Since I was a young kid, alternate histories always fascinated me. The idea that the whole story could have been written in a completely different way than it was, just because someone made a different choice, be it small or large, many years ago simply captivates my mind. To this very day I find myself gravitating towards books that tell of a story set in an alternate reality, caused by a simple change in decisions.
One of the biggest alternate realities explored by several authors was the Axis triumph during the second world war. Amongst others, Robert Harris and Philip K. Dick explore this concept in their books, Man in the High Castle and Fatherland respectively. In the former, Dick explores the ideas of a North American east coast being the Greater Nazi Reich and the west coast as the Japanese Pacific States of America, with the two being split by a buffer zone. In his book, the military loss in the second world war stemmed from the fact that future president Franklin D. Roosevelt was assassinated in 1933, which in turn caused the United States to become more isolated from the rest of the world and never developing into the military power that eventually, in our reality, together with the rest of the allied forces, led to victory in the second world war.
Similarly, in their collection of stories titled Back to the USSA, Eugene Byrne and Kim Newman explore another alternate reality where a communist United Socialist States of America was established following a second american civil war in the early twentieth century. But its not just a few authors that wonder at what could have been. Amazon's television series adaptation of Man in the High Castle was given very good reviews, with a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. And the fact that it was determined to be the most streamed original series of the year by Variety Magazine, clearly shows that a lot of people find the idea of living in alternate world very very intriguing. Even the brilliant mind of Sheldon Cooper couldn't resist postulating these hypotheses, as it was shown when he was playing the made-up game of Counter Factuals with Amy in the Big Bang Theory's season four episode, The Zazzy Substitution.
So when the other day I was randomly scrolling through my Facebook news feed and came upon the the following post by my friend Stefan,
"Malta could have been annexed by Russia after the French capitulation in 1800, under the pretence of the Czar reconstituting sovereignty to the Order of St. John (of whom he was now the Grand Master).
If those Russian soldiers had indeed landed in 1799, how different would Maltese society be right now?"
I couldn't help but drifting away in my own little head thinking about what could have been. Some of the replies were quite entertaining actually, ranging from how we'd have vodka, instead of wine, in the cellars and bears, instead of dogs, tied up in the yards. But all of this also got me thinking of several other occasions in my tiny country's long long history, where things could have diverted from what now is history, to scenarios that I guess we cannot even imagine.
With the second world war being such a significant chapter of our history, one can think of several scenarios where the result could have been the complete opposite of what actually happened. I'm sure that most Maltese like me would instantly think of the convoy of ships that somehow made it to Malta on the 15th of August, 1942. Without those greatly needed supplies, the island would have surely surrendered to the Axis powers, which in turn would have led to them having an uninterrupted corridor all the way from Germany down to Libya, which would made it next to impossible for the Allies to win in the North African theatre of the war.
But even a few years before that, The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was hell bent on establishing an Italian Empire, one which definitely included Malta as part of its territories, as shown on the Italia Irrendita map drawn in the 1930s on the left. In fact, Mussolini claimed that the Maltese language was a dialect of Italian and also theorised about Malta being the cradle of the Latin civilization. This nearly became a reality when Italian forces made it to Africa, conquering Libya and as far down as Abyssinia (modern day Ethiopia).
And, what if the French hadn't surrendered in Malta after the uprising in 1799? I have to admit that there is no way where I can see myself speaking French and eating frog legs instead of speaking Maltese and devouring tons of pastizzi.
Much closer to modern times, we also could have become part of the United Kingdom, if Dom Mintoff's negotiations for integration had been successful back in 1958. A referendum had already been held two years prior to that, and it had passed with 77.02% of the voters being in favour of integration. Maybe that wouldn't have been so bad, or maybe it would have, who knows?
Realistically, if I were to keep mentioning historical events which could have had a different outcome than they actually did, this blog post would drag on to eternity. But, I guess, its nice to think about what could have been every now and then. Maybe in another universe, these events actually happened in a different way than in ours.
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P.S. It has been a while since I posted any music, so here we go, the latest track that got stuck in my head, Clockwork's remix of Abby's This Song Remains Through All.
