{"id":9916,"date":"2017-09-06T02:04:22","date_gmt":"2017-09-06T02:04:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=9916"},"modified":"2017-09-07T02:09:50","modified_gmt":"2017-09-07T02:09:50","slug":"in-defense-of-hbos-counterfactual-confederate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/in-defense-of-hbos-counterfactual-confederate\/","title":{"rendered":"In defense of HBO’s counterfactual ‘Confederate’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gavriel D. Rosenfeld<\/a>, Fairfield University <\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

In late July, HBO announced its forthcoming alternate history series \u201cConfederate,\u201d a show that will take place in a world in which the South successfully seceded from the Union and the institution of slavery persisted.<\/p>\n

The backlash was immediate. Some decried it<\/a> for being the brainchild of two white men, \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. In The New York Times<\/a>, Roxane Gay compared it to \u201cslavery fan fiction.\u201d Ta-Nehisi Coates argued in The Atlantic<\/a> that it would perpetuate the South\u2019s enduring belief in the \u201cLost Cause<\/a>,\u201d which celebrates the Civil War as a heroic struggle and minimizes the role of slavery in the conflict. <\/p>\n

Then the tragic events of Charlottesville happened, and some people started saying that the fictional scenario of the South winning the Civil War was happening in real life. Jamie Broadnax, a leader of the Twitter boycott group #NoConfederate, insisted<\/a> that the \u201calternate history of what the South would be like if it won [the war]\u2026is play[ing] out right before our eyes.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have been joking on social media,\u201d she declared<\/a>. \u201cBut it\u2019s really the truth\u2026we\u2019ve already seen episode one of\u00a0‘Confederate.\u2018\u201d<\/p>\n

At times, this may seem to possess nuggets of truth. After all, plenty of people in the South continue to defend Confederate \u201cheritage,\u201d whether it\u2019s in the form of monuments, flags or building names. And the timing of a series on the Confederacy winning the Civil War could easily be misunderstood given ongoing racial tensions in the United States. <\/p>\n

But as a historian who studies counterfactual histories, I think the critics of \u201cConfederate\u201d are mistaken to suggest that today\u2019s racial tensions make the HBO series redundant, or that imagining a world in which the South won is inherently apologetic to the Confederate cause.<\/p>\n

They overlook the fact that alternate histories of the Civil War have long existed, with each possessing its own agenda. Many mirror the concerns of the era in which they were created. Some have leaned to the right, while others have leaned to the left. Some fantasize about how things might have turned out better, while others offer nightmarish scenarios of a world in which events could have been much, much worse. <\/p>\n

By holding a mirror up to society and reflecting its aspirations and shortcomings, alternative histories can advance our national dialogue about the legacy of slavery and the Civil War.<\/p>\n

A fantasy and a nightmare<\/h2>\n

In 1930, British politician Winston Churchill published an essay<\/a> in Scribner\u2019s Magazine called \u201cIf Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg.\u201d <\/p>\n

As the title indicates, the essay is an alternate history within an alternate history. It\u2019s narrated by an unnamed writer who inhabits a world in which the South won the war, and reflects on how much worse history would have been had the South been defeated.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Winston Churchill\u2019s dismay over the horrors of World War I made him fantasize about whether a southern victory could have prevented the Great War.<\/span>
\n Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In this imaginary world, Robert E. Lee is able to triumph only after agreeing to abolish slavery, which convinces the British to support the Confederacy. The South and North then split into two nations and go their separate ways. <\/p>\n

But at the start of the 20th century, they join forces with Great Britain to form an imperial alliance. This has huge ramifications: It prevents the nations of Europe from going to war in 1914. <\/p>\n

When writing this essay, Churchill clearly had contemporary concerns on his mind. His country had just emerged from the catastrophic Great War. What if it could have been avoided? <\/p>\n

It also indicates that Churchill was concerned about the future of the British Empire. At the essay\u2019s outset, the narrator expresses relief that northern forces didn\u2019t win the war. Had they done so, he notes, they would have irresponsibly extended \u201cequality\u201d and suffrage to the \u201csimple African race\u201d and thereby brought \u201cparliamentary government into\u2026disrepute.\u201d <\/p>\n

At a time of growing anti-colonial movements \u2013 especially in India<\/a> \u2013 the last thing avowed imperialists like Churchill wanted was for subjugated peoples to be inspired by the goals of social and political equality. Portraying a Confederate victory as a positive event that restores order, thus, was appealing to some.<\/p>\n

At first glance, Churchill\u2019s narrative lends credence to the claims of HBO\u2019s critics that a Confederate victory in the Civil War can easily dovetail with racist fantasies.<\/p>\n

But other tales \u2013 told from a more humane point of view \u2013 portray a Confederate victory as a nightmare. In 1953, the American writer Ward Moore published his classic novella \u201cBring the Jubilee<\/a>.\u201d It, too, was set in a world in which the South won the Civil War. But it devoted less attention to its impact on the South than on the North. <\/p>\n

Tellingly, Moore inverted real history, with the defeated North reacting to military defeat in the same way as the South did \u2013 by scapegoating African-Americans in a violent campaign of lynching and forced deportation. <\/p>\n

The book ends on a note of tragic irony when its protagonist \u2013 having accidentally gone back in time and helped the North defeat the South \u2013 thinks he\u2019s improved the course of history, only to realize that the craven compromises following the election of 1876 portend the end of Reconstruction and the onset of Jim Crow<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A biting satire and a liberal pipe dream<\/h2>\n

A more recent alternate history was African-American filmmaker Kevin Willmott\u2019s brilliant 2004 film \u201cC.S.A.<\/a>\u201d <\/p>\n

The biting satire took the form of a film within a film: a mock British documentary about the South\u2019s victory in the Civil War that is broadcast \u2013 complete with bluntly racist commercials \u2013 to an American audience that remains under Confederate rule. <\/p>\n

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