Alfred N.Muggins : The Man Responsible For Bringing Fact and Fiction Together! (In A New Way) : Remolding and Renovating History : Part 3 : Evolution Not Revolution

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By David Kirtley

Thu, 16 Dec 2021
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7 comments
 

Benjamin Franklin might never have got to Paris and impressed the latent French Revolutionaries with his Revolutionary ideas, which may or may not have directly, or indirectly, led to the French Revolution, and the beheading of poor Louis XVI and his poor Austrian wife Marie Antoinette. They could have given the Bourbon biscuits out to the Paris masses, and the Freemasons and Revolutionary Middle Classes at a much earlier date, and kept them happy (without ever needing to resort to Opium or Television, or even Religion, or for that matter suburban gardens or washing machines or any other relatively cheap consumer durables of the future 20th and 21st Centuries).

 

What became of British America, without its Revolution?, and French Canada, without its British conquest or takeover? And Bourbon France, without its Revolution?

 

Robespierre remains a forgotten gentleman, who at least kept his own head, and Corporal Napoleon never rose to such Grand (Army?) Heights! There was no Invasion of Russia, and therefore no 1812 Overture from Tchaikovsky! And then, what about the rest of it? No Civil War in the United States, no Waterloo, no Peninsula War, and therefore no Prime Minister Wellington! (Would the Wellington boots ever have been invented?)

 

No ‘Trail of Tears’ for the Cherokees and the Choctaws etc. as Andrew Jackson never became President (of the non existent United States)! And the American colonists never flooded across the border to take Texas off the Mexicans, and the Alamo never happened!

 

What about California? Did British America buy it off the Spaniards? Did the Russians decide to keep Alaska? And did the French hang on to Louisiana and the West of the Mississippi or more? (It was Napoleon who sold it to his fellow American Revolutionaries in the Louisiana Purchase, but if those two Revolutions never happened it most likely would never have happened! The ‘Wild West’ would not have been the same as the one we know from the films. The Sioux might have hung on to the Dakotas, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn might never have taken place, and the Apaches would have continued to dominate their region of the Southwest?)

 

And what about British India? Did Clive let the French have it instead, or did the Moghul Empire and the Hindu States survive?

 

It was at about this moment that even Alfred N.Muggins’ complex mind began to boggle, and he thought he had better stop writing, for his own benefit and sanity!!

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Comments

Submitted by David Kirtley on

Mr Muggins wrote this section partly on 25/5/21 and partly recently to edit and finish. He is still in the process of recovering from writing this, as his mind has been boggling ever since, and shows no sign (yet!) of slowing down! He has perhaps jumped in too readily to try to rewrite history!

Submitted by marandina on

Who knew bourbon biscuits could have such significant historica context? In a multiverse somewhere, all of those scenarios played out. Mind bending, isn't it?

 

Submitted by David Kirtley on

I am pleased you are finding these scenarios as mindbending as Alfred has (and myself). It shows we are all on the same wavelength when it comes to history! As Alfred often says mere biscuits can represent an awful lot in history. If the Bourbons had been a lot more generous with their biscuits, who knows what could have happened. Well Alfred's alternative historical speculations, just show how seemingly small changes in history can (or could!) have strangely big effects on the development of history. You are quite correct! There is a multiverse of possibilities! (or was, at least!! Still is in fact!)

Submitted by Turlough on

It’s not just the mind of Alfred N. Muggins that is boggling. Mine boggles too as I try to get to grips with the following …

If Marie Antoinette had said ‘Give them a suburban garden and a washing machine’ would this quote have stood the test of time in the same way that her cake-based command has done?

and …

Would Manchester-based 1960s beat combo The Dakotas have still gone on to play at Liverpool’s famous Cavern Club and have a string of smash hits as Billy J. Kramer’s backing band if the Sioux had hung on to them?

Another entertaining read David. I wish you had been my history teacher at school.

Turlough

Submitted by David Kirtley on

Thanks for your entertaining and thought provoking questions, and for reading and commenting Turlough. I guess Marie Antoinette did say the right thing after all, even if it wasn't enough to save her from the guillotine! Although if I have not said it already, I would have advised her to say, 'Let them have the Bourbon biscuits!' That, I fully believe, would have been quite enough to save her life, and the Revolution would have probably turned out quite differently! (That's probably all the Revolutionaries really wanted - access to a plentiful stock of Bourbon biscuits!)

I know the French were thinking about inventions for flying and balloons at the time, in addition to the guillotine, of course, but I think the enlightenment had not quite reached the level of progress required for the advent of the washing machine just yet! And the suburban garden was  still a little 'around the corner' even for the rising (indeed revolting) bourgeoisie of the time. Alfred and I probably got a little too carried away with our analogies, but even so these are rewards which have proved very fruitful in gaining the acquiescence of the middle classes and even the workers in Britain and many countries since!

I must admit that when Alfred (and I) were writing this our heads and imaginations were so filled with images of the French and Indian Wars, and the Wild West and Indian Wars of the 1800's that we never even thought about Manchester in the 1960's! (Manchester crops up everywhere does it not? particularly in music!). Our imaginations might have run as far as Paul Revere and The Raiders, another great sixties group! or perhaps Kansas! Now that is a question :- 'Would rock'n'roll still have been invented if the American Revolution had not taken place?

I will leave that question hanging for the moment in mid air! I am sure that I may be able to get Alfred to attempt an answer to it sooner or later (He likes a historical challenge!), but it will evidently require some thought, and his mind boggling will have to calm down a bit first. I shall set it as his homework, and if any other accolytes of our history lessons, such as yourself, or any other abctalers or facebookers would like to go away and do some research or thinking, we would be happy to hear your answers or thoughts on the subject!

Submitted by Turlough on

My partner is French. I call her Priyatelka which is the Bulgarian word for partner or girlfriend. We live in Bulgaria so our conversations tend to take place in a combination of English, French and Bulgarian languages together with a few words that don’t really exist but which one of us has imagined originates from the other’s native tongue but the error is never corrected because neither of us have a total grasp of any language. In a totally good humoured way we spend a great deal of time ridiculing each other’s ethnic backgrounds, often on the basis of asking a question with the full knowledge that giving an accurate reply will be difficult. For this reason, Marie Antoinette often gets a mention, especially when our cats or dogs are hungry.

Priyatelka insists that Marie Antoinette said brioche rather than cake and scratches her head in puzzlement when I enquire if it was made to the standard recipe or did it contain chocolate chips or a confiture of figs, as it often does when we have it locally with Turkish coffee.

She tells me that whatever the French queen’s suggestion was, it made good sense because what good is simple bread without marmalade (the invention of which was another notable event in French history), which the poor people wouldn't have had. Priyatelka rarely eats bread, she seems to take pleasure from doing our laundry and together we are keen amateur horticulturalists. So the demands of Marie Antoinette that we have previously mentioned make perfect sense to her. She also likes to use the vacuum cleaner, probably more so than the washing machine. I love the way her accent transforms Hoover into euveur, giving it the flavour of a real French verb. Apparently, many French peasants still do not own a vacuum cleaner, so how much sweeter might be the slums of Paris had history taken a slightly different course.

I had forgotten about Paul Revere and The Raiders. Poor old Paul nosedived into obscurity when his backing band abandoned their musical career, concentrating instead on finding their lost arc. I tried to watch the film version of the events but gave up after only a few minutes. Well surely you’d start looking for anything that was lost by checking in your coat pockets and down the back of the settee but no, not these boys. They seem to think that a Peruvian temple is the obvious place. Though from Liverpool rather than Manchester, Gerry and the Pacemakers, in my opinion, were a much more admirable band from the 1960s. If history had been different they could so easily have been called Gerry and the Devices For Stimulating the Heart Muscle and Regulating Its Contractions.

I enjoyed reading your reply to my comment. My best wishes to you both.

 

Turlough

Submitted by David Kirtley on

Well if Marie Antoinette did actually say 'Let them eat Brioche!' instead of 'cake' that does rather change history, but hopefully not too much, and not as much as letting them eat the Bourbon biscuits might have done! A French Lady probably knows these things better than a mere English writer, and self titled historian!

I have got a Paul Revere and The Raiders record, which I bought in a second hand record shop many years ago, but I always liked it when I listened. Their intense and feeling pop rock flavour was just great, but I never knew anything much about them! Thank God Gerry and the Pacemakers did use the word Pacemakers as their name!

Thanks for your interesting scrutiny of Alfred's literary efforts! It will keep him on his toes!