If IT Had Happened Otherwise - Revised Edition

Revised Edition

A revised edition with the alternate title If: or, History Rewritten was also released by the American publisher Viking in 1931, deleting Ronald Knox's essay and adding one new essay along with reprints of two older ones:

• "If the Dutch Had Kept Nieuw Amsterdam" by Hendrik Willem Van Loon

• "If: A Jacobite Fantasy" by Charles Petrie (1926): In this universe, Charles Edward Stuart ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") won the battle of Culloden in 1745, resulting in Hanoverian flight back to their home German province. James Francis Edward Stuart (son of James II of England, or the "Old Pretender") is restored to the British throne as "James III", but proves conciliatory in terms of religion and government. When "Bonnie Prince Charlie" succeeds his father as Charles III in 1766, his adroit diplomatic skills prevent the American Revolution through sharing his own dislike for the House of Commons with his American counterparts. Henry Benedict Stuart succeeds his childless brother in 1788, as "Henry IX". In this world, he never entered the clergy and was able to father surviving children, so the Stuart dynasty effectively displaces that of the Hanoverians from that point on.

• "If Napoleon Had Won the Battle of Waterloo" by G. M. Trevelyan (1907): In this world, Great Britain becomes a reactionary dictatorship wracked with political instability in the early nineteenth century, dealing with the trauma of defeat and reparations, resulting in the censorship of much of English Romanticism. France governs much of Europe, and Napoleon eventually dies of old age.