Allende's Chile: Contemporary History and the Counterfactual

Abstract

Historians generally recognize that the writing of contemporary history is an exercise of some delicacy. Narrating the contests of the Christian sects at the time of Constantine, Edward Gibbon remarks that ‘the fierce and partial writers of the times, ascribingallvirtue to themselves andallguilt to their adversaries, have painted the battle of the angels and the daemons. Our calmer reason,’ he goes on, ‘will reject such pure and perfect monsters of vice and sanctity.’