Alternative history

Alternative history or alternate history can be:

• A history told from an alternative viewpoint, rather than from the view of imperialist, conqueror, or explorer. For example A People's History of the United States as a view sympathetic to people indigenous to the Americas, or Herstory as a history from a female perspective.
• The academic extrapolation of alternate outcomes of historical events: see virtual history (also known as counterfactual history).
• A genre of speculative fiction: see Alternative history (fiction) and uchronia.
• Usually called historical revisionism, i.e. a construction of past events which is refuted by well documented, verifiable, and very broadly accepted sources. Such histories may tend to explain away their lack of scholarship or documentation on a conspiracy to erase such evidence.