For the want of a nail the shoe was lost,
For the want of a shoe the horse was lost,
For the want of a horse the rider was lost,
For the want of a rider the battle was lost,
For the want of a battle the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a horseshoe-nail.
—Proverbial

Chance has always been a huge factor in how history plays out. If you don’t believe that, just ask the dinosaurs. But chance, of course, can affect history in innumerable ways besides the odd six-mile-wide meteoroid coming in from outer space.

Here are some of the ways chance has worked on history.

England is separated from the European continent by a mere twenty-one nautical miles of open water. But that fact has had enormous historical consequences. While it was close enough to Europe for considerable interaction, England was, after the Normans, largely safe from foreign invasion behind its watery walls. So the country could develop as a low-tax economy where the king largely left local matters to local landowners. With such a governing system made possible by geography, England proved fertile soil in which the modern concept of liberty could begin to grow, beginning with Magna Carta in 1215.

When England, with relatively small Crown revenues, began to found American colonies in the early seventeenth century, to keep costs down it did so by means of proprietors and joint-stock companies rather