You might find this interesting: How the World Made the West by Josephine Quinn. https://www.amazon.com/How-World-Made-West-History/dp/059372979X

I haven't read it yet, but a friend lent it to me.

All of culture and geopolitics is the result of an exchange. 1492 and the Tenochtitlan Noche Triste in 1519 are irreversible. So are Thermopylae, Marathon, Salamis and Gaugamela. So are Gib-al-Tariq's crossing the strait to conquer Visigothic Spain in 711, Muslim defeat at Poitiers in 732, the Chinese emperor burning the exploration ships that discovered the world in 1421-23, Ottoman defeat at Lepanto in 1571 and at Vienna in 1683.

1944, D-Day success or failure: would you prefer a Soviet-occupied western Europe?

The key question posed by counterfactuals is whether the outcome we got, however awful, was better than the alternative for human flourishing. None of the above is not on the menu. It's usually bad vs worse.

It makes no sense to prefer the human-sacrificing Aztecs to the Spaniards in 1519. The germs part of Guns, Germs and Steel in North and South America was going to happen with the immune systems of the natives totally unprepared for it.

Greeks vs Persians: I vote against the counterfactual.

Tariq in 711: I vote yes. From it we got the Toledo school of translators.

Poitiers, 732: I vote yes.

European 1492 vs a Chinese version of planetary intercivilizational linkup had the emperor not burnt the ships: I'd likely vote the Chinese version.

Lepanto and Vienna: what we got better than the alternative. Ask any Hungarian, Bulgarian, Moldovan, Serb or Greek about Ottoman governance.