But Why Didn't They ...

Most often a historian tries to show why something happened. In other words, the author is mainly interested in creating a chain of cause and effect. That is the way it is normally done, but it may leave readers wondering why the actors in the historical drama did not do things in a different way, or why they did not know something that seems obvious to us.

For instance, in the First Punic War, the Romans managed to win almost every naval battle, but it took them a very long time to win the war, in large part because they kept losing entire fleets to storms. Since they normally sailed close to land, it is logical that they could have been able to beach their galleys and avoid major losses. The problem was probably threefold. First, as J.H. Thiel noted repeatedly in Roman Sea-Power Before the Second Punic War (1954), the Romans had no prior history of large-scale naval or maritime endeavors. They had very little knowledge of the sea and of storms at sea. That their naval leaders failed for a long time to gain such knowledge is largely due to the fact that they were not admirals in any real sense. Instead, they were magistrates, elected from the aristocracy and replaced yearly, intended to lead legions on land. Few of them commanded at sea for more than a campaigning season, so they had little chance to gain experience.

Note here there are two limiting factors. (There were probably others that were specific to a given time and place, but these two seem the most important and the most widespread.) The structure of Roman government meant that men would be chosen from among the large land-owning families to serve for a year. They lacked knowledge of the sea and they lacked time to gain it. So one limitation was structural. The other was the simple unfamiliarity of the citizens with the sea. As more than one nation has found out, you can make seamen into soldiers, but it is much more difficult for a landsman to become a sailor.

Some historians, such as Theil, do spend a time on these kinds of negative explanations. Any good historian will be aware of the limiting factors, but they may not discuss them in detail or at length. One of the reasons for this is often that the limiting factors are complex and structural, difficult to explain in a short space. Another is that historians internalize many of these as they work over the material and become intimately familiar with the events, the people, and the time in question. The knowledge becomes implicit after a while. Implicit knowledge is difficult to communicate, difficult sometimes even to verbalize. It also creates a barrier between the author and the audience, because the author knows things and has difficulty comprehending what knowledge the audience has or what it lacks. At what point does the explanation become a digression, the digression a distraction, and the distraction a separate project?

So the question of "why didn't they" can apply just as much to the limitations on the author as on the people about whom he is writing.