A historical or counterfactual inquiry begins with relevant scholarship, then moves through research notes and primary sources. For British naval intelligence, Andrew Boyd's work provides a starting point for comparison with notes and archival documents. The method begins with a question rather than a desired conclusion. Its central warning is against reading history backward: an option that looks foolish from the 2020s may have seemed reasonable to people working with the information of the 1920s or 1930s. A credible counterfactual must therefore reconstruct contemporary assumptions and constraints before asking how a different choice might unfold.
Notable Point · 30:32-32:57
Researching naval counterfactuals without hindsight
A credible naval counterfactual begins with the evidence available at the time rather than projecting the outcome backward onto decision-makers.