How a Replay Works

A replay on Treaties & Tradeoffs puts a concluded decision back at the moment it was made and judges it on what was available then. This page explains how to read each part of an article.

The Known then: card

Every article opens with a short answer to its main question. Right after it comes a card titled Known then:, which is the table form of the known-then test. The card holds six fields:

• Date: when the decision was made.
• Decider: who held the choice.
• Known then: three to five things the decider could know at that moment.
• Resources: what was at hand, such as money, people, ships or time.
• Options on the table: the choices open at that moment, as the record shows them.
• Card sources: the numbered sources, from the list at the foot of the article, behind each field.

The card uses only information the decider could have had at the time. It has no row for the outcome, since the ending would bring back the hindsight the card exists to remove. Card and article draw on the same sources, so their figures match.

Reported and Assessed

Passages open with a bold label. Reported: marks what a document records: what the memo says, what the ledger lists, what the court found. A Reported passage presents an event as settled fact only when independent evidence or broad scholarly agreement supports it; otherwise it says whose account it is.

Assessed: marks this site's judgment, such as an interpretation, a comparison or a conclusion. Any conclusion an article draws sits under Assessed and never inside a Reported passage. When a figure from a source has been converted, for instance a price turned into days of wages, the label reads Reported, with our conversion: so that the source and the arithmetic stay distinguishable.

Weighing a source

No fixed ranking lets a document from the time always beat a later study. Each statement is weighed on four questions:

1. When was the source made, and how close was it to the event?
2. Why was it made: as an account book, a memoir, a later hearing, propaganda, or a defense of the writer's own conduct?
3. Does independent evidence confirm it?
4. How has later scholarship judged it?

Where the course of events, the credit for a decision or the terms of a concession are seriously disputed, the article sets out the main scholarly judgments, naming each author with the year; a memoir or a self-defense does not settle the question alone. Encyclopedias serve as a way in, to find names and the sources they cite, never as the only support for a statement.

When sources disagree

Conflicting figures and dates are shown side by side, each with its source; none is quietly picked because it fits the story. When an article sets a popular version against the documents, both halves carry a source.

Prices, wages and units

Historical prices are never turned into modern dollars. Where a price can be given scale, it is counted in days of wages, and only when a wage series exists for the same place, the same period and a named occupation. A gap of more than about ten years, or a change of currency in between, rules the conversion out. The preferred wage is that of the trade tied to the story, such as a soldier's pay or a dock laborer's day, then an unskilled laborer's day wage in the same place, then a skilled craftsman's.

Each conversion states the place, the years, the occupation, the wage unit, whether pay in kind such as rations or lodging is included, and the source. When no matching wage can be found, the article says so and gives only the original price and unit. A wage-day figure shows how expensive something was for that worker, there and then; it is not a measure of living standards or purchasing power.

Numbers and units follow the original text. Where an older translation restates a sum in a different currency, it serves only as a reading aid.

Timelines, maps and data files

Every date in a timeline is checked so that events run in the order their sources give, and each date points to a source. Maps are schematic rather than surveys: places are set from coordinates in named sources, and distances are recomputed from the coordinates given. Diagrams are designed from primary data such as dates, coordinates and figures, and are not traced from maps or charts in modern books.

Each data table can be downloaded beside the article as a CSV file; every row names its source, and a short file next to each download states the license and the data it draws on. Where a figure has been converted, the arithmetic is written out in a formula column so a reader can redo it.

When a source cannot be read

If an article knows a work only through another writer's account, the source list gives the publication details, and the text says whose account it is and keeps the claim no stronger than that account allows. A document that cannot be located is not described as existing. A figure with no source does not appear; the article says the source is missing instead of supplying a convenient number.

Illustrations

Some articles carry a cut-paper illustration of a scene. Each one is credited as an Illustration and carries no evidence. An illustration never stands in for a real person, an artifact or a historical photograph, and it is never an article's lead image. Portraits, objects, documents and old maps come only from public-domain or openly licensed sources, each credited with its license, and any map with a scale is drawn as a diagram from data.

What stays out

The site does not cover ongoing wars, lawsuits still in progress, or the current strategy of a sitting chief executive, and a business case enters only after it has been closed for at least five years. Articles describe what happened and why; they give no investment, career or negotiation advice.

When something is wrong

Corrections are made in the open and listed in the Amendments log with the date and the original wording; to report an error, see Back channel.