In this paper, I explicate desiderata for accounts of
explanation in historiography. I argue that a fully developed account of
explanation in historiography must explicate many explanation-related
notions in order to be satisfactory. In particular, it is not enough
that an account defines the basic structure of explanation. In addition,
the account of explanation must be able to explicate notions such as minimal explanation, complete explanation, historiographical explanation, explanatory depth, explanatory competition, and explanatory goal. Moreover, the account should also tell how explananda can be chosen in a motivated way. Furthermore, the account should be able to clarify notions that are closely connected with explanation such as historical contingency.
Finally, it is important that the account is able to recognize when
explanation-related notions and issues are so closely intertwined that
we are in danger of not seeing the differences between them. In other
words, I argue that a satisfactory account of explanation in
historiography must have the power to explicate central
explanation-related notions and to clarify discussions where the
differences between the notions are obscure. In order to explicate these
desiderata, I formulate a (version of the) counterfactual
account of explanation and show how that account is able to explicate
explanation-related notions and clarify issues that are connected with
historiographical explanations. The success of the counterfactual
account suggests that historiographical explanations do not differ
fundamentally from explanations in many other fields.