WI: Roman Yemen

It is true that they generally lacked the imagination and faith to undertake such projects, even though it would pay for itself fairly quickly.

One would want to know why, if something like that would pay for itself so quickly, it wasn't attempted.

Heck, we even see the OTL transshipment canal abandoned in time.

Saying that it was "a lack of imagination and faith' across the centuries from ~100 AD to the mid 19th century (and multiple polities) just doesn't make sense.
 
One would want to know why, if something like that would pay for itself so quickly, it wasn't attempted.

Heck, we even see the OTL transshipment canal abandoned in time.

Saying that it was "a lack of imagination and faith' across the centuries from ~100 AD to the mid 19th century (and multiple polities) just doesn't make sense.

Well, for much of that time, there wasn't enough stability or a polity large enough to warrant such action. And many probably simply accepted that the existing canal was enough.
 
Well, for much of that time, there wasn't enough stability or a polity large enough to warrant such action. And many probably simply accepted that the existing canal was enough.

Rome (counting Constantinople) controlled the area for five centuries after the POD.

Then we get the Caliphate (up to the Fatamids) for three centuries.

Then the Fatamids for nearly two.

Then the Mamelukes from 1250-1500ish.

Then the Ottomans until they lost Egypt.

Obviously not all of those are uniformly perfectly stable, but that's seventeen hundred years with it undug, and the existing canal left to rot after the mid 8th century.

That any given ruler didn't have it dug is one thing - we can name plenty where other problems got in the way - but that none did for seventeen and a half centuriesis not the result of persistent instability.

If there's an obvious profit, it wasn't obvious to the people who would have to pay for it. Any of them.
 
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