« The well-forgotten old »: new French editions on the history of Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign
Tchoudinov Alexander
The author of the article analyzes the latest French publications on the history of the Egyptian campaign of 1798-1801 – the monographs by C. Chadefaud, P. Cyr and J.-O. Boudon, published in 2015-2019. Noting that over the past two hundred years, the historiography of this topic has reached the highest level of research, A. Tchoudinov identifies a number of previously published fundamental editions that have become a kind of benchmark for evaluating subsequent works on the relevant issues. In the field of military history, such a reference point is the five-volume work by C. La Jonquière. In the field of the history of science, these are monographs by Y. Laissus and P. Bret, as well as collective publications published for the 200th anniversary of the Egyptian campaign. Among the generalizing works on this topic such a standard, according to the author of the article, is the fundamental study of H. Laurens. Comparing the recent French publications with the classics of previous years, A. Tchoudinov comes to the conclusion that none of the latest authors managed to surpass it or at least reach its level. Books by C. Chadefaud and P. Syr, being a popular-scientific editions, are secondary and more or less compilatory. On the contrary the monograph by J.-O. Boudon, although it should also be attributed to popular-scientific works, has such an important advantage as its author's ephasis on the problem of research of everyday practices of war and occupation, which are studied today in the framework of the newest prospect of historiography – the military-historical anthropology.