An attempt to abandon the “archipelago”? Reflections on military history while reading a new book about the Napoleonic era

Preparation of a review of the scientific monograph by Dmitry Igorevich Gorshkov “La garde au feu! Napoleon’s Imperial Guard during the Retreat of 1812: Status, Efficiency and Inter-Regimental Communication” (Moscow, 2022) served as an occasion for reflection on the current state of military history.The metaphor “archipelago” is used to denote four areas of study of the military past (the history of wars, uniformology, the history of military equipment, the history of the armed forces in the context of problems of economic, social and political history). These directions are metaphorically called “islands”, since they occupy a separate position in relation to historiography, which we will conditionally call “other”. These directions are based on special scientific structures, specialized periodicals, methodological innovations that historical science has been interested in over the last century are hardly noticeable in them. D. I. Gorshkov in the introduction of his book announced a new approach to the study of the Napoleonic era and the Patriotic War of 1812 through a comprehensive and scrupulous study of a separate combat episode (the battle at Borovsk on October 25, 1812). In addition, his monograph declares its intentions to obtain updated results in the socio-cultural sphere based on the history of armaments and uniformology. However, according to the author of the article, D. I. Gorshkov fails the attempt to fulfill the promises which he gave to his readers. He failed to leave the “islands”, with there being serious grounds for that.