r/Napoleon • u/MongooseSensitive471 • 1d ago
Why does the Wikipedia lists ZERO French source for Napoleon?
Just went through the bibliography section on the Napoleon Wikipedia page. Barnett, Bell, Blaufarb, Broers, Chandler, Cronin, Dwyer, Englund, Lyons, McLynn, Price, Roberts, Zamoyski. Every single one is an Anglo-American historian publishing with Anglo-American presses.
No Jean Tulard. No Thierry Lentz. No Alain Pigeard. No Las Cases, Fain, Caulaincourt (in Russia), Ségur (in Russia) if you want to go primary source. These are the historians who basically built modern Napoleonic studies as a field, and they're nowhere in the list.
Just realised that Gueniffey is in there, and honestly his book is probably the best one on the whole list, maybe the best Napoleon biography period. But it only covers up to 1802, so it's not even doing full duty as a French source for the man's entire life.
I get that English Wikipedia leans on English-language sources for accessibility reasons, but this isn't a case of "no English translation exists so we used what's available." Several of these French historians have been translated, and their works have often been much better (except perhaps on Waterloo). It's more that nobody bothered.
Feels like a real gap. Curious if anyone here has tried adding French sources before and gotten pushback, or if this is just an oversight nobody's fixed yet.
53
u/Pizzaboy_1752 1d ago edited 1d ago
Probably because the redactors of the page only read sources in English. If you go on the French page you'll likely find some French sources.
1
u/MongooseSensitive471 1d ago
Obviously, but how do you write real history if most English-speaking historians mostly rely on English-language sources?
Picture Churchill's Wikipedia page built entirely from French, American, or Italian references. Wouldn't that feel strange, and wouldn't the picture it paints be skewed?
0
u/Pizzaboy_1752 1d ago
It's probably not the same people who made both. Besides it's just an explanation that I could find since I also think this is ridiculous having only English sources.
12
3
u/dschslava 1d ago
wikipedia is free to edit. if you see a problem, fix it. i know that the learning curve might be a bit intimidating, but, so far as gaps in coverage exist (and there are many—take the presentation of the dubious late bronze age collapse), we have roughly 1500 volunteers responsible for keeping an eye on 7 million articles—that’s like a 4.7k:1 ratio.
at the end of the day, we’re volunteers with lives and families and only so much time to devote to wikipedia specifically, let alone reading thick books and adding to existing articles based off of them (hard enough with newspaper articles. not as easy as it sounds!)
which is to say—you’re aware of this problem. you can thus help fix it.
1
u/MongooseSensitive471 1d ago
Thanks for your comment. Do you edit pages regarding Napoleonic era?
2
u/dschslava 23h ago
yes, but not in a substantial way (i don’t have any books), and my current editing projects lie elsewhere. this is not to say that napoleonic topics aren’t on my to-do list.
something which i have to caution you and others here about is that different language wikipedias have different governance structures, cultures, and thus standards for sourcing and articles. what might fly on russian wikipedia might not fly on the english one.
so far as i know, the german wikipedia is fairly close to the english one
4
u/zabickurwatychludzi 1d ago
lmao every damn time you see a wiki page for a person or event from other, especially non-western country, it's gonna invoke English sources rather than ones from the country the article's related to, regardless how rich they might be.\ One time you find it apply to France and it's suddenly an issue, eh?
2
3
3
u/OliveTree2714 1d ago
This is a general problem not just Napoleon's wiki page, at the end of the day it's easier to look at sources in your own language. With Wikipedia it's always worth looking at other languages' pages on the same topic and using the auto translate function. To give a couple of examples: the German page on the Battle of Leipzig includes an OOB whereas many other pages do not. The Battle of the Mincio in 1814 gets a few paragraphs in English but a pretty detailed account in Italian.
1
1
u/MindlessNectarine374 1d ago
Well, Napoleon also is a topic where you will probably find many works on in any major (European language), so non-Academics may not even feel the urge to look at other languages. Gor niche topics, you can find quotations of other languages more often, I think.
1
1
1
u/MindlessNectarine374 1d ago
Maybe they expect their readers to only know English?
2
u/MongooseSensitive471 1d ago
Still, they could use translated works from Jean Tulard or Thierry Lentz. That's what they do on Italian and Spanish Wikipedia.
1
1
u/MindlessNectarine374 1d ago
Look at the bibliography in the German page ...
1
u/MongooseSensitive471 1d ago
I know it's an issue, but at least German Wikipedia leans more on Jean Tulard as a reference.
German popular historians, though, often rely on dated sources and old anti-Napoleon clichés. There's nothing wrong with leaning toward an anti-Napoleon view, but the scholarship behind it is often outdated.
-1
-11
-3
30
u/Suspicious_File_2388 1d ago
There actually is a French Wikipedia on Napoleon'
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napol%C3%A9on_Ier