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How Do Historians Study The Battle Of Waterloo?

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In this essay it will be discussed what values two particular websites have as resources for historians studying the battle of Waterloo, 1815. To start with this essay will look at how the website is maintained and whether or not it easy to find the relevant articles on the websites. Secondly this essay will look at the hosts of both websites and determine if they are in anyway biased towards one particular side of the battle of Waterloo. Finally this essay will discuss the amount of articles on the website and whether the material on the websites are of an academic quality and can it be trusted. In other words do the articles on the websites contain footnotes, references and a bibliography so that historians can use the information for their …show more content…

The host of Waterloo 200 website, found at http://www.waterloo200.org, is Waterloo 200 ltd. Similarly the host of the second website, found at http://www.napoleon.org, is the Foundation Napoleon. Both hosts are charitable organisations. So discovering that both websites are hosted by charitable organisations shows a great threat of bias in their articles. Furthermore both websites are funded by these organisations thus their objectivity is in question before ever reading an article. The Waterloo 200 website looks biased towards the British side of the battle with no reference towards Napoleon. Similarly the Napoleon website looks at Napoleon …show more content…

Taking the Waterloo website first and looking at the articles found in the education section of the website it is intriguing to discover only two articles. The first one is titled The Origin and Numismatic Characteristics of the British Waterloo Medal by Chris Cawthorne. This essay would not be of any particular relevance to a historian studying the Battle of Waterloo. However this article is well referenced throughout and may be of use to a historian studying the aftermath of the battle. The second essay is titled The Battle of Waterloo: A Brief Account by Gareth Glover. A brief account is exactly what this article is. There is not one single reference in this article making it hard to trust the information in it. In relation to being of help to a historian studying the Battle of Waterloo it’s not other than being of some use as a brief chronological outline of the battle. There is also a short article in the Waterloo section of the website called the Battle of Waterloo. However there is no name of an author given and similar to the previous article, is only a brief outline of the battle with no references, footnotes or bibliography. The website does offer an extensive amount of links in the welcome section to an array of websites with particular reference to the Napoleonic period including an article on J-Stor called A Negotiated Truce: The Battle of Waterloo in European Memory

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