Reply To: Sources for historicals: where, who, what?

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Used to do uniform research for a historical site I worked at years ago. The focus was Napoleonic Era, but we did some Colonial stuff as well. Osprey is always useful. Well researched and with good art. Usually a good price, too, when you’re looking for them and your local historic site will usually have one or two in the gift shop. They can be a bit of a rabbit hole when you go looking for something specific as you may end up trying to work out just which book you need, but they are so synonymous these days that you can quite often find copies on things like Google Books to get a feel before you buy. Local libraries may also have them lying around in places.

I would say for most wargaming scales the details in Osprey will be enough to get the ‘correct’ look, but if you find an era and want to go deeper then I’d advise you look up books by author rather than publisher (outside of Osprey) as you tend to find that an author who contributed to an Osprey book has a couple of their own books that would be more in-depth. For example, I have a book written by a chap called Rene Chartrand all about the British Army uniforms of the War of 1812 which is a bit of a niche subject but is great for the details you can get from it. That’s not to say that there are not specialist publishers out there, mind you, I just can’t recall any off the top of my head. The great benefit of Osprey, though, is definitely the artwork in it. More ‘serious’ works tend to rely on contemporary images which may not represent reality too well, whereas Osprey quite nicely brings things to life. I also think they do books of the artwork that covers VAST distance of time, and you can often get copies of certain books from companies that sell the minis (I know Warlord has a few on their site).

Internet research is also doable, though as Gerry said make sure to find AT LEAST 2 sources that agree. Particularly if dealing with non-english source material, or translated material. If you can speak the language yourself, it is likely easier to find the original source and work from there (or make friends with someone who can do it for you). While it’s also a little trickier right now, museum artifacts are also great sources of information, though you usually have to factor in wear and tear along with fading of colours. At the end of the day, the amount of research you put in determines how accurate you can be, but if you’re looking for uniforms and scale minis there is always that level of detail you can’t reach in a paint job. I don’t know of anyone who can paint the coloured threads on Napoleonic British taping that also denotes regiment; it’s just too small.