Our 2025 Annual Conference
will be held November 6-9 in San Diego
Our 2025 conference in San Diego was another great one. We held it at the beautiful and historic US Grant Hotel. We had a fine group of speakers (program below) and two particularly good feasts. An interesting aspect of hotel is that it is now owned by the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation and displays artifacts, photographs and art they created. We were given a most interesting tour of the hotel and learned much of its history, which dates back to 1910.
We had an another fine program on Saturday, including the following talks- Dr. Anna Barker “Napoleon, Iowa: On the Edge of the French Empire”
- Dennis W. Potts “The Assassination of General Kleber: An Act of Jihad against the West”
- Mark Billings “Essai Général de tactique: How Guibert Changed the Art of War”
- Dr. Diana Murtaugh Coleman “Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign from the Islamic Perspective”
- J. David Markham “The View from Across the Channel: Napoleon and the British Romantic Poets”
- Kevin Rodriguez “The Cutting Edge: Three Technologies That Could Have Changed Napoleonic History”
After the individual presentations, we had a fine panel discussion on how the Napoleonic era was relevant to today.
In addition to the talks, the concierge gave us a tour of the most historic parts of the hotel.
Our Saturday banquet was held in the grand Crystal Ballroom, where we heard to our final talk: Dr. James W. Ingram III “The Napoleonic Ethic and the Spirit of Rationalization.” This year’s banquet had especially good food, selected to have more of a French flare than the usual food at the grant.
On Sunday we visited the Maritime Museum. While it has several historic ships, which we toured, the one that resonated with our era was a replica of HMS Surprise. This ship was used in the film Master and Commander, which has the most realistic movie recreation of sailing and naval warfare in the Napoleonic era.
While our conference officially ended after the tour of the Maritime Museum, as usual, some of us were in town on Sunday night. We had a fine dinner at the famous Hotel del Coronado.
As always, despite the excellent talks, great food and historic locations, the best part of our conference was spending time with old friends and meeting new ones. The first shot is from dinner for the early arrivals at Brazilian steakhouse Fogo. The last is some of us hanging out in the hotel bar After an evening program.
