Albert Malet (historian)

Albert Malet (3 May 1864, Clermont-Ferrand - 25 September 1915, Battle of Thélus, Pas de Calais) was a French historian and author of scholarly textbooks, killed during the First World War.

Life
Catholic, Republican and patriotic, he failed the entry exam for Saint-Cyr but passed the agrégation in history and geography in 1889. He then worked in Paris as professor at the lycée Voltaire in 1897. Albert was one of the founder members of the Société d’Histoire de la Révolution in 1904. He moved to be professor at the Louis-le-Grand in 1914.

Recruited as a contributor to the monumental Histoire Générale, edited by Ernest Lavisse, he was then chosen to edit and direct a series of new textbooks under the school-programme reforms of 1902. He published several such works for use in secondary schools : L'Antiquité - Orient - Grèce - Rome (in collaboration with Charles Maquet, 1902), Les Temps Modernes (1498-1789) (1904), Le Moyen Âge et le commencement des Temps Modernes (1903-1904), L'époque contemporaine (1905), Histoire de France et notions sommaires d'histoire générale jusqu'en 1610 (1906), Histoire de France et notions sommaires d'histoire générale de 1610 à 1789 (1909), Histoire Moderne (1498-1715) (1909), Histoire de France et notions sommaires d'histoire générale jusqu'à la Révolution (1910), Histoire de France et notions sommaires d'histoire générale depuis la Révolution jusqu'en 1875 (1911), XVIIIe siècle Révolution Empire (1715-1815) (1914), XIXe siècle (1815-1900) (1914). These give high importance to military history and to teaching through examples. This collection of textbooks Malet had initiated was continued and expanded by Jules Isaac, who had become Malet's collaborator on them before the war on the initiative of Ernest Lavisse. Isaac introduced a more internationalist and neutral tone to the series, and passed it on to "les éditions Hachette" in 1923.

Although too old in 1914 to be mobilised, he joined up as a volunteer. As sous-lieutenant in the 63e régiment d'infanterie, he was reported missing in the Artois offensive, in making an attack on Thélus on 25 September 1915.