I know it's a weird thing to say about other historians, but this sort of battle, this mad battle pedantry when you cannot possibly know just fills me with total bewilderment.
Even the most distant town he visits is clean " to the point of pedantry." As in the metropole, so also here, the British cannily combine brute force with cultural influence.
Just because you're dealing with a scholarly discipline that's usually reported in a style of dry pedantry is no reason why you shouldn't write in good fresh English.