This lecture moves to the 20th century and investigates the rise of an influential ‘school’ of historical scholarship in France, the so-called Annales School. Historians who belonged to this school were to set the agenda for historiography not only in France but in many other countries from the 1920s. Historians of the Annales School favored medieval and early modern themes and enthusiastically embraced sociological and scientific methodologies for the writing of history. We will investigate some of the Annales school's methodologies, such as new conceptions of time and space and their enthusiasm for a 'histoire des mentalités', all of which were part of the overarching goal, a ‘histoire totale’.

The lecture will demonstate, once again, how new ideas about the purpose and method of history writing were deeply situated within a specific socio-cultural, politica, economic context: in this case post WWI France (and in the case of Braudel, France after WWII).

 

READINGS BELOW CAN ALSO BE FOUND HERELink opens in a new window.

Texts/Documents/Arguments/Sources

Febvre, Lucien, The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: the Religion of Rabelais (1937), Cambridge, 1991, introductions by translator and author. (See Talis Aspire Reading Lists at link just above). BE CAREFUL... THE LIBRARY HAS AN ELECTRONIC BOOK WITH THE SAME TITLE BY TINDLER -- DON'T READ THAT ONE! USE THE SCAN TEXT AVAILABLE ON TALIS ASPIRE READING LISTS.

Bloch, Marc, The Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and FranceLink opens in a new window [1941] (London, 1990), Introduction.

Febvre, Lucien, ‘Sensibility and History: How to Reconstruct the Emotional Life of the Past’ [1941], in A New Kind of History: From the Writings of Febvre‘, ed. P. Burke (London, 1973), pp. 12-26. [Course Extracts]

Braudel, F., ‘History and the Social Sciences: The Longue Durée’, Social Science Information, 9:1 (1970), 144-174. [Course Extracts]

 

Seminar Reading

CWHT, ch. 13; focus on the early history of the Annales until Braudel.

 

Seminar Questions

What was the aim of a ‘total history’ set up by Bloch and Febvre? Discuss this within the context of their own time.

Is a ‘total’ history possible or even desirable?

‘Total history is the closest we can get to an objective truth.’ Discuss.

What do you think about Braudel’s revolutionary division of historical time? What are the advantages and disadvantages of a focus on the longue durée?

Why was Braudel’s model of history writing (long durée) so successful in the immediate aftermath of WWII?

What was new about Bloch’s approach to the history of politics in the Royal Touch?

 

 

Significant Quotations

‘Definitions - are they not a kind of bullying? 'Careful, old chap, you are stepping outside history. Re-read my definition, it is very clear! If you are a historian, don't set foot in here, this is the field of the sociologist. Or there - that is the psychologist's part. To the right? Don't dare go there, that's the geographer's area…and to the left, the ethnologist's domain.' It is a nightmare, madness, wilful mutilation! Down with all barriers and labels! At the frontiers, astride the frontiers, with one foot on each side, that is where the historian has to work, freely, usefully. (Lucien Febvre, ‘A New Kind of History’, 1947).

‘But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavour toward better understanding.’ (Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, 1949)

 

‘History may be divided into three movements: what moves rapidly, what moves slowly and what appears not to move at all.’ (Ferdinand Braudel)

‘Organizing the past in accordance with the needs of the present, that is what one could call the social function of history’ (Lucien Febvre, A New Kind of History, 1947)

‘Specificity, dating and nationality are words which need to be struck off the historian’s vocabulary list. They are problems of no substance – stuffy old controversial subjects, old cast-offs which still lie around in our books of learning.’ Lucien Febvre, A New Kind of History, 1947)

‘….what I have attempted here is essentially a contribution to the political history of Europe, in the widest and truest sense of the word.’ (Marc Bloch, The Royal Touch, 1924)

‘There is tradition and there is history. History in the last resort meets the same need as tradition, whether the need is conscious or no. History is a way of organizing the past so that it does not weigh too heavily on the shoulders of men. Of course, as I said above, it does not resign itself to disregarding the heap of 'historical' facts available to our civilization for the writing of history; indeed it takes pains to add to it. There is no contradiction here. For history does not present men with a collection of isolated facts. It organizes those facts. It explains them and so, in order to explain them, it arranges them in series to which it does not attach equal importance. For history has no choice in the matter, it systematically gathers in, classifies and assembles past facts in accordance with its present needs. It consults death in accordance with the needs of life.’ Febvre, A New Kind of History, 1973)

‘But let us just think for a moment, to what extent would the practice of group investigation by historians facilitate that organization of history which is of such concern to us. We should gain much from the fertilizing effect of the hypothesis made visible to all by means of incontroversal results. And there would be gains in time, money and effort through such collective work; the role of history itself would suddenly be rendered visible and tangible to those who persist in regarding it simply.as a game of mere curiosity, a mnemotechnical pastime, an insignificant entertainment.’ (Febvre, A New Kind of History’, 1973)

  

Further Readings

Braudel, F., Civilisation and Capitalism, Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries: The Structures of Everyday Life; The Wheels of Commerce; The Perspective of the World (3 vols., London, 1981-5)

Braudel, F., The Identity of France: History and Environment; People and Production (2 vols., 1988-90)

Burguière, A., The Annales School: An Intellectual History (Ithaca NY, 2009).

Burke, P., ‘French Historians and their Cultural Identities’, in E. Tonkin et al (eds), History and Ethnicity (London, 1989), 157-167.

Burke, P., The French Historical Revolution: The Annales School, 1929-89 (Cambridge, 1990).

Burke, P., ‘Fernand Braudel’, in J. Cannon, J. (ed.), The Historian at Work (London, 1980), 188-202, & reprinted in S. Clark (ed.), The Annales School: Critical Assessments (4 vols, London, 1999), III, 111-23

Carrard, P., Poetics of the New History: French Historical Discourse from Braudel to Chartier (Baltimore, 1992).

Ibid., ‘Theory of Practice: Historical Enunciation and the Annales School’, in F. Ankersmit and H. Kellner (eds.), A New Philosophy of History (Chicago, 1995) (digitised extract).

Chirot, D., ‘The Social and Historical Landscape of Marc Bloch’, in T. Skocpol (ed.), Vision and Method in Historical Sociology (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 22-46, & reprinted in S. Clark (ed.), The Annales School: Critical Assessments (4 vols, London, 1999), IV, pp. 177-99.

Clark, S. (ed.), The Annales School: Critical Assessments (4 vols, London, 1999).

Cobb, R., ‘Annalistes’ Revolution’, Times Literary Supplement (8 September 1966), 19-20, reprinted as ‘Nous des Annales’, in Cobb, A Second Identity: Essays on France and French History (Oxford, 1969), 76-83 .

Colbert-Rhodes, R. ‘Emile Durckheim and the Historical Thought of Marc Bloch‘, Theory & Society v/1 (1978): 45-73.

Dosse, F., New History in France: The Triumph of the Annales (Urbana IL, 1994)

Epstein, S. R., ‘Marc Bloch: The Identity of a Historian’, Journal of Medieval History, 19 (1993), 273-83.

Fink, C., Marc Bloch: A Life in History (Cambridge, 1989).

Fox-Genovese, E., ‘The Political Crisis of Social History: A Marxian Perspective’, Journal of Social History, 10 (1976): 205-20.

Harris, O., ‘Braudel: Historical Time and the Horror of Discontinuity’, History Workshop Journal, 57 (2004): 161-174. (electronic journal, Warwick library)

Himmelfarb, G., The New History and the Old (Cambridge MASS, 1987), 1-46

Hunt, L., ‘French History in the Last Twenty Years: The Rise and Fall of the Annales Paradigm’, Journal of Contemporary History, 21 (1986), 209-24, & reprinted in S. Clark (ed.), The Annales School: Critical Assessments (4 vols, London, 1999), I, pp. 24-38

Iggers, G. G., New Directions in European Historiography (London, 1985).

Iggers, G. G., Historiography in the Twentieth Century: from Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Middletown, CT, 1997), ch. 5.

Jones, G. S., ‘The New Social History in France’, in C. Jones & D. Wahrman (eds), The Age of Cultural Revolutions: Britain and France, 1750-1820 (Berkeley, 2002), 94-105

Judt, T., ‘A Clown in Regal Purple: Social History and the Historians’, History Workshop Journal 7 (1979), pp. 66-94

Kinser, S., ‘Capitalism Enshrined: Braudel’s Trypych of Modern European History’, Journal of Modern History, 53 (1981), 673-82, & reprinted in S. Clark (ed.), The Annales School: Critical Assessments, 4 Vols. (London, 1999), III, 184-94

Ibid., ‘Annaliste Paradigm? The Geo-Historical Structuralism of Fernand Braudel’, American Historical Review, 86 (1981), 63-105, & reprinted in S. Clark (ed.), The Annales School: Critical Assessments, 4 vols (London, 1999), III, 124-75

Loyn, H., ‘Marc Bloch’, in J. Cannon, J. (ed.), The Historian at Work (London, 1980), 121-35, & reprinted in S. Clark (ed.), The Annales School: Critical Assessments (4 vols, London, 1999), IV, 162-76

Lyon, B., ‘Marc Bloch, Historian’, French Historical Studies, 15 (1987), 195-207.

Lyon, B., ‘Marc Bloch: Did He Repudiate Annales History?’, Journal of Medieval History, 11 (1985), 181-92, & reprinted in S. Clark (ed.), The Annales School: Critical Assessments (4 vols, London, 1999), IV, 200-212.

McNeill, W., et al. (eds), ‘History With A French Accent’, Journal of Modern History, 44 (1972), pp. 447-538 (volume also incl. F. Braudel, ‘Personal Testimony’, pp. 448-67; H. R. Trevor Roper, ‘Fernand Braudel, the Annales, and the Mediterranean’, pp. 468-79; J. H. Hexter, ‘Fernand Braudel and the Monde Braudellien . . .’, pp 480-538)

Middell, Matthias, ‘The Annales’, in Berger, S., Feldner, H., Passmore, K. (eds), Writing History: Theory & Practice (2003), pp. 105-115.

Stoianovich, T., French Historical Method: The Annales Paradigm (Ithaca, 1976).

Wessling, H., ‘Ferdinand Braudel, Historian of the Longue Duree’, Intinerario 5 (1981): 16-29.

Welskopp, T., ‘Social History’, in S. Berger, H. Feldner and K. Passmore (eds), Writing History: Theory and Practice (London, 2003), pp. 203-22.