The Annales School and Fernand Braudel (rev. 16 February 2007)

I. The "Annales School"

A. Founding scholars, Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre
B. Interested in History in the aggregate, the "snapshot" of history
C. Culture rests on society rests on economy
D. Founding of Annales d'histoire economique et sociale
E. So, why not 'Marxist'? Some concerns with Marxist history

II. Fernand Braudel

A. Personal History
B. Student of Febvre
C. Worked in (and on) the Mediterranean (Algiers) and in South America

SAYEGH'S ONLINE LECTURE--NB: these are my words, therefore anything you take from this for a paper, etc. must be properly cited...

The founding scholars of the Annales school were Marc Bloch (1886-1944) and Lucien Febvre, colleagues who met at the University of Strasbourg in 1919. In 1929, they formed the journal Annale d'histoireÉconomique et Sociale, a journal that according to Febvre would incorporate all the disciplines of the social sciences in order to truly get a history of the aggregate—a "snapshot of history" as it were. While not Marxists, they, like the Marxists of their time, believed that culture rested on society which rested on the economy—hence, they were "materialist." Marc Bloch was executed after being imprisoned for fighting in the French Resistance. His death was a great shock to his fellow scholars, and Febvre worked to publish his last work, The Historian's Craft, an unfinished work, but one that even in its current form, shows the trajectory Bloch believed was necessary for working in the profession. Above all, fight against antiquarianism.

Fernand Braudel (1902 – 1985) was a student of Febvre's and hence would be from what we would call the second generation of the Annales School. He worked in Algeria during the late 20s and early 30s and returned to France to work with Febvre. He then moved to Sao Paolo, Brazil to help build up the university. He spent some time in a POW camp during WWII.

You have Braudel's theory and his introduction of that theory in his practice and we will unpack it in class discussion. Your reading comes from a very large three-volume set entitled Civilization and Capitalism, 15th – 18th Centuries (1. Structure of Everyday Life, 2. The Wheels of Commerce and 3. The Perspective of the World). Note how the volumes begin with the basic stuff of material conditions). His first major work was The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (in two volumes) which is a sweeping history of the Mediterranean World in the early-modern period. Think about how Troup and Green articulate his idea of history as the sea, from the great waves to the foam hitting the sand. What types of history would these parts of the wave be? In the first article you will read, Braudel outlines the interdisciplinary nature of the first generations of the Annales School. It is situated squarely within the social sciences, but because of the kinds of questions it asks, history offers far more than some of the other, more mathematical disciplines. He outlines the different time "frames" for an annaliste—the longue duree, the conjoncture, the evenementielle—that enable the historian to toggle between time frames and establish particular models. Pay attention to his analogies here—what kind of analogy does he use for his temporal models? Why? The second reading you have is "practice" (and please note that the first reading is the theory). What part of Braudel's theory do we see operating in this very short excerpt of a very long volume of a long three-volume series?

Braudel's protégés believed that his work was too sweeping, too global, and so began to focus on microhistory and demographics (and computer-based history). We will not cover those histories which are considered the third generation of the Annale (something your textbook forgets). Instead, we will skip to the fourth generation of the Annales that focused on mentalités. A history of mentalities—worldviews and ideas. Pay attention to that when we get to the Lynn Hunt reading and the Robert Darnton reading (i.e. cultural history).