MARC BLOCH

The Annales SchoolDesigned by Mrs Graham

Who has no life!!!!!!

1886-1944

• First Generation

• Marc Bloch• Lucian Febvre

1902-1985

• Second Generation

• Fernand Braudel

1929-

• 3rd Generation

• Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie· Marc Ferro · Jacques Le Goff ·

NEW HISTORY

History from Below

Short and Long Duree

Mentalites

TIMELINE• Born 1886 in France• 1914-1918 served in WW1• Went to Strasborg University• 1924 The royal touch: sacred monarchy and scrofula in

England and France• 1929, Bloch founded, with Lucien Febvre, the important

journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale • Feudal Society• 1936Became professor at Sorbonne • 1939 joined the French Army• 1944 captured and shot by Gestapo• 1944-Unfinished meditation The Historian’s craft published

posthumously

HISTORICAL

SOCIAL

PERSONAL

• War, Depression and War resulted in a loss of certainty in everything

• Benefited from the blurring of boundaries of academic disciplines and sciences

• Jewish Historian living through WW2

The Historian’s CraftMake notes on the Source Reading

• METHODOLOGY• -emphasized multi disciplinary approach, focusing on

economics, social and political structures.• In direct contrast to “ dominant” history of great events

performed by great men• Problem based, it set broad questions to answer • Challenging stimulating alternative to traditional,

political and diplomatic history• Operated on the basis that history was about the past,

not just the study of documents

• FEUDAL SOCIETY• Bloch conceived of feudalism as a type of society that was not

limited solely to the nobility. He recognized that there was a hierarchal relationship between lords and vassals, but Bloch saw as well a similar relationship obtaining between lords and peasants.

• It is this radical notion that peasants were part of the feudal relationship that sets Bloch apart from his peers. While the vassal performed military service in exchange for the fief, the peasant performed physical labour in return for protection. Both are a form of feudal relationship. According to Bloch, other elements of society can be seen in feudal terms; all the aspects of life were centered on "lordship", and so we can speak usefully of a feudal church structure, a feudal courtly (and anti-courtly) literature and a feudal economy.

• METHODOLOGY- SOURCES OF EVIDENCE• archaeology, geography, religion, collective

mentalities( group psychology)• “ To plead in favour of a community of the

human sciences despite the walls that separate them from one another”

• Read the source attached from the Introduction to Feudal Society. Discuss how innovative it is in terms of purpose and construction. 

PURPOSE

• “..THE Annalists wanted to break away from narrative political history, allowing more space to economic and social history…the key differences with Marxists was that they were much more interested in material culture and the influence of geography on human history and also much more likely to write regional histories…the Annalists were far more ecclectic in their theoretical approaches drawing from different disciplines and schools of thought.”

• Anne Curthoys and John Docker• Is History Fiction

Bloch's focus on the longue durée and his emphasis upon structures underlying events led to misguided

accusations of a denial of human agency and a marginalization of political history. In Strange Defeat he clearly states his view that individuals can change

events and he castigates the French government's refusal to trust its own officers in the field of battle,

thus leading to the surrender of France to the Nazis.

FERNAND BRAUDEL• FERNAND BRAUDEL 1902-1985• Fernand Braudel was born in Luméville-en-Ornois, in the département of the

Meuse, France, where he also lived with his paternal grandmother for a long time. He studied at the elite Paris Institute of Political Studies (better known as Sciences Po). His father, who was a natural mathematician, aided him in his studies. Braudel also studied a good deal of Latin and a little Greek. He loved history and wrote poetry. Braudel wanted to be a doctor, but his father opposed this idea. In 1923, he went to Algeria, then a French colony, to teach history. Returning to France in 1932, he worked as a high school teacher and met Lucien Febvre, the co-founder of the influential Annales journal, who was to have a great influence on his work. With him, he travelled to Brazil in 1935 to "build" the University of São Paulo, returning together with Febvre in 1937. In 1939, he joined the army but was captured in 1940 and became a prisoner of war in a camp near Lübeck in Germany, where, working from memory, he put together his great The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II ).

CONTEXT

HISTORICAL

SOCIAL

PERSONAL

• War, Depression, War resulted in loss of certainty of Enlightenment positivism

• Experience under Nazi regime

• Influence of Febvre

• Natural and familial interests in Maths

• Extensive travel

STYLE AND METHODOLOGY• Braudel expressed time in a metaphor of the ocean. He envisaged three layers of

historical time, each moving at a different speed and each aligned with different historical topics.

• The slowest moving, “ man in his relationship with the environment” was geographical time. This longue duree moved in slow cycles of hundreds of years or more.

• The medium duree was equivalent to the swelling currents with slow but perceptible rythms and revolved in 10-50 year cycles. This middle cycle comprised economic cycles, trade, population fluctuations and prices.

• His 3rd aspect of time Braudel called histoire evenementielle, the “ ephemera of history.” Crests of foam that the tides of history carry on their strong backs. This is the concern of a more traditional political and diplomatic history.

• This was a structuralist approach and the deepest layer was ultimately the most influential. Thus he overturned the traditional emphasis on the importance of events and people as the agents of history.

• Braudel was labeled a geographic determinist in much the same way as Marx had been an economic determinist. As well many disagreed that The Mediterranean was an example of total history since he had omitted key topics like agriculture, law and religion.

• Braudel’s immediate followers focused on the quantitative aspects of his work Quantification of history was assisted also in the growth and access to the computer technology.

• Throughout his life Braudel remained committed to the big picture. Civilization and Capitalism is a synthesis of primary and secondary material, especially quantitative data, tackling the large question of how the modern world developed.

• Overrall the Annales historians search for underlying structures, their attempt at total history and their use of the methods and subjects of social sciences has led to a great expansion of the subject of history.

• The study of mentalites has been viewed as the Annales means of addressing the objectivity-subjectivity dilemma which historians continually confront

• In the following section of The Mediterranean ( the longue duree section) Braudel connects the environment with what we now label mentalites; the physical barrier of the mountain is an obstacle and therefore also a refuge.

Emmanuelle Roy Le Ladurie 1929-• Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (born 1929) is a noted French historian whose work is mainly

focused upon Languedoc in the ancien regime, focusing on the history of the peasantry.• Received his Doctorate from the University of Paris• His Father was an aristocrat, wealthy Landowner and Minister for Agriculture. Ladurie

rejected his social position and joined the Communist Party for a short time• He occupied from 1973 to 1999 the chair of History of Modern Civilization and is now

emeritus professor of the Collège de France.• His thesis The Peasants of Languadoc was published in 1974• Influenced by Weber, Braudel and Foucault ideas• His other work includes Montaillou 1975, The Territory of the Historian 1978, The

Carnaval de Romans 1980, L’Ancien Regime 1991

CONTEXT

historical

SOCIAL

PERSONAL

• End of Cold War, Collapse of Communist states -

• Influence of post modernist thinkers like Foucault

• Computer Age- explosion of data available to Historians, Ladurie becomes the standard bearer of cliometricians

• French influence of First Generation Annales

• Scientific thinker interested in a range of social and anthropological disciplines

• Rejected family aristocratic wealth and political leanings

The Peasants of Languedoc 1966

• “This work of "total" regional history (p. 8), grounded in the climate and topography of its fixed place, narrated around a loving reconstruction of time series data drawn from land tax registers, grain (and other commodity) prices, population registers and communicant lists, and ultimately nuanced by an anthropologist's sensitivity to the social impact of even small changes in literacy and spiritual affiliation, is in many respects the crowning achievement of the Annales school for the post-Braudelian generation” McCants

• In this book he draws on quantitative data such as tax, tithe, wage, rent, and profit figures and the insights of Freud, Weber, Levi Strauss and Foucault

Witchcraft from a different perspective

• Other more recent treatments of social history by Le Roy Ladurie have included La sorcière de Jasmin (translated into English as Jasmin's Witch and Le siècle des Platter, 1499-1628 (translated into English as The Beggar and the Professor: a Sixteenth Century Family Drama).

• In Jasmin's Witch, Le Roy Ladurie following the lead of Carlo Ginzburg argued that the idea of witchcraft as seen by peasants was very different from the idea of witchcraft held by judges and churchmen. To understand the "total social fact of witchcraft", Le Roy Ladurie used an 1842 poem Françouneto written by Jacques Boè and based on a traditional French peasant folk tale. Le Roy Ladurie contended that the poem contains many authentic traces of popular beliefs about witchcraft in the 17th century-18th century rural France. Le Roy Ladurie argued that the "crime" of the "witch" Françouneto was the violation of the unwritten social code of "limited wealth", namely that she increased her own wealth at the expense of others. In The Beggar and the Professor, Le Roy Ladurie used the letters and memoirs of the Platter family to examine the social values of the 16th century, especially in regards to religion, medicine, crime, learning, and taxes

MICROHISTORY• Le Roy Ladurie is a leading champion of "microhistory", in which a

historian uses the study of an event, locality, family or life to reveal the "structures" which underlines life in the particular period under st

• Le Roy has also integrated environmental change and written essays on the utility of computers in history. His approach followed the characteristically Annales tradition in integrating not only interdisciplinary sources of evidenve but methodology as well.

• Some like Niall Ferguson ( Mr Media) have questioned the value of "microhistory" arguing that it is wrong to assume that the study of one village or one incident in one town or one family reveals wider patterns of life in France, let alone the rest of Europe.

Montiallou1975

• . His most noted work is Montaillou, village occitan, a study of the village of Montiallou in the south of France is the age of the Cathar heresy. He uses the meticulous notes of a member of the inquisition to develop a multi-layered study of life in a small French village over the course of several years.

L’Ancien Regime- A History of France

• Le Roy Ladurie argued that there was a close connection between the domestic and foreign policies of the French Crown. In particular, Le Roy Ladurie argued that periods of authoritarianism in domestic policy coincided with periods of aggression in foreign policy and that periods of liberalism in domestic policy coincided with periods of peace in foreign policy.

The Idea of Mentalite`Initially focused on physical structures including the physical environment, climate, biology, which set limits on human action; associated with idea of different levels of time, from history of events to medium-term social and economic changes to la longue durée, environmental and biological changes. Later historians in this tradition focus instead on mental structures which set limits on human thought; detailed studies of mentalities of particular societies or even villages (for example, Le Roy Ladurie’s classic study of a single village in the Pyrenees, based on records from the inquisition). Seek to establish dominant ideas, key themes, semantic range of concepts, ‘world view’.

In the Alleys of MentaliteLawrence Stone

• In the 1960’s and 70’s he led his historical troops up into the arid mountains of long term structural analyses,” scientific history”, and computerised quantification. In the late 1970’s he has led them down into the steamy jungles of mentalite, symbolism, folklore, storytelling..”

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Marnie Hughes Warrington-Fifty Key Thinkers

• “…..has played a leading role in the extension of the territory of history. Le Roy Ladurie has shown many historians that much can be gained from considering the insights of social scientists, taking fresh approaches to well known sources, using quantitative methods and studying “ drops” of the sea humanity.”

IMPACT ON HISTORIOGRAPHY

• Annales historians criticised positivism, which 'concentrated on the analysis of short periods, adopted a traditional narrative of events and analysed history almost exclusively from the political-military point of view'and rebelled against empirical history which focused on politics, great individuals, and chronological events. The Annales historians found fault with the formulaic structure of empiricist, and especially Rankian, method of historiography.

CRITICISM

• While the wide range of interests and the differing methods of approaching history used by different members of the third generation of Annales historians combine to produce an effective method of historiography, one criticism levelled at the group is that the long-term view of history is ineffective when it comes to studying fast-paced modern history.

• Annales tradition has been criticised both from above-that is elite, individual and event centred history and below-from feminist historians who observe the relative lack of study of women.

POST SCRIPTGeorge Iggers

• In the 21st century, cultural and anthropological interests remain centred in the Annales School. However the change in mood is reflected by the new Title, Histoire, Sciences Sociales.

• “The change of name..demonstrated an awareness that the political and social conditions had fundamentally changed in recent years. The Subtitle Economies. Societies. Civilisations had consciously eliminated politics as a prime concern of history and had downgraded the role of narrative. Now in the face of the momentous changes in the 80’s, politics was rediscovered and with it the role of personalities.”

KEY FEATURES OF THE ANNALES TRADITION• Marc Bloch (1886-1944)• probing questions, interdisciplinary, innovative analysis of r’ships, combo of styles but

died in war • Lucien Febvre (1878-1956)• a desire to move beyond the political narrative , lots of interdisciplinary work, moved

higher than Block since not a Jew, interest in geography, move to focus on alternatives• impact was restricted to mainly france and Braudel• Fernand Braudel (1902-85)• less eurocentric perspective, spent time in Brazil• distaste for traditional accounts of erudits w/ battles and great leaders emphasis on

seeing the bigger picture or la longue durée• the effect of geography in an analysis of causation• main work done while in prison camp• demanded a consideration of time in different ways, three – social , individual, 

geographical• most influence on longue duree : long-term changes of social and geographical time.

• Total history: an attempt to integrate all aspects of past human life- cultural, social, economic, political into his history

• Failed in terms of understanding lots of politics, the effect of the individual, too focused on geography

• Annales emerged as quantative history, based on statistical data• and attempt to write total history of a relatively narrow area no means

mutually exclusive• Led to a tendency in followers to write more restricted regional histories focusing on a town for example, often split into sections tackling structure (long term) and conjoncture (medium/shorter term)

• Later historians Ladurie new pioneering methods• Multiple strands in this school• Stimulation but focus on structures in society

SUMMARY OF KEY FEATURES