Impact of Annales School Historiography

HI323 Historiography Charles Walton Les Annales

A week is a long time in politics Harold Wilson- (1964)

Zhou Enlai on the impact of the French Revolution of 1789- it's too soon to tell (c.1971)

Annales School 1. It s French 2. It spanned most of 20th century 3. It came in three waves

The Annales at their peak 1950s/1970s under Fernand Braudel & Emmanuel Leroy-Ladurie Influential in France and internationally, esp. in US from 1970s onward Fernand Braudel sThe Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (1949 French/1972-3 English) makes a splash Influence has waned but still significant

Peter Burke (Cambridge historian) on the Annales: The substitution of a problem-orientated analytical history for a traditional narrative of events (more true of waves 1 and 3 than 2) The history of the whole range of human activities in the place of a mainly political history Collaboration with other disciplines such as geography, sociology, economics and anthropology

Marc Bloch (1886-1944) and Lucien Febvre (1878-1956) founded the journal Annales d Histoire Economique et Sociale in 1929

First Wave Annales Approaches Rejected narrow political history Interdisciplinary link study of the past with approaches and methods of the social sciences Breaking down chronological barriers How unique? Influence of other historians (Berr), sociologists (Durkheim) and geographers (Vidal de la Blache)

The early years Importance of place University of Strasbourg (came into French hands after WWI) Desire to avoid overtly political mobilization of history Love-hate relationship with sociology (sociological models: leaky vessels for Bloch) Influence of World War One and Marxist concerns respect for peasants and workers (soldiers); respect for ordinary individuals Competition with Germany desire to provide alternative to Rankean and nationalist history

Marc Blochs histories The Royal Touch (1924)- influence of Durkheim and anthropology; examined irrational beliefs to explore kingship and power in Britain and France French Rural History (1931) long duration; stresses work of peasants rather than elites; use of aerial photographs and move backwards in time Feudal Society (1939) a comparative historical sociology of Europe c.900-1300, avoiding any political narrative or discussion of individual kings.

long view - centuries problem focused religious psychology history of mentalit s (practices, unconscious mental structures) comparative history (France, Britain) Influenced by sociologist Emile Durkheim ( 1858-1917), who focused not on individual or individual psychology but on collective phenomena Suicide (1897) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) Marc Bloch, The Royal Touch (1924) About the custom of royals curing scrofula by laying hands on infected subjects

- Looked at aerial photos of French countryside - Looked for historical reasons for different land patterns - Materialism: looked at forces and relations of production: certain technology (the heavy plow) worked best in Northern France due to political, environmental and socio-cultural factors. - Non-Marxist materialism: No base vs. superstructure; Both mattered.

1942/3 1939/40 1940

Strange Defeat, 1940 How did France collapse so quickly? Statement of evidence : his commitment to empiricism Immediate AND long-term causes (made his career looking at long-term; had to struggle to ) Crisis of conscience: Durkheimian collective culture fails to capture the anguish of individual responsibility: part III of book - > A Frenchman examines his conscience

Strange Defeat If we turn back on ourselves we shall be lost. Salvation can be ours only on condition that we set our brains to work with a will, in order that we may know more fully, and get our imaginations moving to a quicker tempo.

Question Was Bloch moving away from his own school? Was Strange Defeat an attempt to re-incorporate individual and collective agency into an analytical framework that had treated mentalit s (collective mental structures) as resistant to change, resistant to sudden bursts of individual or collective will? If so, why bother joining the Resistance (as he did, and was killed for it)?

In the vast drag of submarine swells, so cosmic as to appear irreversible, of what avail were the struggles of a few shipwrecked sailors? To think otherwise would be to falsify history . History must look at structures; now, at last, it struggles to penetrate beneath the mere surface of actions . Debt to sociology and commitment to interdisciplinarity Long have we worked for a wider more human history . BUT Sociological laws are frail vessels that disintegrate as they sail. Historian should understand, not judge (Rankean attitude) but what about the politics of one s own time? Should historians ignore them? How can one not judge in the face of Nazism? Last book, written while fighting in the Resistance against Nazism Denial of individual agency in favour of the collective. Does this lead to ethical paralysis?

Lucien Febvre Phd thesis: Franche-comt in the time of Philippe II Published in 1912 Begins with land, then economy, social relations, ending with the rule of Philippe II (late 16th century)

Franois Rabelais (?-1553) The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel 1937

Febvre Problem of Unbelief About a 16th century French poet, Rabelais Funny story about giants -- critical of religion. So was Rabelais an atheist? Impossible! says Febvre Categories of belief and unbelief didn t exist Book about mentalit s: the senses, practice, experience He was wrong, it turns out, but he asked influential questions and made historians more aware of potential anachronism in their analyses we have to understand different states of mind (and not just of elites) to make sense of past worlds Legacies: cultural history (anthropological); psychological histories, history of emotions (recent).

2nd Wave Annales (post-WWII) Dominates the field for decades Fernand Braudel, 1902-1985

The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (1923-1949)

BraudelsMediterranean in the Age of Philip II (1949) Age of is the key here, not King Philip II Interdisciplinary Vast in scope Histoire totale! Region, sea Sea as real but also historical metaphor How people engage with environment Society, culture, economy Last part of book: the reign of Philip II

Braudel and the Annales way Large-scale the sea is at the centre of the book rather than an individual Beyond Europe global, comparative Interdisciplinary, influence of geography particularly strong Attempt to write a total history

Braudels conception of time Built on work of Febvre and Bloch Time was not homogenous: different rhythms geographical, economic, social, cultural, political The political timeframe was the least important: statesmen more acted upon than actors froth on top of the crest of waves pulled and pushed by tides. The tides mattered most to Braudel.

Three Dimensions of Time 1. The deep /structures (Part I of book): geographical structures and climate in which humans live. Change is slow, only visible over the longue dur e (the long run) Conjonctures (Part II): medium term trends (5, 10, 50 years) that combine in historically important ways: legal systems, economic cycles. A middle term between longue-dur e structures and events L histoire v nementielle (Part III): history of events (seen as superficial by Annalistes at the time) 2. 3.

Braudel on structures and longue dur e To historians like ourselves, while structure does of course mean an assembly of parts, a framework, it signifies more particularly a reality which survives through long periods of time and is only slowly eroded all structures act both as foundations and obstacles. History and the Social Sciences: The Long Term , Social Science Information 9:1 (1970), 151

Braudel on the Environment: Part One is devoted to a history whose passage is almost imperceptible, that of man in his relationship to the environment, a history in which all change is slow, a history of constant repetition, ever-recurring cycles. I could not neglect this almost timeless history, the story of man s contact with the inanimate.

Ernst Labrousse: a fellow traveller of the Annales Braudel praised Labrousse s statistical studies Taught at Sorbonne from 1940s onward The French Economic Crisis at the End of the Old Regime (1943) Looked at long, medium and short term economic trends to explain socioeconomic origins of the French Revolution a conjoncture historian Tout s explique par la courbe! The curve explains everything! the French Revolution could be explained by economic curves plotting the prices of land rents, bread and taxes. Everyone had economic reasons to be angry in 1789!

How to historically situate the longue dur e approach to history? (My speculation here) Braudel was a prisoner of war in Germany in World War II desire to see history as a great sea of time, to relativize the tragic present to transcend it. Offered a historical contrast to the present (1950s-1960s), which underwent abrupt modernisation. The anxiety of vertiginous change was soothed by the seemingly eternal seas of soci t s immobiles unchanging societies

How to historically situate the longue dur e approach to history? (My speculation here) And yet, the perspective which put the environment and technologies at the core (de-centring the human ethical agent) also heightened the historical significance of technological modernisation, which was all the rage in the 1950s-1970s (e.g. Third World modernisation programmes) Opposite of Frankfurt School, which rejected the cold, scientific materialism and technological modernisation of the Enlightenment. Next to Braudel s immobile societies of deep history, one could only marvel at recent modernisation.

Criticism of Braudel Mediterranean influenced environmental historians, but they have shown that nature is far more fluid and historical than Braudel suggested. Braudel too descriptive and his work lacks a central problem - a kaleidoscopic jumble (Simon Kinser); disconnected rooms of a mansion Not enough attention to institutions and ideas Lots of answers but to what questions? (Less problem focused than wave 1 and 3 of Annales)

The period post-Braudel Third Wave Annales Le Roy Ladurie continued and developed the Annaliste approach

History of mentalities Roots in Bloch and Febrve s work on cultural representations Engages with anthropology Focus on collective (not individual) beliefs/assumptions Mentalities the (often unconscious) mental structures that influence (determine?) action

Mentalits Le Roy Ladurie The Peasants of Languedoc (1966) Economic life of peasants in southern France between late medieval and early modern period, 14th-18th centuries Histoire immobile (unchanging history), but more emphasis on culture and economy than environment. Juicy factoid (literally): average peasant in Languedoc drank between 1.5 and 2.5 litres of wine daily in 1480. Wine consumption rates would go down the southern Gaulois could handle their alcohol better than the Frankish northerners! Montaillou (1975) Medieval town destroyed by feuds and religious strife Narrower time period: thirty years (not millenia!) Still histoire totale with demography, attitudes, beliefs, cosmology, politics But focused on particular individuals (new). Aim to uncover the texture of the town in specific historical moments move towards micro-history, even as it was total history

1970s and 1980s New approach or revival of Bloch/Febvre? Women historians arrive on the Annales scene: Arlette Farge, Michele Perrot Shift away from quantification (wave 2) towards mentalit s again Micro-history, history of minorities, women, children not all white-male elite history Influence of cultural anthropology: symbols and culture, history of meanings

Influence of Annales beyond France Became globally influential in 1960s-1970s. Why? French funding for research was generous. (Les Trente glorieuses economic boom in these years) US funding (Ford, Rockefeller), especially of the 6th section of the cole pratique des hautes tudes, which became the cole des hautes tudes en sciences sociales, directed by Braudel International academic exchanges increase (think Erasmus programs but global and professors) Translations into other languages Hierarchy, patronage in French university system

Chief legacies History and social science self-conscious interdisciplinarity, often as cultural history : sociology, anthropology, critical theory [Foucault] Longue dur e / total history still current notions (making a comeback with deep history and big data history in recent years) Global, postmodern, gender history From narrative political history to political culture (ideas, practices, mentalit s)

Annales in perspective 1st wave desire to avoid politics while acknowledging ordinary workers (a somewhat Marxist sentiment but also desire to remain neutral in troubled times) 2ndwave dominated by former communist/socialists who rejected Marxism. Non-dialectical in approach. Shift from modes of production (Marx) to modes of exchange (Braudel) stress on market integration (a good thing for Braudel), not capitalist exploitation of workers and peasants (as Marxists would emphasise)

Origins of Longue dure