The Annales is one of the most influential schools of historical inquiry and methodology of the twentieth century. Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch, influenced by the like of Henri Berr and Paul Vidal de la Blanche, are the precursors of Annales School. Anne Green and Kathleen Troup argue, in The Houses of History (1999), that the Annales School is one of the most innovative houses of historical inquiry developed during the twentieth century.
Political, military and diplomatic topics characterized historical inquiry and methodology during the nineteenth century. Ernst Breisach indicates, in Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern (2007), that the Annales rejected this histoire événementielle- history based on political, diplomatic and military events. The objective of this new school of historical thought was to write total history. Historians needed a new methodology to make this possible. The newly methodology consisted on merging historical investigation with the disciplines of social sciences, such as geography, and economy.
Annales d’histoire économique et sociale
In 1929, Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch established the scholarly journal Annales d’histoire économique et sociale, which inaugurated a new generation of historians. Febvre and Bloch are known as the pioneers of this school of thought, but in reality the works of previous scholars, such as Henri Berr and Paul Vidal de la Blanche, inspired their methodology.
Henri Berr was a French philosopher rather than a historian. His doctoral dissertation at the University of Paris focused on the synthesis of historical inquiry. His doctoral thesis disfavored his career, and as a result, Collège de France discarded him in 1912. He founded the journal Revue de synthése historique, which gathered the attention of the most respected historians of his time. Febvre commenced to write in it in 1905, while Bloch began in 1912.
Paul Vidal de la Blanche, the father of modern-French geography, acquired a position as a teacher at the École Normale Supérieure in 1877. Vidal de la Blanche’s works combined the disciplines of geography and history, and as a consequence, his style became a highlight of the French undergraduate programs of the period. In 1891, he published the journal Annales de géographie, showing a research-oriented history. Interestingly, Bloch also studied at the École Normale Supérieure, and his degree combined geography with history too.
Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch
As stated previously, Febvre and Bloch founded Annales d’histoire économique et sociale in 1929; however, their partnership commenced in 1920 at the University of Strasbourg. Both Febvre and Bloch had already made significant contributions to what became the Annales School of history.
Breisach indicates that Febvre had published works which showed a new historical methodology. Febvre demonstrated a tendency towards total history in Philippe VI et la Franche-Comté (1911). He utilized geographical sources in La Terre et l’evolution humaine (1922). He used psychological explanations in Un destin, Martin Kuther (1928).
Meanwhile, Michael Bentley points out, in Modern Historiography: An Introduction (1999), that Bloch first demonstrated his “historiographical radicalism” in Les Rois Thaumaturges (1924). This work focused on the medieval belief in the curative power of the royal touch in the instance of suffering from scrofula. Green and Troup argue that his methodological approach showed “the importance of popular belief in legitimizing the power of medieval monarchy, and the ways kings utilized that belief for their own purposes.”
There is no doubt that Febvre and Bloch played a leading role in the foundation of the Annales School of history. The influence of scholars, such as Henri Berr and Paul Vidal de la Blanche, on Febvre and Bloch’s work, must not be forgotten. The Annales was one of the most influential schools of historical inquiry during the twentieth century because it changed the direction of methodology. From then on, the Annales School has studied the impact of geography, economy, and psychology, among other social science's disciplines, in the course of history.
Sources:
- Bentley, Michael. Modern Historiography: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 1999.
- Breisach, Ernst. Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007.
- Green, Anne and Kathleen Troup. The Houses of History. New York: New York University Press, 1999.
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