The French Historical Revolution: Annales School, 1929-1989 (Key Contemporary Thinkers) - Softcover

Burke, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804718377 ISBN 13: 9780804718370

Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr, 1991

Synopsis

The aim of this book is to analyze, to describe and to evaluate the achievement of the Annales School, a journal of historical studies founded in 1929 in France. The journal was founded in order to promote a new kind of historythe substitution of a problem-oriented analytical history for a traditional narrative of events, and the history of the whole range of human activities in place of a mainly political history.

This critical text describes, analyzes, and evaluates the acheivements of the Annales School, combining chronological and thematic approaches. The author distinguishes three generations in the history of the Annales movement. In the first phase, from the 1920's to 1945, the movement was small, radical, and substantive, fighting a guerrilla action against traditional political history and the history of events. Its leaders, and the founders of Annales, were Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch. After the Second World War, the movement's rebels took over the historical establishment. During this second phase, which lasted untill about 1968, the movement was most nearly a school, with distinctive concepts and mehods, and was presided over by the towering figure of Fernand Braudel. The third phase of the movement was marked by fragmentation.

About this title

Review:

No one has had a greater collective impact on modern historiography than the historians of the Annales school, and no one has appraised their aims and achievements with more sympathetic insight than Peter Burke. His concise, inclusive, and authoritative survey of the transformations they brought about is itself a powerful incentive to think reflectively about the idea of history.
Stuart Clark, University of Swansea [and editor of The Annales School: Critical Assessments, 1999.]

Eminent historian of modern France, Peter Burke is also a great connoisseur of French historians, and especially of the Annales School. This new and expanded edition of The French Historical Revolution brings out the contribution of a 4th generation of the Annales open to the diversity of the world, its hybridity and cultural encounters through the work of its most original and productive representatives, such as Serge Gruzinski, Lucette Valensi and Nathan Wachtel.
André Burguière, L’Ecole des Hautes Etudes on Sciences Sociales

Synopsis:

A remarkable amount of the most innovative, significant, and lasting historical writing of the twentieth century has been produced in France, much of it the work of a group of historians associated with the journal Annales. Founded in 1929, Annales promoted a new kind of history based on three central aims: to substitute a problem-orientated analytical history for a traditional narrative of events; to embrace the history of the whole range of human activities rather than concentrate on political history; and, in order to achieve the first two aims, to collaborate fully with other disciplines - notably geography, sociology, psychology, economics, linguistics, and anthropology. The critical history describes, analyzes, and evaluates the achievements of the Annales school, combining chronological and thematic approaches. The author distinguishes three generations in the history of the Annales movement. In the first phase, from the 1920's to 1945, the movement was small, radical, and subverse, fighting a guerrilla action against traditional political history and the history of events. Its leaders, and the founders of Annales, were Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch. After the Second World War, the movement's rebels took over the historical establishment. During this second phase, which lasted until about 1968, the movement was most nearly a school, with distinctive concepts and methods, and was presided over by the towering figure of Fernand Braudel. The third phase of the movement, which continues today, is marked by fragmentation. Its influence in France had become so great that it lost much of its distinctiveness, and no strong figures appeared to give the movement the inspiration and direction that Febvre, Bloch, and Braudel had provided. Some members of the group even returned to political history and to the narrative of events. The cycle was complete - the rebels became the establishment and were in turn rebelled against.<

About this edition

• Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0804718377
• ISBN 13: 9780804718370
• Binding: Paperback