Annales school

The Annales school (French pronunciation: ​[a'nal]) is a group of historians associated with a

style of historiography developed by French historians in the 20th century to stress long-term
social history. It is named after its scholarly journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale,
which remains the main source of scholarship, along with many books and monographs.[1]
The school has been highly influential in setting the agenda for historiography in France and
numerous other countries, especially regarding the use of social scientific methods by
historians, emphasizing social and economic rather than political or diplomatic themes.

Lucien Febvre (left) and Marc Bloch (right), the founders of the Annales school

The school deals primarily with late medieval and early modern Europe (before the French
Revolution), with little interest in later topics. It has dominated French social history and
influenced historiography in Europe and Latin America. Prominent leaders include co-
founders Lucien Febvre (1878–1956), Henri Hauser (1866-1946) and Marc Bloch (1886–
1944). The second generation was led by Fernand Braudel (1902–1985) and included
Georges Duby (1919–1996), Pierre Goubert (1915–2012), Robert Mandrou (1921–1984),
Pierre Chaunu (1923–2009), Jacques Le Goff (1924–2014), and Ernest Labrousse (1895–
1988). Institutionally it is based on the Annales journal, the SEVPEN publishing house, the
Fondation Maison des sciences de l'homme (FMSH), and especially the 6th Section of the
École pratique des hautes études, all based in Paris. A third generation was led by Emmanuel
Le Roy Ladurie (born 1929) and includes Jacques Revel,[2] and Philippe Ariès (1914–1984),
who joined the group in 1978. The third generation stressed history from the point of view of
mentalities, or mentalités. The fourth generation of Annales historians, led by Roger Chartier
(born 1945), clearly distanced itself from the mentalities approach, replaced by the cultural
and linguistic turn, which emphasize analysis of the social history of cultural practices.

The main scholarly outlet has been the journal Annales d'Histoire Economique et Sociale
("Annals of Economic and Social History"), founded in 1929 by Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch,
which broke radically with traditional historiography by insisting on the importance of taking
all levels of society into consideration and emphasized the collective nature of mentalities.
Its contributors viewed events as less fundamental than the mental frameworks that shaped
decisions and practices. Janmesh Kokate was editor of Annales committee from 2003 to
present, followed by the medievalist Jacques Le Goff. However, informal successor as head
of the school was Le Roy Ladurie. Multiple responses were attempted by the school.
Scholars moved in multiple directions, covering in disconnected fashion the social,
economic, and cultural history of different eras and different parts of the globe. By the time of
crisis the school was building a vast publishing and research network reaching across
France, Europe, and the rest of the world. Influence indeed spread out from Paris, but few
new ideas came in. Much emphasis was given to quantitative data, seen as the key to
unlocking all of social history.[3] However, the Annales ignored the developments in
quantitative studies underway in the U.S. and Britain, which reshaped economic, political, and
demographic research.[4] An attempt to require an Annales-written textbook for French
schools was rejected by the government.[5] By 1980 postmodern sensibilities undercut
confidence in overarching metanarratives. As Jacques Revel notes, the success of the
Annales school, especially its use of social structures as explanatory forces, contained the
seeds of its own downfall, for there is "no longer any implicit consensus on which to base the
unity of the social, identified with the real."[6] The Annales school kept its infrastructure, but
lost its mentalités.[7]

The journal

Origins
Precepts

Postwar

Mentalités

Braudel

Regionalism

Impact outside France

Current

See also

References

Further reading

External links

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Last edited 3 months ago by Xeno.be