FRENCH HISTORIOGRAPHY
Annales school (annalistes)
 One of most notable and influential historiographical schools of C20th
 Closely associated with journal Annales: Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations (founded
by Marc Bloch & Lucien Febvre as Annales d’Histoire Économique et Sociale, 19291946)
 Cf Past and Present associated with British Marxist school
 Heyday 2nd generation – e.g. Fernand Braudel - & 3rd generation - e.g. Emmanuel
Leroy Ladurie – from 1950s-‘70s
 Characteristic rejection of ‘event-based/narrative history’; Ranke’s emphasis on
political/diplomatic history, ‘great men’; Marxist emphasis on class; anglophone
empiricism
 ‘Total history’ & ‘longue durée’, esp climate/ demography/ geography - Leroy
Ladurie’s ‘histoire immobile’ – quantitative analysis, collective mentalities
 Removed human agency contrary to Marxists – esp Braudel, politics & events
‘surface froth’ cf structural elems – so criticised by Right & Left
 Sought interdisciplinary approach, esp social sciences, e.g. sociologist Emile
Durkheim (1858-1917), later anthropology
 N.B. chronological focus = medieval/early modern/ancien regime:
 Bloch (1886-1944): The Royal Touch (1924); French Rural Society (1931), Feudal
Society (1939)
 Febvre (1878-1956): The Problem of Unbelief in the Age of Rabelais (1942)
 Braudel (1902-1985), Philippe Ariès (1914-1984), Pierre Goubert (1915-), Georges
Duby (1919-1996), Robert Mandrou (1921-1984). Conservatism?
 Context of 2nd World War: Bloch shot by Gestapo; Braudel wrote The Mediterranean
and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (1949) in prisoner of war camp;
Leroy Ladurie’s father Vichy minister
 Braudel, 3-volume Capitalism and Material Life (1979)
 Leroy Ladurie (1929-) – Peasants of Languedoc (1966), peasant protest, engagement
with social/cultural history (influence of anthropology/sociology). Montaillou (1975)
– C14th Cathar village = microhistory based on inquisition
 Cf Carnival (1979), bloody uprising in 1579-80 in Dauphiné town of Romans:
political, religious, social, economic & cultural context; urban & rural; esp ritualised
behaviour. Emphasised structural continuities, resistance to change.
 Roger Chartier (1945-) – historian of print culture; emphasis now on ‘new’ cultural
history/ linguistic turn; barely any economics
 Postmodernism vs Annales – Michel Foucault (1926-1984) structural
 Last few decades, Annales lost distinctiveness
Other trends in early modern French historiography:
 1950s Russian Marxist Boris Porchnev (1905-1972) vs right-wing Roland Mousnier
(1907-1993): C17th peasant revolts in France - role of classes (BP) or orders (RM)
(horizontal vs vertical ties): initiative from below or above
 Debate influential and nuanced in interesting ways by later commentators. Leroy
Ladurie – local authorities caught between crown and protestors
 Recent trend > political culture of elites esp the court. E.g. French religious wars –
also mentalités of Denis Crouzet (1953-), Les Guerriers de Dieu (1991)
 Continuing political and personal animosities