(1) Is there a particular historian or group of historians in the 20th century who have made a difference in historiographical thought? – you are writing about ONE historian or ONE group/school of historians
TOPIC — This HE focuses on a specific group of historians writing in a specific period of history (the 20th century). As you read the chapters on 20th century historiography in Breisach and Bentley please consider the variety of 20th century historians and historical schools of thought.
(1) Is there a particular historian or group of historians in the 20th century who have made a difference in historiographical thought? – you are writing about ONE historian or ONE group/school of historians
(2) Do you have some sort of affinity with any of the historians or schools discussed? In other words, who do you like, and why?
The first question is more about importance and significance.
The majority of the essay (say 75-80%) should be taken up with your discussion of a major historian or group of historians.
The essays must target 1250 words, and should begin with a clear and easily identifiable thesis statement.
All essays must have a suitable title. Footnotes are required. All sources, as well as the bibliography, must conform to Turabian’s A Manual for Writers, 9th ed
The lack of uniformity in historical writing and thought that are observed from the beginning of the 20th century until today is reflected in the many different criteria by which the main trends or historiographical schools usually take their name. [1]
These names can be derived from a philosophical approach (positivism), a journal (the French journal Annales), an author (Marx and the various forms of Marxism) or a university with which the trend is associated (like the Bielefeld school, in Germany). Likewise, an interpretive article that marks a milestone can give rise to a name, such as Lawrence Stone on “the return to narrative”).
Other names have arisen from problems or challenges of the present (environmental history and global history). In some cases, it has been claimed that a previously neglected analytical or thematic category has identified trends such as the Alltagsgeschichte (history of daily life), the Italian microstoria and the history of women and/or gender.
In some cases, a happy expression has come to designate a change of orientation, such as the “linguistic turn”.
Below, we present a brief overview of the most significant objectives, socio-cultural contexts, authors and works of the different historiographical trends distinguishable in the 20th and early 21st centuries, especially in the West.
Our tour starts with the dominant historiographical model in the early the 20th century and concludes with the commentary on the controversial role played by history in today’s media environment.
Until the renewal of the writing of the history advocated by the French journal Annales d’Histoire Economique et Sociale in 1929, the predominant model for historians could be characterised as “history that does not neglect the story, attentive to the great figures, to the exemplary destinations, to the fate of nations and empires”.
A history of political predominance made through careful criticism of sources (especially texts), seen from above, punctuated by great (and not so great) events. A history that the militant Lucien Febvre, the co-founder of Annales with M. Bloch, and many others would later describe as “historicising history” and “histoire événementiel” (“factual history”).
From the point of view of the theory of history (of historiography as metahistory), this dominant historiographical model was a roughly harmonious combination of classical German historicism embodied by Ranke, Hegelian idealism and Comtian scientific positivism in an atmosphere prone to exalting the nation itself. It has been said that the history of France between 1870 (Franco-Prussian War) and 1914 (the start of the First World War) was a prelude to widespread patriotic mobilisation.
The interest in this historiographical model that was demonstrated by the publication and systematic criticism of historical sources is still quite valid.
The one-hundred-year anniversary of the foundation of the French journal Annales d’Histoire Économique et Sociale by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre will be celebrated in a few years[5].
It took place in 1929, at a socio-cultural crossroads: the university of a city, Strasbourg, that was returned to France in 1918. It arose almost without programmatic manifesto. After the harsh changes of World War II (in which Marc Bloch died fighting in the resistance against Nazism), [6] the journal resumed, appearing with its most lasting title: Annales. ESC (Economies, Sociétes, Civilisations). Fernand Braudel took over running it in 1957.
By then, Braudel had already published his masterly study of The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, [7] a great thesis that marks a historiographical milestone due to its articulation of the different historical tempos, the longue durée and the événement, the value given to geographical conditioning and the quality of its prose.
Among the many authors that could be classified as belonging to this “school” or trend grouped around the Annales, we might highlight Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, the author of Les Paysans de Languedoc (1966).
This is a work of history of the kind so frequent among those historians. (After shifting from a quantitative socio-structural history with serial sources to an anthropological and narrative history, Le Roy Ladurie wrote Montaillou, village occitane in 1975.)
What were the aspirations of the Annales school? L. Febvre and M. Bloch wanted to broaden the historians’ field and make them aware of false objectivism, showing them that historical knowledge is obtained from the historian’s hypothesis and problems arising from the present, in close association with economics, geography and sociology.
In addition, in the face of history centred on rulers, they aimed to accommodate the common man in a Europe shaken by the Soviet Revolution of 1917. They also desired to expand the subject of study, in pursuit of a total or comprehensive history, as well as the concept of sources.
Fernand Braudel died in 1985, covered with accolades. His works from the 1960s and 1970s on civilisations and their relationship to capitalism had been warmly received in some universities in the United States.
The Annales school would be very influential in Latin countries such as Italy and Spain, whose university environments were familiar with the French language and culture. In recent decades, this influence has diminished considerably.
As an outsider, Couteau-Begarie has evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of the Annales school. [8] Its clearest strengths include its contributions to economic history, historical demography, the history of material culture, the history of mentalities and social history (although the latter suffers from a fundamental indeterminacy in Annales).
Regarding the limits or weaknesses of the praxis of the school, it has little interest in ancient history and the 20th century, showing a clear preference for research on the pre-industrial world of the Ancien Régime.
One can speak of an elective affinity between the interest shown by Annales historians for the most stable structures and societies and the primacy given to mediaeval and modern history.
In addition, Bloch comes from mediaeval history and Febvre from early modern history. As for the thematic areas, the Annales school hardly cultivates political history, the history of international relations and, with the important exception of Febvre himself, biography.
By focusing on the pre-industrial era, the Annales school distinguishes itself and contrasts with the German social history practiced by the Bielefeld school, with which, on the other hand, it is related.