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182-572: 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 heavily 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

364-739: A histoire totale , or histoire tout court , a complete study of a historic problem. Bloch was shot by the Gestapo during the German occupation of France in World War II for his active membership of the French Resistance , and Febvre carried on the Annales approach in the 1940s and 1950s. It was during this time that he mentored Braudel, who would become one of the best-known exponents of this school. Braudel's work came to define

546-457: A "germinal event for 20th-century historiography", and they were to work closely together for the rest of Bloch's life. Febvre was some years older than Bloch and was probably a great influence on him. They lived in the same area of Strasbourg and became kindred spirits, often going on walking trips across the Vosges and other excursions. Bloch's fundamental views on the nature and purpose of

728-440: A "gigantic social experience, of unbelievable richness". For example, he had a habit of noting the different coloured smoke that different shells made — percussion bombs had black smoke, timed bombs were brown. He also remembered both the "friends killed at our side ... of the intoxication which had taken hold of us when we saw the enemy in flight". He also considered it to have been "four years of fighting idleness". Following

910-421: A "journal of ideas", whereas Bloch saw it as a vehicle for the exchange of information to different areas of scholarship. By early 1939, war was known to be imminent. Bloch, in spite of his age, which automatically exempted him, had a reserve commission for the army holding the rank of captain. He had already been mobilised twice in false alarms. In August 1939, he and his wife Simonne intended to travel to

1092-618: A "laborious cult of facts" that accompanied it. In 1920, with the opening of the University of Strasbourg , Bloch was appointed chargé de cours ( assistant lecturer ) of medieval history. Alsace-Lorraine had been returned to France with the Treaty of Versailles ; the status of the region was a contentious political issue in Strasbourg, its capital, which had a large German population. Bloch, however, refused to take either side in

1274-521: A "second" era of Annales historiography and was influential throughout the 1960s and 1970s, especially for his work on the Mediterranean region in the era of Philip II of Spain . Braudel developed the idea, often associated with Annalistes, of different modes of historical time: l'histoire quasi immobile (the quasi motionless history) of historical geography, the history of social, political and economic structures ( la longue durée ), and

1456-559: A career in professional French society. Bloch's later close collaborator, Lucien Febvre , visited the Bloch family at home in 1902; although the reason for Febvre's visit is now unknown, he later wrote of Bloch that "from this fleeting meeting, I have kept the memory of a slender adolescent with eyes brilliant with intelligence and timid cheeks—a little lost then in the radiance of his older brother, future doctor of great prestige". Bloch's biographer Katherine Stirling ascribed significance to

1638-740: A closer affinity with academic life in England than that of France. For example, in comparing the Bibliothèque Nationale with the British Museum , he said that A few hours work in the British [Museum] inspire the irresistible desire to build in the Square Louvois a vast pyre of all the B.N.'s regulations and to burn on it, in splendid auto-de-fé , Julian Cain [the director], his librarians and his staff...[and] also

1820-412: A few malodorous readers, if you like, and no doubt also the architect ... after which we could work and invite the foreigners to come and work". Isolated, each [historian] will understand only by halves, even within his own field of study, for the only true history, which can advance only through mutual aid, is universal history'. Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft During this period he supported

2002-744: A leading role in its unified regional structures in Lyon . In 1944, he was captured by the Gestapo in Lyon and murdered in a summary execution after the Allied invasion of Normandy . Several works—including influential studies like The Historian's Craft and Strange Defeat —were published posthumously. His historical studies and his death as a member of the Resistance together made Bloch highly regarded by generations of post-war French historians; he came to be called "the greatest historian of all time". By

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2184-651: A long time dominated the eastern Mediterranean in politics and culture. By the 14th century, however, it had almost entirely collapsed into a tributary state of the Ottoman Empire , centered on the city of Constantinople and a few enclaves in Greece . With the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Byzantine Empire was permanently extinguished. The Bulgarian Empire was in decline by the 14th century, and

2366-578: A major regional power, and the annexation of the vast Republic of Novgorod in 1478 laid the foundations for a Russian national state. After the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Russian princes started to see themselves as the heirs of the Byzantine Empire . They eventually took on the imperial title of Tzar , and Moscow was described as the Third Rome . The Byzantine Empire had for

2548-691: A medievalist in the eyes of his contemporaries. He began publishing articles in Henri Berr 's Revue de Synthèse Historique . Bloch also published his first major work, Les Rois thaumaturges , which he later described as " ce gros enfant " (this big child). In 1928, Bloch was invited to lecture at the Institute for the Comparative Study of Civilizations in Oslo. Here he first expounded publicly his theories on total, comparative history: "it

2730-460: A medievalist like Bloch should have been named to such a chair with so little previous preparation. In France it was only to be expected: no one else was better qualified". His first lecture was on the theme of never-ending history, a process, a never-to-be-finished thing. Davies says his years at the Sorbonne were to be "the most fruitful" of Bloch's career, and according to Epstein he was by now

2912-561: A new independent foundation, the Fondation Maison des sciences de l'homme (FMSH), which Braudel directed from 1970 until his death. In 1970, the 6th Section and the Annales relocated to the FMSH building. FMSH set up elaborate international networks to spread the Annales gospel across Europe and the world. In 2013, it began publication of an English language edition, with all the articles translated. The scope of topics covered by

3094-889: A permit to work despite being Jewish. This was probably due to Bloch's pre-eminence in the field of history. He worked again at the University of Strasbourg, now relocated to Clermont-Ferrand , for one academic year before moving to Montpellier. In Clermont-Ferrand, his two older sons were involved with the Christian - conservative Gaullist Resistance organisation Combat . In November 1940 he received an offer of employment from The New School in New York , but he delayed his decision due to his reluctance to leave family members behind; it expired in July 1941 before he could obtain visas for his adult children. Montpellier, further south,

3276-591: A regular correspondence until Pirenne's death in 1935. In 1923, Bloch attended the inaugural meeting of the International Congress on Historical Studies (ICHS) in Brussels , which was opened by Pirenne. Bloch was a prolific reviewer for Annales , and during the 1920s and 1930s he contributed over 700 reviews. These included criticisms of specific works, but more generally, represented his own fluid thinking during this period. The reviews demonstrate

3458-587: A review of Febvre's first book, Histoire de Franche-Comté . Bloch intended to turn his thesis into a book, but the First World War intervened. Both Marc and Louis Bloch volunteered for service in the French Army. Although the Dreyfus Affair had soured Bloch's views of the French Army, he later wrote that his criticisms were only of the officers; he "had respect only for the men". Bloch

3640-1034: A series of lectures in Liège , on Belgian neutrality . Some academics had escaped France for The New School in New York City, and the School also invited Bloch. He refused, possibly because of difficulties in obtaining visas : the US government would not grant visas to every member of his family. In May 1940, the German army forced the French to withdraw. Bloch fought at the Battle of Dunkirk in May–June 1940, being evacuated to England . Although he could have remained in Britain, he chose to return to France because his family

3822-653: A so-called "depression of the Renaissance". In spite of convincing arguments for the case, the statistical evidence is simply too incomplete for a definite conclusion to be made. Marc Bloch Marc Léopold Benjamin Bloch ( / b l ɒ k / ; French: [maʁk leɔpɔld bɛ̃ʒamɛ̃ blɔk] ; 6 July 1886 – 16 June 1944) was a French historian. He was a founding member of the Annales School of French social history. Bloch specialised in medieval history and published widely on Medieval France over

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4004-456: A spiritual individual and recognized himself as such." This proposition was later challenged, and it was argued that the 12th century was a period of greater cultural achievement. As economic and demographic methods were applied to the study of history, the trend was increasingly to see the late Middle Ages as a period of recession and crisis. Belgian historian Henri Pirenne continued the subdivision of Early , High , and late Middle Ages in

4186-408: A strong supporter, however, and had an article published in the first volume in 1929. He became close friends with both Bloch and Febvre. He was particularly influential on Bloch, who later said that Pirenne's approach should be the model for historians and that "at the time his country was fighting beside mine for justice and civilisation, wrote in captivity a history of Europe". The three men kept up

4368-524: A study of long-term historical structures ( la longue durée ) over events and political transformations. Geography, material culture, and what later Annalistes called mentalités , or the psychology of the epoch, are also characteristic areas of study. The goal of the Annales was to undo the work of the Sorbonnistes, to turn French historians away from the narrowly political and diplomatic toward

4550-464: A thousand years, downplaying short-term events. Bloch's revolutionary charting of mentalities, or mentalités , resonated with scholars who were reading Freud and Proust . In the 1960s, Robert Mandrou and Georges Duby harmonized the concept of mentalité history with Fernand Braudel 's structures of historical time and linked mentalities with changing social conditions. A flood of mentalité studies based on these approaches appeared during

4732-446: A whole and literature (particularly theatrical plays) for France, England and Spain. His work in this specific field (based on the criss-crossing between literary criticism, bibliography, and sociocultural history) is connected to broader historiographical and methodological interests which deal with the relation between history and other disciplines: philosophy, sociology, anthropology. Chartier's typical undergraduate course focuses upon

4914-428: A year to be attacked by a ruthless, stronger force. Carole Fink On 24 August 1939, at the age of 53, Bloch was mobilised for a third time. He was responsible for the mobilisation of the French Army's massive motorised units which involved him undertaking such a detailed assessment of the French fuel supply that he later wrote he was able to "count petrol tins and ration every drop" of fuel he obtained. During

5096-606: Is preserved. In 1934, Bloch was invited to speak at the London School of Economics . There he met Eileen Power , R. H. Tawney and Michael Postan , among others. While in London, he was asked to write a section of the Cambridge Economic History of Europe; at the same time, he also attempted to foster interest in the Annales among British historians. He later told Febvre in some ways he felt he had

5278-476: The mentalités approach, replaced by the cultural and linguistic turn , which emphasizes 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

5460-734: The École Normale Supérieure , and from an early age was affected by the antisemitism of the Dreyfus affair . During the First World War , he served in the French Army and fought at the First Battle of the Marne and the Somme . After the war, he was awarded his doctorate in 1918 and became a lecturer at the University of Strasbourg. There, he formed an intellectual partnership with modern historian Lucien Febvre . Together they founded

5642-470: The 46th Infantry Regiment based at Pithiviers from 1905 to 1906. By this time, changes were taking place in French academia. In Bloch's own speciality of history, attempts were being made at instilling a more scientific methodology. In other, newer departments such a sociology, efforts were made at establishing an independent identity. Bloch graduated in 1908 with degrees in both geography and history (Davies notes, given Bloch's later divergent interests,

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5824-470: The Annales and Polish scholars continued until the early 1980s. The reciprocal influence between the French school and Polish historiography was particularly evident in studies on the Middle Ages and the early modern era studied by Braudel. In South America the Annales approach became popular. From the 1950s Federico Brito Figueroa was the founder of a new Venezuelan historiography based largely on

6006-466: The Annales focused attention on the synthesizing of historical patterns identified from social, economic, and cultural history, statistics, medical reports, family studies, and even psychoanalysis. The Annales was founded and edited by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre in 1929, while they were teaching at the University of Strasbourg and later in Paris. These authors, the former a medieval historian and

6188-404: The Annales often contained commentary on contemporary, rather than exclusively historical, events. Editing the journal led to Bloch forming close professional relationships with scholars in different fields across Europe. The Annales was the only academic journal to boast a preconceived methodological perspective. Neither Bloch nor Febvre wanted to present a neutral facade. During the decade it

6370-420: The Annales over to the sole editorship of Febvre, who then changed the journal's name to Mélanges d'Histoire Sociale . Bloch was forced to write for it under the pseudonym Marc Fougères. The Annalist historian André Burguière suggests Febvre did not really understand the position Bloch, or any French Jew, was in. Already damaged by this disagreement, Bloch's and Febvre's relationship declined further when

6552-484: The Annales school was Hugh Trevor-Roper . American, German, Indian, Russian and Japanese scholars generally ignored the school. The Americans developed their own form of "new social history" from entirely different roots. Both the American and the Annales historians picked up important family reconstitution techniques from French demographer Louis Henry . The Wageningen school centered on Bernard Slicher van Bath

6734-532: The Armistice in November 1918 , Bloch was demobilised on 13 March 1919. "Must I say historical or indeed sociological? Let us more simply say, in order to avoid any discussion of method, human studies. Durkheim was no longer there, but the team he had grouped around him survived him...and the spirit which animates it remains the same". Marc Bloch, review of L'Année Sociologique , 1923–1925 The war

6916-716: The Atlantic Ocean to America . As Genoese and Venetian merchants opened up direct sea routes with Flanders , the Champagne fairs lost much of their importance. At the same time, English wool export shifted from raw wool to processed cloth, resulting in losses for the cloth manufacturers of the Low Countries. In the Baltic and North Sea , the Hanseatic League reached the peak of their power in

7098-563: The Battle of Agincourt in 1415 briefly paved the way for a unification of the two kingdoms, but his son Henry VI soon squandered all previous gains. The loss of France led to discontent at home. Soon after the end of the war in 1453, the dynastic struggles of the Wars of the Roses (c. 1455–1485) began, involving the rival dynasties of the House of Lancaster and House of York . The war ended in

7280-540: The Bible , translations of Ovid, Hamlet , Don Quixote , Montaigne's essays, Pepys's diary, Richardson's Pamela , and Franklin's autobiography. Late Middle Ages The late Middle Ages or late medieval period was the period of European history lasting from AD 1300 to 1500. The late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern period (and in much of Europe,

7462-612: The Collège de France , and Annenberg Visiting professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania . He frequently lectures and teaches in the United States, Spain, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. His work in Early Modern European History focuses on the history of education, the history of the book and the history of reading. Recently, he has been concerned with the relationship between written culture as

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7644-656: The Croix de Guerre and the Légion d'Honneur . He had joined as a non-commissioned officer , received an officer's commission after the Marne, and had been promoted to warrant officer and finally a captain in the fuel service , ( Service des essences) before the war ended. He was clearly, says Loyn, both a good and a brave soldier; he later wrote, "I know only one way to persuade a troop to brave danger: brave it yourself". While on front-line service, Bloch contracted severe arthritis which required him to retire regularly to

7826-644: The Czechs , but both the Catholic Church and the German element within the country were weakened. Martin Luther , a German monk, started the German Reformation by posting 95 theses on the castle church of Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. The immediate provocation spurring this act was Pope Leo X 's renewal of the indulgence for the building of the new St. Peter's Basilica in 1514. Luther

8008-565: The Dreyfusard movement and his son agreed with the cause. Bloch was educated at the prestigious Lycée Louis-le-Grand for three years, where he was consistently head of his class and won prizes in French, history, Latin, and natural history. He passed his baccalauréat , in Letters and Philosophy, in July 1903, being graded trés bien (very good). The following year, he received a scholarship and undertook postgraduate study there for

8190-624: The English aristocracy, such as John of Gaunt , the movement was not allowed to survive. Though Wycliffe himself was left unmolested, his supporters, the Lollards , were eventually suppressed in England. The marriage of Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia established contacts between the two nations and brought Lollard ideas to her homeland. The teachings of the Czech priest Jan Hus were based on those of John Wycliffe, yet his followers,

8372-639: The Golden Bull of 1356 made the king of Bohemia first among the imperial electors , but the Hussite revolution threw the country into crisis. The Holy Roman Empire passed to the House of Habsburg in 1438, where it remained until its dissolution in 1806. Yet in spite of the extensive territories held by the Habsburgs , the Empire itself remained fragmented, and much real power and influence lay with

8554-490: The House of Capet in 1328, was at its outset marginalized in its own country, first by the English invading forces of the Hundred Years' War and later by the powerful Duchy of Burgundy . The emergence of Joan of Arc as a military leader changed the course of war in favour of the French, and the initiative was carried further by King Louis XI . Meanwhile, Charles the Bold , Duke of Burgundy , met resistance in his attempts to consolidate his possessions, particularly from

8736-431: The Hussites , were to have a much greater political impact than the Lollards. Hus gained a great following in Bohemia , and in 1414, he was requested to appear at the Council of Constance to defend his cause. When he was burned as a heretic in 1415, it caused a popular uprising in the Czech lands. The subsequent Hussite Wars fell apart due to internal quarrels and did not result in religious or national independence for

8918-423: The Hôtel Lutetia . By now, Annales was being published six times a year to keep on top of current affairs, however, its "outlook was gloomy". In 1938, the publishers withdrew support and, experiencing financial hardship, the journal moved to cheaper offices, raised its prices, and returned to publishing quarterly. Febvre increasingly opposed the direction Bloch wanted to take the journal. Febvre wanted it to be

9100-413: The Jacquerie and the Peasants' Revolt , as well as over a century of intermittent conflict, the Hundred Years' War . To add to the many problems of the period, the unity of the Catholic Church was temporarily shattered by the Western Schism . Collectively, those events are sometimes called the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages . Despite the crises, the 14th century was also a time of great progress in

9282-451: The Ottoman Empire . After Italy, Hungary was the first European country where the Renaissance appeared. However, the glory of the Kingdom ended in the early 16th century, when the King Louis II of Hungary was killed in the Battle of Mohács in 1526 against the Ottoman Empire . Hungary then fell into a serious crisis and was invaded, ending its significance in central Europe during the medieval era. The state of Kievan Rus' fell during

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9464-425: The Popular Front politically. Although he did not believe it would do any good, he signed Alain's— Émile Chartier 's pseudonym—petition against Paul Boncour 's Militarisation laws in 1935. While he was opposed to the rise of European fascism , he also objected to attempting to counter the ideology through "demagogic appeals to the masses", as the Communist Party was doing. Febvre and Bloch were both firmly on

9646-416: The Renaissance ). Around 1350, centuries of prosperity and growth in Europe came to a halt. A series of famines and plagues , including the Great Famine of 1315–1317 and the Black Death , reduced the population to around half of what it had been before the calamities. Along with depopulation came social unrest and endemic warfare . France and England experienced serious peasant uprisings, such as

9828-428: The Second World War Bloch volunteered for service, and was a logistician during the Phoney War . Involved in the Battle of Dunkirk and spending a brief time in Britain, he unsuccessfully attempted to secure passage to the United States. Back in France, where his ability to work was curtailed by new antisemitic regulations, he applied for and received one of the few permits available allowing Jews to continue working in

10010-433: The Sorbonne in 1936, and his chair in economic history was up for appointment. Bloch—"distancing himself from the encroaching threat of Nazi Germany" —applied and was approved for his position. This was a more demanding position than the one he had applied for at the college. Weber has suggested Bloch was appointed because unlike at the college, he had not come into conflict with many faculty members. Weber researched

10192-410: The Swiss Confederation formed in 1291. When Charles was killed in the Burgundian Wars at the Battle of Nancy in 1477, the Duchy of Burgundy was reclaimed by France. At the same time, the County of Burgundy and the wealthy Burgundian Netherlands came into the Holy Roman Empire under Habsburg control, setting up conflict for centuries to come. Bohemia prospered in the 14th century, and

10374-403: The bill of exchange and other forms of credit that circumvented the canonical laws for gentiles against usury and eliminated the dangers of carrying bullion ; and new forms of accounting , in particular double-entry bookkeeping , which allowed for better oversight and accuracy. With the financial expansion, trading rights became more jealously guarded by the commercial elite. Towns saw

10556-453: The condottieri of the Italian city-states. All over Europe, Swiss mercenaries were in particularly high demand. At the same time, the period also saw the emergence of the first permanent armies. It was in Valois France, under the heavy demands of the Hundred Years' War, that the armed forces gradually assumed a permanent nature. Parallel to the military developments emerged also a constantly more elaborate chivalric code of conduct for

10738-411: The final German assault on Paris . He survived the war, which he later described as having been an "honour" to have served through. He had, however, lost many friends and colleagues. Among the closest of them, all killed in action, were: Maxime David (died 1914), Antoine-Jules Bianconi (died 1915) and Ernest Babut (died 1916). Bloch himself was wounded twice and decorated for courage, receiving

10920-401: The population of Europe to perhaps no more than a third of what it was a century earlier. The effects of natural disasters were exacerbated by armed conflicts; this was particularly the case in France during the Hundred Years' War . It took 150 years for the European population to regain similar levels of 1300. As the European population was severely reduced, land became more plentiful for

11102-415: The siege of Belgrade of 1521. By the end of the medieval period, the entire Balkan peninsula was annexed by, or became vassal to, the Ottomans. Avignon was the seat of the papacy from 1309 to 1376. With the return of the Pope to Rome in 1378, the Papal State developed into a major secular power, culminating in the morally corrupt papacy of Alexander VI . Florence grew to prominence amongst

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11284-415: The thermal baths of Aix-les-Bains for treatment. He later remembered very little of the historical events he found himself in, writing only that his memories were "a discontinuous series of images, vivid in themselves, but badly arranged, like a reel of motion picture film containing some large gaps and some reversals of certain scenes". Bloch later described the war, in a detached style, as having been

11466-432: The École pratique des hautes études , all based in Paris. A third generation was led by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (1929–2023) and includes Jacques Revel, 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

11648-418: The 13th century in the Mongol invasion . The Grand Duchy of Moscow rose in power thereafter, winning a great victory against the Golden Horde at the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380. The victory did not end Tartar rule in the region, however, and its immediate beneficiary was the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , which extended its influence eastwards. Under the reign of Ivan the Great (1462–1505), Moscow became

11830-422: The 14th century but started going into decline in the fifteenth. In the late 13th and early 14th centuries, a process took place – primarily in Italy but partly also in the Empire – that historians have termed a "commercial revolution". Among the innovations of the period were new forms of partnership and the issuing of insurance , both of which contributed to reducing the risk of commercial ventures;

12012-434: The 1970s and 1980s. By the 1990s, however, mentalité history had become interdisciplinary to the point of fragmentation, but still lacked a solid theoretical basis. While not explicitly rejecting mentalité history, younger historians increasingly turned to other approaches. Fernand Braudel became the leader of the second generation after 1945. He obtained funding from the Rockefeller Foundation in New York and founded

12194-409: The 6th Section of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, which was devoted to the study of history and the social sciences. It became an independent degree-granting institution in 1975 under the name École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). Braudel's followers admired his use of the longue durée approach to stress slow, and often imperceptible effects of space, climate and technology on

12376-438: The Annales School and began publishing the journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale in 1929. Bloch was a modernist in his historiographical approach, and repeatedly emphasised the importance of a multidisciplinary engagement towards history, particularly blending his research with that on geography , sociology and economics, which was his subject when he was offered a post at the University of Paris in 1936. During

12558-406: The Center for Historical Studies of El Colegio de México, the leading graduate studies institution of Latin America. British historians, apart from a few Marxists, were generally hostile. Academic historians decidedly sided with Geoffrey Elton 's The Practice of History against Edward Hallett Carr 's What Is History? One of the few British historians who were sympathetic towards the work of

12740-407: The English became acquainted with, and adopted, the highly efficient longbow . Once properly managed, this weapon gave them a great advantage over the French in the Hundred Years' War. The introduction of gunpowder affected the conduct of war significantly. Though employed by the English as early as the Battle of Crécy in 1346, firearms initially had little effect in the field of battle. It

12922-443: The French University of Strasbourg's inherited German treasures". Bloch also taught French to the few German students who were still at the Centre d'Études Germaniques at the University of Mainz during the Occupation of the Rhineland . He refrained from taking a public position when France occupied the Ruhr in 1923 over Germany's perceived failure to pay war reparations . Bloch began working energetically, and later said that

13104-535: The French university system. He had to leave Paris, and complained that the Nazi German authorities looted his apartment and stole his books; he was also persuaded by Febvre to relinquish his position on the editorial board of Annales . Bloch worked in Montpellier until November 1942 when Germany invaded Vichy France . He then joined the non-Communist section of the French Resistance and went on to play

13286-535: The German historian Christoph Cellarius published Universal History Divided into an Ancient, Medieval, and New Period (1683). For 18th-century historians studying the 14th and 15th centuries, the central theme was the Renaissance , with its rediscovery of ancient learning and the emergence of an individual spirit. The heart of this rediscovery lies in Italy, where, in the words of Jacob Burckhardt , "Man became

13468-659: The Great Schism had done irreparable damage. The internal struggles within the Church had impaired her claim to universal rule and promoted anti-clericalism among the people and their rulers, paving the way for reform movements. Though many of the events were outside the traditional time period of the Middle Ages, the end of the unity of the Western Church (the Protestant Reformation ) was one of

13650-577: The ICHS in Bucharest . In autumn 1939, just before the outbreak of war, Bloch published the first volume of Feudal Society . Torn from normal behaviour and from normal expectations, suspended from history and from commonsense responses, members of a huge French army became separated for an indefinite period from their work and their loved ones. Sixty-seven divisions, lacking strong leadership, public support, and solid allies, waited almost three-quarters of

13832-580: The Iberian peninsula, but there were also some in France, the Empire, and the Low Countries, as well as London in England. Through battles such as Courtrai (1302), Bannockburn (1314), and Morgarten (1315), it became clear to the great territorial princes of Europe that the military advantage of the feudal cavalry was lost and that a well equipped infantry was preferable. Through the Welsh Wars ,

14014-607: The Italian city-states through financial business, and the dominant Medici family became important promoters of the Renaissance through their patronage of the arts. Other city-states in northern Italy also expanded their territories and consolidated their power, primarily Milan , Venice , and Genoa . The War of the Sicilian Vespers had by the early 14th century divided southern Italy into an Aragon Kingdom of Sicily and an Anjou Kingdom of Naples . In 1442,

14196-499: The Jews. Monarchs gave in to the demands of the people, and the Jews were expelled from England in 1290, from France in 1306, from Spain in 1492, and from Portugal in 1497. While the Jews were suffering persecution, one group that probably experienced increased empowerment in the late Middle Ages was women. The great social changes of the period opened up new possibilities for women in the fields of commerce, learning, and religion. Yet at

14378-580: The Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II ) was his most influential. This vast panoramic view used ideas from other social sciences, employed effectively the technique of the longue durée, and downplayed the importance of specific events and individuals. It stressed geography but not mentalité . It was widely admired, but most historians did not try to replicate it and instead focused on their specialized monographs. The book dramatically raised

14560-580: The Spanish expedition under Christopher Columbus to the Americas in 1492 and Vasco da Gama 's voyage to Africa and India in 1498. Their discoveries strengthened the economy and power of European nations. The changes brought about by these developments have led many scholars to view this period as the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern history and of early modern Europe . However,

14742-652: The Spanish kingdoms supported the Avignon Papacy, France's enemy England stood behind the pope in Rome, together with Portugal, Scandinavia, and most of the German princes. At the Council of Constance (1414–1418), the Papacy was once more united in Rome. Even though the unity of the Western Church was to last for another hundred years, and though the Papacy was to experience greater material prosperity than ever before,

14924-483: The Third Republic". Marc had a brother, Louis Constant Alexandre, seven years his senior. The two were close, although Bloch later described Louis as being occasionally somewhat intimidating. The Bloch family lived at 72, Rue d'Alésia , in the 14th arrondissement of Paris . Gustave began teaching Marc history while he was still a boy, with a secular, rather than Jewish, education intended to prepare him for

15106-408: The U.S. and Britain, which reshaped economic, political, and demographic research. An attempt to require an Annales -written textbook for French schools was rejected by the government. 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

15288-658: The West, particularly Italy. Combined with this influx of classical ideas was the invention of printing, which facilitated the dissemination of the printed word and democratized learning. Those two things would later lead to the Reformation . Toward the end of the period, the Age of Discovery began. The expansion of the Ottoman Empire cut off trading possibilities with the East. Europeans were forced to seek new trading routes, leading to

15470-615: The accession of Henry VII of the House of Tudor , who continued the work started by the Yorkist kings of building a strong, centralized monarchy. While England's attention was thus directed elsewhere, the Hiberno-Norman lords in Ireland were becoming gradually more assimilated into Irish society, and the island was allowed to develop virtual independence under English overlordship. The French House of Valois , which followed

15652-406: The actions of human beings in the past. The Annales historians, after living through two world wars and incredible political upheavals in France, were deeply uncomfortable with the notion that multiple ruptures and discontinuities created history. They preferred to stress inertia and the longue durée. Special attention was paid to geography, climate, and demography as long-term factors. They believed

15834-626: The archives of the college in 1991 and discovered that Bloch had indicated an interest in working there as early as 1928, even though that would have meant him being appointed to the chair in numismatics rather than history. In a letter to the recruitment board written the same year, Bloch indicated that although he was not officially applying, he felt that "this kind of work (which he claimed to be alone in doing) deserves to have its place one day in our great foundation of free scientific research". H. Stuart Hughes says of Bloch's Sorbonne appointment: "In another country, it might have occasioned surprise that

16016-721: The arts and sciences. Following a renewed interest in ancient Greek and Roman texts that took root in the High Middle Ages, the Italian Renaissance began. The absorption of Latin texts had started before the Renaissance of the 12th century through contact with Arabs during the Crusades , but the availability of important Greek texts accelerated with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks , when many Byzantine scholars had to seek refuge in

16198-698: The ascendancy of Serbia was marked by the Serbian victory over the Bulgarians in the Battle of Velbazhd in 1330. By 1346, the Serbian king Stefan Dušan had been proclaimed emperor. Yet Serbian dominance was short-lived; the Serbian army led by the Lazar Hrebeljanovic was defeated by the Ottoman Army at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, where most of the Serbian nobility was killed and

16380-509: The body, and the heart), writing implements (including styluses, pens, pencils, needles, and brushes), and material forms (including scrolls, erasable tables, codices, broadsides and printed forms and books). Under the heading of "places", his class explores where texts were made, read, and listened to, including monasteries, schools and universities, offices of the state, the shops of merchants and booksellers, printing houses, theaters, libraries, studies, and closets. The texts for his course include

16562-606: The coast of Africa , and in 1498, Vasco da Gama found the sea route to India . The Spanish monarchs met the Portuguese challenge by financing the expedition of Christopher Columbus to find a western sea route to India, leading to the discovery of the Americas in 1492. Around 1300–1350, the Medieval Warm Period gave way to the Little Ice Age . The colder climate resulted in agricultural crises,

16744-427: The collective nature of mentalities. Its contributors viewed events as less fundamental than the mental frameworks that shaped decisions and practices. 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

16926-466: The connections between historians and sociologists to be greater than their differences. Not only did he openly acknowledge Durkheim's influence, but Bloch "repeatedly seized any opportunity to reiterate" it, according to R. C. Rhodes. At Strasbourg, he again met Febvre, who was now a leading historian of the 16th century. Modern and medieval seminars were adjacent to each other at Strasbourg, and attendance often overlapped. Their meeting has been called

17108-541: The consolidation of central authority and the emergence of the nation state . The financial demands of war necessitated higher levels of taxation, resulting in the emergence of representative bodies – most notably the English Parliament . The growth of secular authority was further aided by the decline of the papacy with the Western Schism and the coming of the Protestant Reformation . After

17290-657: The continuities of the deepest structures were central to history, beside which upheavals in institutions or the superstructure of social life were of little significance, for history lies beyond the reach of conscious actors, especially the will of revolutionaries. They rejected the Marxist idea that history should be used as a tool to foment and foster revolutions. In turn the Marxists called them conservatives. Braudel's first book, La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéen à l'Epoque de Philippe II (1949) ( The Mediterranean and

17472-507: The conversion of Lithuania, also marked the end of paganism in Europe. Louis did not leave a son as heir after his death in 1382. Instead, he named as his heir the young prince Sigismund of Luxemburg . The Hungarian nobility did not accept his claim, and the result was an internal war. Sigismund eventually achieved total control of Hungary and established his court in Buda and Visegrád. Both palaces were rebuilt and improved, and were considered

17654-653: The country into a succession crisis , and the English king, Edward I , was brought in to arbitrate. Edward claimed overlordship over Scotland, leading to the Wars of Scottish Independence . The English were eventually defeated, and the Scots were able to develop a stronger state under the Stewarts . From 1337, England's attention was largely directed towards France in the Hundred Years' War . Henry V's victory at

17836-432: The course of his career. As an academic, he worked at the University of Strasbourg (1920 to 1936 and 1940 to 1941), the University of Paris (1936 to 1939), and the University of Montpellier (1941 to 1944). Born in Lyon to an Alsatian Jewish family, Bloch was raised in Paris, where his father—the classical historian Gustave Bloch —worked at Sorbonne University . Bloch was educated at various Parisian lycées and

18018-480: The debate; indeed, he appears to have avoided politics entirely. Under Wilhelmine Germany , Strasbourg had rivalled Berlin as a centre for intellectual advancement, and the University of Strasbourg possessed the largest academic library in the world. Thus, says Stephan R. Epstein of the London School of Economics , "Bloch's unrivalled knowledge of the European Middle Ages was ... built on and around

18200-400: The defining feature of an entire European historical epoch. The period from the early 14th century up until – and sometimes including – the 16th century is rather seen as characterized by other trends: demographic and economic decline followed by recovery, the end of Western religious unity and the subsequent emergence of the nation-state , and the expansion of European influence onto

18382-496: The distinguishing characteristics of the medieval period. The Catholic Church had long fought against heretic movements, but during the late Middle Ages, it started to experience demands for reform from within. The first of these came from Oxford professor John Wycliffe in England. Wycliffe held that the Bible should be the only authority in religious questions, and he spoke out against transubstantiation , celibacy , and indulgences . In spite of influential supporters among

18564-414: The division is somewhat artificial, since ancient learning was never entirely absent from European society. As a result, there was developmental continuity between the ancient age (via classical antiquity ) and the modern age . Some historians, particularly in Italy, prefer not to speak of the late Middle Ages at all but rather see the high period of the Middle Ages transitioning to the Renaissance and

18746-432: The early days of the war; like most of his generation, he had expected a short but glorious conflict. Gustave Bloch remained in France, wishing to be close to his sons at the front. Except for two months in hospital followed by another three recuperating, he spent the war in the infantry; he joined as a sergeant and rose to become the head of his section . Bloch kept a war diary from his enlistment. Very detailed in

18928-471: The end of the 20th century, historians were making a more critical assessment of Bloch's abilities, influence, and legacy, arguing that there were flaws to his approach. Marc Bloch was born in Lyon on 6 July 1886, one of two children to Gustave and Sarah Bloch, née Ebstein. Bloch's family were Alsatian Jews : secular , liberal and loyal to the French Republic . They "struck a balance", says

19110-520: The era in which Bloch was born: the middle of the French Third Republic , so "after those who had founded it and before the generation that would aggressively challenge it". When Bloch was nine-years-old, the Dreyfus affair broke out in France. As the first major display of political antisemitism in Europe, it was probably a formative event of Bloch's youth, along with, more generally, the atmosphere of fin de siècle Paris. Bloch

19292-485: The extent to which he shifted his thinking on particular subjects. In 1930, both keen to make a move to Paris, Febvre and Bloch applied to the École pratique des hautes études for a position: both failed. Three years later Febvre was elected to the Collège de France . He moved to Paris, and in doing so, says Fink, became all the more aloof. This placed a strain on Bloch's and his relations, although they communicated regularly by letter and much of their correspondence

19474-687: The failed union of Sweden and Norway of 1319–1365, the pan-Scandinavian Kalmar Union was instituted in 1397. The Swedes were reluctant members of the Danish -dominated union from the start. In an attempt to subdue the Swedes, King Christian II of Denmark had large numbers of the Swedish aristocracy killed in the Stockholm Bloodbath of 1520. Yet this measure only led to further hostilities, and Sweden broke away for good in 1523. Norway, on

19656-577: The first few months of the war, called the Phoney War , he was stationed in Alsace, this time lacking the eager patriotism he had shown in the war. He also evacuated civilians to behind the Maginot Line and for a while he worked with British Intelligence . Bloch began but did not complete writing a history of France. At one point he expected to be invited to neutral Belgium to deliver

19838-499: The first few months, it rapidly became more general in its observations. However, says the historian Daniel Hochedez , Bloch was aware of his role as both a "witness and narrator" to events and wanted as detailed a basis for his historiographical understanding as possible. The historian Rees Davies notes that although Bloch served in the war with "considerable distinction", it had come at the worst possible time both for his intellectual development and his study of medieval society. For

20020-531: The first of which is known as the Great Famine of 1315–1317 . The demographic consequences of this famine , however, were not as severe as the plagues that occurred later in the century, particularly the Black Death . Estimates of the death rate caused by this epidemic range from one third to as much as sixty percent. By around 1420, the accumulated effect of recurring plagues and famines had reduced

20202-449: The first time in his life, Bloch later wrote, he worked and lived alongside people he had never had close contact with before, such as shop workers and labourers, with whom he developed a great camaraderie . It was a completely different world to the one he was used to, being "a world where differences were settled not by words but by bullets". His experiences made him rethink his views on history, and influenced his subsequent approach to

20384-633: The following year and again applied to the Fondation , this time successfully. Bloch researched the medieval Île-de-France in preparation for his thesis. This research was Bloch's first focus on rural history. His parents had moved house and now resided at the Avenue d'Orleans , not far from Bloch's quarters. Bloch's research at the Fondation —especially his research into the Capetian kings —laid

20566-650: The former had been forced to leave his library and papers in his Paris apartment following his move to Vichy. On account of limited space in Montpellier, he had attempted to have them transported to his country home in Fougères . Eventually the Nazis looted his apartment and removed the library in January 1942. Bloch held Febvre responsible, believing he could have done more to prevent it. Bloch had refused to donate

20748-400: The globe. By the time of the crisis the school was building a vast publishing and research network reaching across France, Europe, and the rest of the world. Influence 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. However, the Annales ignored the developments in quantitative studies underway in

20930-411: The groundwork for his career. He began by creating maps of the Paris area illustrating where serfdom had thrived and where it had not. He also investigated the nature of serfdom, the culture of which, he discovered, was founded almost completely on custom and practice. His studies of this period formed Bloch into a mature scholar and first brought him into contact with other disciplines whose relevance he

21112-614: The growing power of guilds , while on a national level, special companies would be granted monopolies on particular trades, like the English wool Staple . The beneficiaries of these developments would accumulate immense wealth. Families like the Fuggers in Germany, the Medicis in Italy, and the de la Poles in England and individuals like Jacques Cœur in France would help finance the wars of kings, achieving great political influence in

21294-519: The historian Carole Fink , between both "fierce Jacobin patriotism and the antinationalism of the left". His family had lived in Alsace for five generations under French rule. In 1871, France was forced to cede the region to Germany following its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War . The year after Bloch's birth, his father was appointed professor of Roman History at the Sorbonne, and the family moved to Paris —"the glittering capital of

21476-406: The history of men and events, in the context of their structures. While authors such as Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie , Marc Ferro and Jacques Le Goff continue to carry the Annales banner, today the Annales approach has been less distinctive as more and more historians do work in cultural history , political history and economic history . Bloch's Les Rois thaumaturges (1924) looked at

21658-536: The history of mentalities. The Annales school systematically reached out to create an impact on other countries. Its success varied widely. The Annales approach was especially well received in Italy and Poland . Franciszek Bujak (1875–1953) and Jan Rutkowski (1886–1949), the founders of modern economic history in Poland and of the journal Roczniki Dziejów Spolecznych i Gospodarczych (1931– ), were attracted to

21840-498: The ideas of the Annales School. Brito Figueroa carried his conception of the field to all levels of university study, emphasizing a systematic and scientific approach to history and placing it squarely in the social sciences. Spanish historiography was influenced by the "Annales School" starting in 1950 with Jaume Vicens Vives (1910–1960). In Mexico, exiled Republican intellectuals extended the Annales approach, particularly from

22022-586: The individual principalities. In addition, financial institutions, such as the Hanseatic League and the Fugger family, held great power, on both economic and political levels. The Kingdom of Hungary experienced a golden age during the 14th century. In particular the reigns of the Angevin kings Charles Robert (1308–42) and his son Louis the Great (1342–82) were marked by success. The country grew wealthy as

22204-527: The innovations of the Annales school. Rutkowski was in contact with Bloch and others, and published in the Annales . After the Communists took control in the 1940s Polish scholars were safer working on the Middle Ages and the early modern era rather than contemporary history. After the " Polish October " of 1956 the Sixth Section in Paris welcomed Polish historians and exchanges between the circle of

22386-422: The journal is vast and experimental—there is a search for total history and new approaches. The emphasis is on social history, and very long-term trends, often using quantification and paying special attention to geography and to the intellectual world view of common people, or "mentality" ( mentalité ). Little attention is paid to political, diplomatic, or military history, or to biographies of famous men. Instead

22568-458: The journal's management as being a chief executive officer—Bloch—with a minister of foreign affairs—Febvre. Utilizing comparative methodology allowed Bloch to discover instances of uniqueness within aspects of society, and he advocated it as a new kind of history. According to Bryce Lyon, Braudel and Febvre, "promising to perform all the burdensome tasks" themselves, asked Pirenne to become editor-in-chief of Annales to no avail. Pirenne remained

22750-467: The king's policies. The Annales historians did not try to replicate Braudel's vast geographical scope in La Méditerranée . Instead they focused on regions in France over long stretches of time. The most important was the study of The Peasants of Languedoc by Braudel's star pupil and successor Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie. The regionalist tradition flourished especially in the 1960s and 1970s in

22932-568: The latter an early modernist, quickly became associated with the distinctive Annales approach, which combined geography, history, and the sociological approaches of the Année Sociologique (many members of which were their colleagues at Strasbourg) to produce an approach which rejected the predominant emphasis on politics, diplomacy and war of many 19th and early 20th-century historians as spearheaded by historians whom Febvre called Les Sorbonnistes. Instead, they pioneered an approach to

23114-457: The left, although with different emphases. Febvre, for example, was more militantly Marxist than Bloch, while the latter criticised both the pacifist left and corporate trade unionism. In 1934, Étienne Gilson sponsored Bloch's candidacy for a chair at the Collège de France. The college, says the historian Eugen Weber , was Bloch's "dream" appointment—although one never to be realised—as it

23296-626: The library to the University of Montpellier at the advice of the Vichy education minister, his friend Jérôme Carcopino , and later protested the loss to the newly appointed minister Abel Bonnard . Bloch's mother had recently died, and his wife was ill; he faced daily harassment. On 18 March 1941, Bloch made his will in Clermont-Ferrand. The Polish social historian Bronisław Geremek suggests that this document hints at Bloch in some way foreseeing his death, as he emphasised that nobody had

23478-521: The local leaders of Combat and organisers of the Comité Général d'Etudes (an underground Conseil d'État ), René Courtin and Pierre-Henri Teitgen . He also knew the sociologist and Communist Resistance member Georges Friedmann and the philosopher of mathematics Jean Cavaillès , a key Resistance figure who co-founded the left-wing Libération-sud in Clermont-Ferrand in December 1940,

23660-551: The long-standing folk belief that the king could cure scrofula by his thaumaturgic touch . The kings of France and England indeed regularly practiced the ritual. Bloch was not concerned with the effectiveness of the royal touch—he acted instead like an anthropologist in asking why people believed it and how it shaped relations between king and commoner. The book was highly influential in introducing comparative studies (in this case France and England), as well as long durations ("longue durée") studies spanning several centuries, even up to

23842-537: The main European supplier of gold and silver. Louis the Great led successful campaigns from Lithuania to Southern Italy, and from Poland to Northern Greece. He had the greatest military potential of the 14th century with his enormous armies (often over 100,000 men). Meanwhile, Poland 's attention was turned eastwards, as the Commonwealth with Lithuania created an enormous entity in the region. The union, and

24024-485: The making, remaking, dissemination, and reading of texts in early modern Europe and America. Under the heading of "practices", his class considers how readers read and marked up their books, forms of note-taking, and the interrelation between reading and writing from copying and translating to composing new texts. Under the heading of "materials", his class examines the relations between different kinds of writing surfaces (including stone, wax, parchment, paper, walls, textiles,

24206-700: The modern era. The term "late Middle Ages" refers to one of the three periods of the Middle Ages , along with the early Middle Ages and the High Middle Ages. Leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodization in his History of the Florentine People (1442). Flavio Biondo used a similar framework in Decades of History from the Deterioration of the Roman Empire (1439–1453). Tripartite periodization became standard after

24388-450: The most productive years of his life were spent at Strasbourg. In his teaching, his delivery was halting. His approach sometimes appeared cold and distant—caustic enough to be upsetting —but conversely, he could be also both charismatic and forceful. Durkheim died in 1917, but the movement he began against the "smugness" that pervaded French intellectual thinking continued. Bloch had been greatly influenced by him, as Durkheim also considered

24570-451: The most significant French historian of his age. In 1936, Friedman says he considered using Marx in his teachings, with the intention of bringing "some fresh air" into the Sorbonne. The same year, Bloch and his family visited Venice , where they were chaperoned by the Italian historian Gino Luzzatto . During this period they were living in the Sèvres – Babylone area of Paris, next to

24752-446: The new vistas in social and economic history. Co-founder Marc Bloch (1886–1944) was a quintessential modernist who studied at the elite École Normale Supérieure, and in Germany, serving as a professor at the University of Strasbourg until he was called to the Sorbonne in Paris in 1936 as professor of economic history. Bloch's interests were highly interdisciplinary, influenced by the geography of Paul Vidal de la Blache (1845–1918) and

24934-425: The next generation. To complicate the situation further, the country was in both political and economic crises , and the college's budget was slashed by 10%. No matter who filled it, this made another new chair financially unviable. By the end of the year, and with further retirements, the college had lost four professors: it could replace only one, and Bloch was not appointed. Bloch personally suspected his failure

25116-439: The originality of thought that Bloch would later be known for, and was not vastly different to what others had written on the subject. Following his graduation, he taught at two lycées , first in Montpelier, a minor university town of 66,000 inhabitants. With Bloch working over 16 hours a week on his classes, there was little time for him to work on his thesis. He also taught at the University of Amiens . While there, he wrote

25298-468: The other hand, became an inferior party of the union and remained united with Denmark until 1814. Iceland benefited from its relative isolation and was the last Scandinavian country to be struck by the Black Death . Meanwhile, the Norse colony in Greenland died out, probably under extreme weather conditions in the 15th century. These conditions might have been the effect of the Little Ice Age . The death of Alexander III of Scotland in 1286 threw

25480-451: The other hand, landowners were able to exploit the situation to force the peasantry into even more repressive bondage. The upheavals caused by the Black Death left certain minority groups particularly vulnerable, especially the Jews , who were often blamed for the calamities. Anti-Jewish pogroms were carried out all over Europe; in February 1349, 2,000 Jews were murdered in Strasbourg . States were also guilty of discrimination against

25662-408: The period has reached a consensus between the two extremes of innovation and crisis. It is now generally acknowledged that conditions were vastly different north and south of the Alps, and the term "late Middle Ages" is often avoided entirely within Italian historiography. The term "Renaissance" is still considered useful for describing certain intellectual, cultural, or artistic developments but not as

25844-409: The position be redesignated the study of comparative history. Bloch, says Weber, enjoyed and welcomed new schools of thought and ideas, but mistakenly believed the college should do so also; the college did not. The contest between Bloch and Grenier was not just the struggle for one post between two historians; it was also a struggle to determine which path historiography within the college would take for

26026-515: The potential seizure or liquidation of Annales , Febvre insisted on continuing to publish it in Paris to ensure an international distribution and demanded that Bloch step down for the sake of preserving their project. Bloch initially refused what he called "an abdication" and proposed to move the journal to the unoccupied zone. In his desire to keep the journal afloat at all costs, Febvre went so far as to point out that Bloch had himself tried to rescue his Paris library. Bloch, forced to accede, turned

26208-441: The process. Though there is no doubt that the demographic crisis of the 14th century caused a dramatic fall in production and commerce in absolute terms, there has been a vigorous historical debate over whether the decline was greater than the fall in population. While the older orthodoxy held that the artistic output of the Renaissance was a result of greater opulence, more recent studies have suggested that there might have been

26390-565: The reforming movements with what has been called the Catholic Reformation, or Counter-Reformation . Europe became split into northern Protestant and southern Catholic parts, resulting in the Religious Wars of the 16th and 17th centuries. The increasingly dominant position of the Ottoman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean presented an impediment to trade for the Christian nations of the west, who in turn started looking for alternatives. Portuguese and Spanish explorers found new trade routes – south of Africa to India , as well as across

26572-512: The rest of the world. The limits of Christian Europe were still being defined in the 14th and 15th centuries. While the Grand Duchy of Moscow was beginning to repel the Mongols , and the Iberian kingdoms completed the Reconquista of the peninsula and turned their attention outwards, the Balkans fell under the dominance of the Ottoman Empire . Meanwhile, the remaining nations of the continent were locked in almost constant international or internal conflict. The situation gradually led to

26754-477: The richest of the time in Europe. Inheriting the throne of Bohemia and the Holy Roman Empire, Sigismund continued conducting his politics from Hungary, but he was kept busy fighting the Hussites and the Ottoman Empire , which was becoming a menace to Europe in the beginning of the 15th century. King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary led the largest army of mercenaries of the time, the Black Army of Hungary , which he used to conquer Moravia and Austria and to fight

26936-399: The river Marne —with a temporary recuperative halt in Termes —which they reached in early September. During the First Battle of the Marne , Bloch's troop was responsible for the assault and capture of Florent before advancing on La Gruerie. Bloch led his troop with shouts of "Forward the 18th!" They suffered heavy casualties: 89 men were either missing or known to be dead. Bloch enjoyed

27118-417: The same time, women were also vulnerable to incrimination and persecution, as belief in witchcraft increased. The accumulation of social, environmental, and health-related problems also led to an increase in interpersonal violence in most parts of Europe. Population increase, religious intolerance, famine, and disease led to an increase in violent acts in vast parts of medieval society. One exception to this

27300-423: The same year he founded the historical journal Annales with Febvre. One of its aims was to counteract the administrative school of history, which Davies says had "committed the arch error of emptying history of human element". As Bloch saw it, it was his duty to correct that tendency. Both Bloch and Febvre were keen to refocus French historical scholarship on social rather than political history and to promote

27482-704: 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". The Annales school kept its infrastructure, but lost its mentalités . The journal began in Strasbourg as Annales d'histoire économique et sociale ; it moved to Paris and kept the same name from 1929 to 1939. It was successively renamed Annales d'histoire sociale (1939–1942, 1945), Mélanges d'histoire sociale (1942–1944), Annales. Economies, sociétés, civilisations (1946–1994), and Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales (1994– ). In 1962, Braudel and Gaston Berger used Ford Foundation money and government funds to create

27664-614: The significance of the two qualifications). He had a high respect for historical geography , then a speciality of French historiography, as practised by his tutor Vidal de la Blache whose Tableau de la géographie Bloch had studied at the ÉNS, and Lucien Gallois . Bloch applied unsuccessfully for a fellowship at the Fondation Thiers . As a result, he travelled to Germany in 1909 where he studied demography under Karl Bücher in Leipzig and religion under Adolf Harnack in Berlin; he did not, however, particularly socialise with fellow students while in Germany. He returned to France

27846-435: The sociology of Émile Durkheim (1858–1917). His own ideas, especially those expressed in his masterworks, French Rural History ( Les caractères originaux de l'histoire rurale française , 1931) and Feudal Society , were incorporated by the second-generation Annalistes, led by Fernand Braudel . Georges Duby , a leader of the school, wrote that the history he taught: The Annalistes, especially Lucien Febvre , advocated

28028-451: The south of the country came under Ottoman occupation , as much of southern Bulgaria had become Ottoman territory in the Battle of Maritsa 1371. Northern remnants of Bulgaria were finally conquered by 1396, Serbia fell in 1459, Bosnia in 1463, and Albania was finally subordinated in 1479 only a few years after the death of Skanderbeg . Belgrade , a Hungarian domain at the time, was the last large Balkan city to fall under Ottoman rule, in

28210-442: The study of history were established by 1920. That same year he defended, and subsequently published, his thesis. It was not as extensive a work as had been intended due to the war. There was a provision in French further education for doctoral candidates for whom the war had interrupted their research to submit only a small portion of the full-length thesis usually required. It sufficed, however, to demonstrate his credentials as

28392-466: The survivors, and labour was consequently more expensive. Attempts by landowners to forcibly reduce wages, such as the English 1351 Statute of Laborers , were doomed to fail. These efforts resulted in nothing more than fostering resentment among the peasantry, leading to rebellions such as the French Jacquerie in 1358 and the English Peasants' Revolt in 1381. The long-term effect was the virtual end of serfdom in Western Europe. In Eastern Europe, on

28574-430: The two kingdoms were effectively united under Aragonese control. The 1469 marriage of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon and the 1479 death of John II of Aragon led to the creation of modern-day Spain . In 1492, Granada was captured from the Moors , thereby completing the Reconquista . Portugal had during the 15th century – particularly under Henry the Navigator  – gradually explored

28756-408: The use of sociological techniques. The journal avoided narrative history almost completely. The inaugural issue of the Annales stated the editors' basic aims: to counteract the arbitrary and artificial division of history into periods, to re-unite history and social science as a single body of thought, and to promote the acceptance of all other schools of thought into historiography. As a result,

28938-409: The warrior class. This newfound ethos can be seen as a response to the diminishing military role of the aristocracy, and it gradually became almost entirely detached from its military origin. The spirit of chivalry was given expression through the new ( secular ) type of chivalric orders ; the first of these was the Order of St. George , founded by Charles I of Hungary in 1325, while the best known

29120-423: The work of Pierre Goubert in 1960 on Beauvais and René Baehrel on Basse-Provence. Annales historians in the 1970s and 1980s turned to urban regions, including Pierre Deyon (Amiens), Maurice Garden (Lyon), Jean-Pierre Bardet (Rouen), Georges Freche (Toulouse), Gregory Hanlon (Agen and Layrac), and Jean-Claude Perrot (Caen). By the 1970s the shift was underway from the earlier economic history to cultural history and

29302-414: The world in general. He was particularly moved by the collective psychology he witnessed in the trenches . He later declared he knew of no better men than "the men of the Nord and the Pas de Calais" with whom he had spent four years in close quarters. His few references to the French generals were sparse and sardonic. Apart from the Marne, Bloch fought at the battles of the Somme , the Argonne , and

29484-502: The worldwide profile of the Annales School. In 1951, historian Bernard Bailyn published a critique of La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéen à l'Epoque de Philippe II , which he framed as dichotomizing politics and society. Before Annales , French history supposedly happened in Paris. Febvre broke decisively with this paradigm in 1912, with his sweeping doctoral thesis on Philippe II et la Franche-Comté . The geography and social structure of this region overwhelmed and shaped

29666-407: The years around World War I . Yet it was his Dutch colleague, Johan Huizinga , who was primarily responsible for popularising the pessimistic view of the late Middle Ages, with his book The Autumn of the Middle Ages (1919). To Huizinga, whose research focused on France and the Low Countries rather than Italy, despair and decline were the main themes, not rebirth. Modern historiography on

29848-483: The École normale supérieure (ÉNS) (where his father had been appointed maître de conferences in 1887). His father had been nicknamed le Méga by his students at the ÉNS and the moniker Microméga was bestowed upon Bloch. Here he was taught history by Christian Pfister and Charles Seignobos , who led a relatively new school of historical thought which saw history as broad themes punctuated by tumultuous events. Another important influence on Bloch from this period

30030-402: Was 11 when Émile Zola published J'Accuse…! , his indictment of the French establishment's antisemitism and corruption. Bloch was greatly affected by the Dreyfus affair, but even more affected was nineteenth-century France generally, and his father's employer, the École Normale Supérieure, saw existing divides in French society reinforced in every debate. Gustave Bloch was closely involved in

30212-600: Was North-Eastern Europe, whose population managed to maintain low levels of violence due to a more organized society resulting from extensive and successful trade. Up until the mid-14th century, Europe had experienced steadily increasing urbanization . Cities were also decimated by the Black Death, but the role of urban areas as centres of learning, commerce, and government ensured continued growth. By 1500, Venice, Milan, Naples, Paris, and Constantinople each probably had more than 100,000 inhabitants. Twenty-two other cities were larger than 40,000; most of these were in Italy and

30394-484: Was a compelling plea for breaking out of national barriers that circumscribed historical research, for jumping out of geographical frameworks, for escaping from a world of artificiality, for making both horizontal and vertical comparisons of societies, and for enlisting the assistance of other disciplines". His 1928 Oslo lecture, called "Towards a Comparative History of Europe", formed the basis of his next book, Les Caractères Originaux de l'Histoire Rurale Française . In

30576-539: Was arrested in Narbonne in September 1942 and escaped from Montpellier prison in December 1942. It was during these bitter years of defeat, of personal recrimination, of insecurity that he wrote both the uncompromisingly condemnatory pages of Strange Defeat and the beautifully serene passages of The Historian's Craft . R. R. Davies Bloch's professional relationship with Febvre was also under strain. The Nazis wanted French editorial boards to be stripped of Jews in accordance with German racial policies . Facing

30758-478: Was beneficial to his wife's declining health. The dean of faculty at Montpellier was an antisemite, who also disliked Bloch for having once given him a poor review . Bloch rejected the Vichy propaganda notion of returning to traditional French values, arguing that "the idyllic, docile peasant life of the French right had never existed". In Montpellier, he had to be escorted to class for protection from militant right-wing students. His university contacts included

30940-410: Was challenged to recant his heresy at the Diet of Worms in 1521. When he refused, he was placed under the ban of the Empire by Charles V . Receiving the protection of Frederick the Wise , he was then able to translate the Bible into German . To many secular rulers, the Protestant Reformation was a welcome opportunity to expand their wealth and influence. The Catholic Church met the challenges of

31122-603: Was due to antisemitism and Jewish quotas . At the time, Febvre blamed it on a distrust of Bloch's approach to scholarship by the academic establishment, although Epstein has argued that this could not have been an over-riding fear as Bloch's next appointment indicated. We sometimes clashed...so close to each other and yet so different. We threw our 'bad character' in each other's faces, after which we found ourselves more united than ever in our common hatred of bad history, of bad historians—and of bad Frenchmen who were also bad Europeans. Lucien Febvre Henri Hauser retired from

31304-401: Was fundamental in re-arranging Bloch's approach to history, although he never acknowledged it as a turning point. In the years following the war, a disillusioned Bloch rejected the ideas and the traditions that had formed his scholarly training. He rejected the political and biographical history which up until that point was the norm, along with what the historian George Huppert has described as

31486-630: Was his father's contemporary, the sociologist Émile Durkheim , who pre-figured Bloch's own later emphasis on cross-disciplinary research. The same year, Bloch visited England; he later recalled being struck more by the number of homeless people on the Victoria Embankment than the new Entente Cordiale relationship between the two countries. The Dreyfus affair had soured Bloch's views of the French Army , and he considered it laden with "snobbery, anti-semitism and anti-republicanism". National service had been made compulsory for all French adult males in 1905, with an enlistment term of two years. Bloch joined

31668-412: 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

31850-431: Was one of over 800 ÉNS students who enlisted; 239 were to be killed in action . On 2 August 1914 he was assigned to the 272nd Reserve Regiment. Within eight days he was stationed on the Belgian border where he fought in the Battle of the Meuse later that month. His regiment took part in the general retreat on the 25th, and the following day they were in Barricourt , in the Argonne . The march westward continued towards

32032-433: Was one of the few (possibly the only) institutions in France where personal research was central to lecturing. Camille Jullian had died the previous year, and his position was now available. While he had lived, Julian had wished for his chair to go to one of his students, Albert Grenier , and after his death, his colleagues generally agreed with him. However, Gilson proposed that not only should Bloch be appointed, but that

32214-452: Was probably the English Order of the Garter , founded by Edward III in 1348. The French crown's increasing dominance over the Papacy culminated in the transference of the Holy See to Avignon in 1309. When the Pope returned to Rome in 1377, this led to the election of different popes in Avignon and Rome, resulting in the Western Schism (1378–1417). The Schism divided Europe along political lines; while France, her ally Scotland, and

32396-416: Was published it maintained a staunchly left-wing position. Henri Pirenne , a Belgian historian who wrote comparative history , closely supported the new journal. Before the war he had acted in an unofficial capacity as a conduit between French and German schools of historiography. Fernand Braudel —who was himself to become an important member of the Annales School after the Second World War—later described

32578-440: Was still there. To Bloch, France collapsed because her generals failed to capitalise on the best qualities humanity possessed—character and intelligence —because of their own "sluggish and intractable" progress since the First World War. Two-thirds of France were occupied by Germany. Bloch was demobilised soon after Philippe Pétain 's government signed the Armistice of 22 June 1940 forming Vichy France . Bloch received

32760-446: Was through the use of cannons as siege weapons that major change was brought about; the new methods would eventually change the architectural structure of fortifications . Changes also took place within the recruitment and composition of armies. The use of the national or feudal levy was gradually replaced by paid troops of domestic retinues or foreign mercenaries . The practice was associated with Edward III of England and

32942-421: Was to emphasise for most of his career. Serfdom as a topic was so broad that he touched on commerce, currency, popular religion, the nobility, as well as art, architecture, and literature. His doctoral thesis —a study of 10th-century French serfdom—was titled Rois et Serfs, un Chapitre d'Histoire Capétienne . Although it helped mould Bloch's ideas for the future, it did not, says Bryce Loyn, give any indication of

33124-447: Was viewed internationally as a Dutch counterpart of the Annales school, although Slicher van Bath himself vehemently rejected the idea of a quantitative "school" of historiography. Has been cited as a key influence in the development of World Systems Theory by sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein . The current leader is Roger Chartier , who is Directeur d'Études at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, Professeur in

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