Fernand Braudel, Personal Testimony

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Personal TestimonyAuthor(s): Fernand BraudelSource: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Dec., 1972), pp. 448-467Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1876804 .

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2/21

Personal Testimony

Fernand Braudel

Ecole pratique des hautes etudes

How was

I

shaped

as a

historian? And how

can a historical account

of the development of the

Annales school be taken as

an example of

the

particular

circumstances of

contemporary

French

historiography?

Such

was the double

question

put

to me

by

the

editor. I admit

that for

a

long

time I turned

a deaf ear to this

proposition

which would

compel me to look

at

myself in an unaccustomed way,

to consider

myself

in some

fashion as an

object

of

history,

and

to embark upon

confidences which must at

first glance seem

signs of self-satisfaction

or

even of

vanity.

I

pondered these considerations

over

and over, but

William McNeill

was

stubborn;

if

I

would not

write this

particular

article myself, would

I

be

kind

enough to provide someone

else with

the

information

necessary

to write

it?

I

finally gave

in

and will try to

answer the double

question

with

complete honesty,

although I con-

fess

to

having doubts as to whether this

account, all too personal and

of

questionable interest to the

reader, really

gets to the heart of the

matter.

I

Let us

then

begin

with

facts.

I

was born in

1902

between

Champagne

and

Barrois

in

a little

village

which now has

about a hundred

in-

habitants but

which, during

my

childhood,

had

nearly twice that

number. It

is

a

village

whose roots

go

back for

centuries;

I

imagine

that

its

central

square,

where three roads and an

ancient

track come

together, may

correspond

to

the

courtyard

of an

old

Gallo-Roman

villa. Not only was

I

born

there, to the peril of

my parents'

summer

vacation, but

I

also lived

there quite a

long time with my paternal

grandmother, who was

the passion

of

my

childhood and

youth. Even

today,

transporting myself

back

into

those

early years,

which remain

so

clear in

my

memory, always brings

a warm satisfaction. The

house

where

I

lived,

built

in

1806,

lasted

almost unchanged

until

1970-a

pretty good record for a

simple peasant

house.

I

believe

that these

long and oft-repeated country visits were of no small significance for

the

historian

I

later became.

Things

that others

had to learn from

books

I

knew

all along from

first-hand experience.

Like Gaston

Roupnel, the

historian

of

the Burgundian

countryside,

and

like Lucien

Febvre,

above all

a man

of Franche

Comte,

I

was in the

beginning

448


3/21

Personal

Testimony

449

and

I

remain now a

historian

of peasant

stock. .1

could

name

the

plants

and trees of

this

village of

eastern

France;

I

knew

each of its

inhabitants;

I

watched them

at work:

the

blacksmith,

the

cartwright,

the

occasional

woodcutters, the "bouquillons." I observed the yearly

rotation of

the

crops on the

village lands

which

today

produce

nothing

but grass

for

grazing

herds.

I

watched the

turning wheel

of the

old

mill which

was,

I

believe,

built

long ago

for the

local lord

by an

ancestor of

mine.

And

because

all this

countryside

of

eastern

France

is full

of

military

recollections,

I

was,

through

my family, a child

at

Napoleon's side at

Austerlitz,

at

the

Berezina....

By a

paradox

which

is

not one

after

all,

it is this

same

eastern

France

which,

in the

rear of

the

revolutionary

armies

of

1793 and

1794, remained

loyal and saved

the revolution

at a time

when

it was

not-nor would

it

become-revolutionary in

spirit,

particularly in

the

years that followed.

My

father

was a teacher in

Paris

and ended his

short life

(1878-

1927)

as

director of an academic

group.

I

had the

advantage of

living,

from

1908 to

1911,

in

the

outskirts of

Paris;

but at

that time

the suburbs

were

practically unspoiled

countryside. Meriel

is

a

large

village

of solid stone

houses, with

walled

gardens full

of

gooseberry

bushes and cherry trees, which disappeared each spring amidst the

flowering

lilacs. The river

Oise,

which

flowed

nearly

though

not

quite

next to

it,

brought convoys

of

Belgian tugboats from the

north

trailing

their

strings

of

barges.

From

time to time

the

Montebellos,

the

de-

scendants of Marshal

Lannes,

would

organize magnificent

cross-

country hunts.

At

school, which

I entered

late,

I

had

a

superb

teacher, a

man who

was

intelligent,

considerate,

authoritarian, and

who recited

the

history

of France as though he were celebrating Mass.

Next

I

studied

at the

Lycee

Voltaire in

Paris

(1913-20).

My

father,

a

mathematician

by

nature,

I

may say,

taught

my

brother and

me

with such

ingenuity

that our studies

of that

subject were

as-

tonishingly easy.

I

took a

lot of Latin

and a

little Greek.

I

adored

history,

having

a

rather

remarkable

memory.

I

wrote

poetry-too

much

poetry. In

short,

I

got a

very good

education.

I

wanted to be

a

doctor,

but

my

father

opposed this

insufficiently motivated

career,

and

I

found

myself

disoriented in

that

year 1920,

which

was,

for

me,

a

sad

one. In the end,

I

entered the

Sorbonne as

a student

of

history.

I

graduated

without

difficulty,

but also

without much

real

enjoyment.

I

had

the

feeling

I

was

frittering away

my

life, having

chosen the

easy

way out. My

yocation as a

historian did

not come

to

me

until later.

Of the

benignant

and

not

very

crowded

Sorbonne

of those

days

I

retain

only

one

agreeable

memory:

the teaching

of

Henri Hauser. He


4/21

450

Fernand

Braudel

spoke a

different language from the rest

of our

professors,

that of

economic

and social

history. Marvelously

intelligent,

he knew

every-

thing and

showed it without

ostentation. A sign

of

the

times: he

lectured to a very small audience of six or seven persons. To be fair, I

also enjoyed the courses

of Maurice

Holleaux, an extraordinary spe-

cialist

in Greek

history.

He

also

spoke

to

only

three or four

listeners,

including the

Rumanian

historian, Cantacuzene, and

the future dean

of the

Sorbonne,

Andre

Aymard.

My

studies were over in the

twinkling

of an

eye,

and

I

became,

at

the

age

of

twenty-one,

a teacher of

history

in

the lycee

at Constantine

in Algeria.

I

was then

an

apprentice

historian like hundreds

of others.

Like thousands of others, I taught a superficial history of events,

which

pleased

me because

I

was learning as

I

taught.

I even

plunged

into

the

game

of

becoming

what one may call a good teacher,

because

I

liked

my pupils,

and

they

more than

reciprocated

the feeling, first in

Constantine

and then the

following year

in

Algiers.

I

repeat,

I

was

still

a

historian

of

happenings,

of

politics,

of great men; the syllabus of

secondary instruction

condemned us to

it.

The

paper

which

I

wrote for my diploma,

"Bar-le-Duc during the

First Three Years of the French Revolution,"

is a

conscientious

work. (As was true of all leftist students at that time, the Revolution

of 1789 attracted

and held

me.)

In

short,

my

watch kept the same

time as

everyone else's,

which

was only right and proper

in the view

of

my

most

traditionally

minded

teachers.

I

strove

to be as

erudite

and

honest as

they

were and to stick as

closely

as

possible

to the

facts.

My

diploma paper

demonstrated this

allegiance,

as did

my

first

article, published

in

1928,

"The

Spaniards

and North

Africa,"

and

my

paper

delivered at the Congress of Historical Sciences

at Algiers in

1930. 1 was the assistant secretary at that Congress, and it was a

good opportunity

to

see

my professors again

and to

meet

Henri

Berr,

the

most

sympathetic

and

generous

of those who had

"arrived," being

anxious

to convince and even more to charm

the

others.

My stay

in

Algiers

lasted until

1932, interrupted only

by military

service which,

in

1925

and

1926, gave

me occasion

to travel

through-

out

the

Rhinelands

and

learn to

know

and then to

love

Germany.

I

thus had

the

opportunity

to

give myself

over

to the

pleasures

of

living in a magnificent city with great joie de vivre, and to visit

intensively

all

the

countries

of

North Africa,

into the

Sahara,

which

fascinated

me.

I

believe that this spectacle,

the Mediterranean

as

seen from

the

opposite

shore, upside

down,

had considerable

impact

on

my

vision of

history.

But the change in my viewpoint

was slow.

At

any

rate,

at

that


5/21

Personal

Testimony 451

point in my life

I did not understand the social, political, and colonial

drama which

was, nevertheless, right before my eyes.

It is true that it

was not until after 1929 that the

North African countryside

grew

darker, and then, suddenly, the night had fallen. I have my excuses.

First

of all, the

need to live when

one is twenty, paying attention to

oneself alone -a good and

a

bad counsellor;

the difficulty of learning

Arabic (I tried

seriously and did not succeed); my

particular anxiety

about Germany which

I

had just

seen at close hand,

a country which

I

loved but which, as a man of

eastern France,

I

distrusted.

And

above all it must be said, in 1923,

in 1926, and in

the years which

followed,

French Algeria did not appear

as

a

monster to my eyes.

Some day perhaps a pied noire settler will write a book like Gone

with the Wind about

those lost years.

At any rate, I did not personally

feel

any twinges

of conscience. The bad conscience

would be there

twenty years

later. About 1930, when Benjamin Cremieux

arrived in

Algiers

to

give

a lecture, he telegraphed

to Rudyard Kipling: "Having

arrived

in

Algeria,

I

begin

to understand

France."

Kipling

and

Eng-

land had

India-and a

clear conscience.

And

India

was the ex-

planation

for

England.

I

therefore

set

out

belatedly

on the way

to

that which became

my

passion-a

new

history, breaking

with traditional

teachings.

In

choos-

ing

a

topic

for

my

thesis

(the

thesis

was in ihose

days

an

obligatory

step on the way to advanced

teaching status),

I

had naturally thought

at first of turning

to

German

history,

as

I

knew the

language tolerably

well. But that

history seemed

to me

poisoned

in

advance by my

overly French

sentiments. That

is

why

I

allowed

myself

to be

tempt-

ed

by

the history

of

Spain,

encountered

by

chance

in the

course

of

my

studies in connection

with

a

work

on the Peace

of

Vervins

(1598)

under the direction of the sympathetic and prestigious Emile

Bourgeois.

I had learned

Spanish

for

fun,

and

then

consulted

the

very

rich source "K"

in the National

Archives, the result of the pillage

of

Simancas

by

Napoleon

I.

Being

in

Algiers,

I

thought

that a

work

devoted

to

Philip 11, Spain, and the

Mediterranean

would make

an

acceptable thesis subject.

And in fact it

was

accepted

at

the

Sorbonne

without difficulty.

There were

no

research fellowships

or

sabbatical

leaves

in France

then. I had to wait for the summer vacation of 1927 to undertake my'

lengthy labors

in the archives of Simancas.

But

I

had

an unusual

piece

of luck:

when

I

tried to buy

an

ordinary

camera

(microfilm

is a

postwar

invention),

an American cameraman

offered

me an -ancient

apparatus

intended

for

making

movies,

and

proved

to me that

it

could

perform

marvels in

photographing

documents.

I

aroused

envy

and


6/21

452

Fernand Braudel

admiration among

the archivists and buscadores of Simancas by tak-

ing 2,000- 3,000 photos a day

and rolling

some

thirty

meters of

film.

I

used it and abused it, in Spain and

in

Italy.

Thanks to this

ingenious

cameraman, I was no doubt the first user of true microfilms, which I

developed myself

and later

read, through long days

and

nights,

with a

simple magic lantern.

Little

by little,

I

grew

more doubtful about

the

subject

of my

labors. Philip II the Prudent, the

Sad, attracted

me

less and less,

and

the Mediterranean more and

more. In 1927

Lucien

Febvre

had writ-

ten

to me

(I quote

from

memory):

"Even more than Philip 1I,

it would

be exciting to know about the

Mediterranean of the Barbary states."

In 1931, Henri Pirenne spoke at Algiers about his ideas on the

closure

of the Mediterranean

after

the

Moslem invasions.

His lectures

seemed prodigious to me;

his hand opened and shut, and the entire

Mediterranean

was

by

turns

free and locked in

It

was

during

these

years, between 1927

and

1933,

when

I lived in the archives without

hurrying

-

not even hurrying to choose my subject

-

that my decision

ripened of its own accord. And so I chose the Mediterranean.

But one still had to

be

able

to write

such a book. Among my

friends

and

colleagues

it

was

reputed

that I

would never finish

this

overly

ambitious work. I had taken it into my head to rediscover the past of

this

sea,

which

I

saw

every day,

and of which the low-flying hydro-

planes of those days gave me

unforgettable glimpses. But the files

of

ordinary archives

talked

mainly

of

princes, finances, armies,

of

the

land, and of peasants. In one archive after another,

I

tunneled through

fragmentary materials, poorly

explored and often poorly classified, if

classified at all.

I

remember

my

delight

in

discovering

the

marvelous

registers of Ragusa

at

Dubrovnik

in

1934: at

last,

here were

ships,

bills of lading, trade goods, insurance rates, business deals. For the

first time,

I

saw the Mediterranean

of the sixteenth century.

But all historical

subjects

call

for,

indeed

demand, their

own

organ-

ization around problems.

I

had another bit of luck. By chance in 1935

I

was offered a position on the faculty at Sao Paulo in Brazil. I found

it a

paradise

for work and reflection. Charged with conducting

a

general course on the history

of civilization, I had attractive stu-

dents-combative about some things, living close to you, obliging you

to take a position on everything. I spent three marvelous years in this

fashion: in

winter, during the period

of

my

southern

vacations,

I was

in

the

Mediterranean; the rest of

the year, in Brazil, with leisure and

fantastic

possibilities

for

reading.

And

so

I

read kilometers

of

mi-

crofilm.

I

also made direct contact with Lucien Febvre in 1932 and

1933,

once

at the home of Henri Berr (with whom

I

had been in touch


7/21

Personal

Testimony

453

since 1930),

once at the Encyclopedie

francaise, rue du Four,

and

once at his house,

in his amazing

office in the rue

Val de

Grace.

And

then,

when

I

was

finally leaving Brazil,

at

Santos

in

October 1937,

as

I was boarding the ship (there were no transoceanic airplanes in those

days), I

encountered Lucien

Febvre,

who was returning from

a series

of lectures

in Buenos Aires.

Those

twenty

days of the ocean

crossing

were, for Lucien

Febvre,

my wife and

me, twenty days of

happy

conversation and

laughter. It

was then that I became

more

than a

companion to Lucien

Febvre-a

little like a son;

his house

in the

Juras at

Souget became my

house, his children

my children.

By

this time

all

my

hesitations

had

evaporated.

I had reached

port;

I had been appointed the year before to the Ecole des hautes etudes.

In the summer of

1939 at Souget,

in Lucien Febvre's

house,

I

pre-

pared

to

begin

writing my

book.

And then the

war I served on

the

Rhine

frontier.

From

1940

to 1945 1

was a

prisoner

in

Germany,

first

in

Mainz,

then from

1942 to 1945 in

the special

camp at Lilbeck,

where

my Lorrainer's

rebelliousness sent

me. As I returned

safe and

sound from this long time

of testing,

complaining

would be futile

and

even

unjust; only

good

memories

come back to

me now. For

prison

can be

a good

school. It teaches patience,

tolerance.

To

see

arriving

in Lubeck

all the

French

officers of

Jewish

origin-what

a

sociologi-

cal study

And

later, sixty-seven

clergymen

of

every hue,

who had

been

judged

dangerous

in their

various former

camps

-what a

strange

experience

that

was The French

church

appeared

before

me in all its

variety,

from the country

cure

to the Lazarist,

from the

Jesuit

to the

Dominican. Other

experiences:

living

with

Poles,

brave to

excess;

and

receiving

the defenders of

Warsaw,

among

them

Alexander

Gieysztor

and Witold

Kula. Or

to be

submerged

one

fine

day by

the

massive arrival of Royal Air Force pilots; and living with all the

French

escape

artists,

who were sent to

us

as a

punishment;

these

are-and

I

omit

much-among

the

picturesque

memories.

But what

really

kept

me

company

during

those

long years

-that

which distracted

me

in the true etymological

meaning

of

the

word

-

was the Mediterranean.

It

was in

captivity

that

I

wrote that

enormous

work, sending

school

copy

book after

school

copy

book

to

Lucien Febvre. Only

my

memory permitted

this tour

de force.

Had it

not been for my imprisonment, I would surely have written quite a

different

book.

I

am

not quite

sure whether it

was one or two

years ago

when a

young Italian philosopher

in Florence

remarked: "You

wrote that

book

in

prison? Oh, that

is

why

it always

struck me as a book

of

contemplation."

Yes,

I

contemplated

the Mediterranean,

tete-a-tete,


8/21

454 Fernand Braudel

for years on end, far though

it was from me in

space

and time. And

my

vision of

history

took

on its definitive form without

my being

entirely

aware of

it, partly

as a direct intellectual response

to a

spectacle-the Mediterranean-which no traditional historical ac-

count seemed

to

me capable

of encompassing,

and

partly

as a

direct

existential response

to the tragic times

I

was passing through. All

those

occurrences which

poured

in

upon

us from the radio and the

newspapers

of

our enemies,

or

even

the news from

London which

our

clandestine receivers gave

us

-

I

had

to outdistance, reject, deny

them. Down

with

occurrences, especially vexing

ones I

had to be-

lieve

that history,

destiny,

was written

at a

much

more

profound

level.

Choosing a long-time scale to observe from was choosing the position

of God the Father himself as a refuge.

Far removed from

our

persons

and our

daily misery,

history was being made, shifting slowly,

as

slowly as the ancient life

of the Mediterranean,

whose perdurability

and

majestic immobility

had so often

moved me. So it was that I

consciously set forth in

search of a historical language-the

most

profound I could grasp or invent-in order to present

unchanging (or

at least very slowly

changing) conditions which stubbornly assert

themselves over and over

again.

And

my

book

is

organized

on

several

different temporal scales,

moving from the unchanging to the fleeting

occurrence.

For

me, even today, these

are

the

lines that delimit and

give form to every historical

landscape.

11

The

testimony

asked of me about the Annales

school,

its

origin

and

program, involves three

men: Henri Berr, Lucien

Febvre, and Marc

Bloch,

all

three of whom

I

knew,

as will be

seen,

in

quite

different

ways.

The

first,

Henri

Berr

(1862- 1955),

is

the one

who presents me with

the most difficult

problems.

I

am sure this

will

surprise

those

who

knew this

man as a

person

who was

transparent

in an old-fashioned

way, committed to a grandiose task, disproportionate

to tell the truth,

before which, however, he never hesitated for an

instant, having

remained faithful

always

and throughout his life to what he was in his

earliest

writings.

I

refer

to

the article "Essay on

the Science of

History: The Statistical Method and the Question of Great Men,"

which

appeared

in the Nouvelle

revue

(May I

and

15, 1890);

and

even

more

to his

principal

thesis, presented

in

1898, Synthesis of

Historical

Knowledge: Essay

on the Future

of

Philosophy;

and

I

am

thinking, too,

of his

secondary

thesis

(written

according

to

custom

in

Latin,

but

translated and

published

in French

thirty years later,

in


9/21

Personal Testimony 455

1928,

with

the title

Of

the

Scepticism of Gassendi),

which

was

prob-

ably

the finest

and most successful of his

works,

and

for

which

he

himself had a certain

preference.

In re-reading today these very old writings, I hear very clearly the

voice of Henri

Berr

just

as it struck

my ear, even though

I

met him

very late-in .1930, when he

was sixty-eight years old. Strange and

appropriate

coincidence:

his

open manner,

warm

and

unassuming,

of

which I was so much

aware,

had affected

in

the same

way another

young man

whom he must have

encountered for the

first time

twenty

or

twenty-one years before.

".. .

such

a small young man, no matter

how slender his

accomplishments, still had access to you," Febvre

wrote to him in 1942. "A

perfect graciousness, to be sure, a perfect

cordiality; more than that, an

elan."

Thus

we see

a

man who seems

to have changed little in the course

of his

very long life,

which

he

enjoyed throughout, as a man of spirit

and of industriousness.

Yet

this man was a bit

of

the Annales before the journal was

created, from 1900 or even from 1890. It is to him one must turn

if

one wishes

to

know

"How did

it

start?" But I must admit that nothing

in

the education

or

recorded

biography of Henri Berr seems, at first

glance, to have marked him out for the exceptional role which was

well and truly his.

He was what one may call a

very brilliant pupil, and no doubt he

was attracted from very

early years by multiple interests, until in

1880-81 he attained

many

honors in

national competition, notably

the

Prize of

Honor in

Rhetoric

(Latin composition),

first

prize

in

French composition, and first

prize

in

philosophy. Readers of the

Journal of

Modern

History

may

not

be familiar with these national

competitions which in France mark the end of secondary instruction

and

distinguish exceptional

pupils. So they

can

scarcely imagine

the

aureole of

glory

these three

prizes projected upon

the head of

this

child.

Moreover,

he

had to

get

a

special dispensation

to enter the

Ecole

normale

in

1881

because of his

youth.

Three

years

later

he

graduated

in

letters.

Accordingly,

it

was

the

humanities-literature,

Latin,

and Greek-that he chose for his

university

studies.

Therefore,

is

it not

altogether astonishing, or at least aberrant, to see this brilliant

graduate in letters, teacher of rhetoric (which he continued to be until

1925), fleeing,

indeed

betraying himself,

at the

beginning

of

his

career,

by leaving

the

subjects

which

he

taught

with

undeniable

talent in

order to throw himself

heart

and soul into

the

philosophy

of

history?

Yet,

inasmuch

as the French and

Latin

prize compositions by

the

end

of the

nineteenth

century

were no more than futile

school

ex-


10/21

456 Fernand

Braudel

ercises,

was

it not

logical that,

under

the

impetus

of his

very great

initial adolescent successes

(first prize in

philosophy ), Henri Berr

remained a

philosopher by

temperament

and

vocation?

And

what

philosophy, between 1884

and 1890, was

not

interested in

history? At

least since

Hegel,

philosophy had

been obliged

to nourish

itself on the

historical

experience

so

profusely

encountered

by human

beings. His-

tory was thus a kind of raw

material,

and

had

begun (as an

additional

merit) to transform

itself, to

organize

itself even

before

1870. Henri

Berr

noticed this: "The

establishment

[in

1868]

of the

Ecole des

hautes

etudes,"

he

wrote,

"by Victor Drury

and the

creation of the

Revue

critique

in

1866 showed

that the need for

transforming our

advanced instruction, of reviving our science, had been felt before our

disaster."

The

history that was

coming

into focus

aspired

to

analysis,

alert

erudition, and,

in a

word,

science;

it was

the sort of

history that

would

conquer the new

Sorbonne in 1908,

though in a

way that did

not

please

everyone and, in a

later

time,

did

not please

Henri Berr

himself,

naturally indulgent

though he

was.

As a

philosopher, then, Henri

Berr

followed the

great intellectual

debates of

his

time, seeking to master them and discover

their

sense.

The title of his thesis speaks for itself, and-a detail that may be

significant -when he

later had

occasion

to mention

it,

he

designated it

in

brief,

not

by

its

main

title,

Synthesis of Knowledge and

of

History,

but

by its

subtitle, Essay

on the

Future of

Philosophy. The

word

"philosophy" took

precedence over

the

others. So

he

was a

philoso-

pher. But

perhaps

it was exactly a

philosopher who was

needed for

the

first and

necessary exploration

of the

horizon

at a time

when, long

after the

ancient

thrust

of

August Comte (1798-

1857),

a

militant and

almost

completely

new

sociology

rose like

a

sun in France

with

Emile

Durkheim

(1858-

1917),

and

the review he

founded

in

1897-the

quickly

famous

Annee sociologique,

which

became a favorite

reading

matter

for an entire

generation

of young

historians, from

Lucien

Febvre to

Marc

Bloch,

Andre

Piganiol,

and Louis

Garnet.

Nevertheless,

Henri Berr's

viewpoint, at

least in

1898,

was neither

for

nor

against

Durkheim,

neither for nor

against sociology.

Good,

very good,

relations were

established and

maintained

with the Anne'e

sociologique.

But

the

"synthesis,"

Henri Berr's

essential

pre-

occupation, was,

at least

for

him,

brought

back to earth

by

being

a

philosophy of

history -history

of

the

kind

practiced

and still

practiced

in

Germany-on condition,

as he

insisted,

that one

does

not sacrifice

minute

analysis,

intellectual

prudence,

and

eliminates

grand

systems

and

gratuitous

ideas

that cannot be

and are not

demonstrable.

Such


11/21

Personal

Testimony

457

was, if

I

perceive matters

aright, the thought of the founder of the

Revue

de

synthese

historique

in

1900,

in

that first year of the review

of the

century.

Were

the

Annales already in potentia

in that enterprise? Yes and

no. Lucien Febvre and

Marc Bloch were not philosophers, either by

taste or by temperament. What

the

Annales proclaimed,

much later,

was a history whose scope

would extend to embrace

all the sciences

of man-to the

"globality"

of all the human sciences, and which

would seize upon them

all in some fashion or other to construct its

own proper methods and true domain. Henri Berr

was too courteous

to

proclaim any

such

imperialism,

or

even to conceive of it. What he

set out to reunite were the diverse branches into which history obsti-

nately subdivided itself: political history, social

history, economic

history, history of science, of art, etc. Could he,

in drawing such

fragile intellectual threads together, hope to take

over economics,

sociology, aesthetics,

all at once? Certainly not. He was concerned at

most

to pay polite

visits among these neighbors. The Revue de syn-

these

historique

was not born and did

not live under a polemical star.

At

most, it allowed only

courteous controversy. Abroad, for example

in Germany, Spain, and Italy, the new review was seen as an ex-

pression of a need of the hour. "Something," said

Benedetto Croce

(Critica,

vol. 1

[January 20, 1903]), "which had

been awaited for

some time, and which was destined to appear at one

time or another."

Yet

in

France

this review aroused

disquiet

and raised the hackles

of

traditionalists

and orthodox-minded men

whose touch

was

general-

ly

surest when it was a question

of

finding

and

denouncing impious

novelties.

This comes out

clearly

in

four

unedited

letters which

I

recently discovered by chance

in the archives of

the

College

de

France.

Since

1898,

Henri Berr

had been a teacher

at the

Lycee

Henri

IV,

where

Bergson

was

teaching

at the same

time.

Twice,

in

1903

and 19

10,

he

dreamed

of

becoming

a candidate for

appointment

to the

College

de

France,

located close

by.

This aroused

curious

reactions,

which

for once

led Henri Berr to

defend

himself,

and

thus

to

express

his

opinions

precisely

and

even to enter into

a bit of

polemic.

On October 30, 1903

he wrote to the administrator

of

the

College:

".

. .

I

am sure that

I

can

do

a

good job, partly

new,

in

your

free, scientific College. M. Monod [then editor of the Revue histo-

rique,

and himself a candidate for the

College

de

France]

is mistaken

in

writing

to me that

there

are

already enough

chairs of

pure history

as there are of

philosophy

in

the strict

sense of

the term.

What

is

generally

conceded about

me,

and whence

arises the

particular

char-


12/21

458 Fernand

Braudel

acter of the

review

I

founded,

is

that I combine

philosophical

pre-

occupations with a taste for and the

methods

of learned

research. For

me,

there

is

no

worthwhile

synthesis except

through patient

analysis."

The matter became even clearer when, for a second time in 19 10,

he

again

tried, and

in

a more

serious

way, to make a move to

enter the

College. Since

1892,

he

declared,

"The

College

de

France has

offered

no instruction at all in

philosophical

history and not even

in general

history. Literary history,

history of

art, of philosophy, of

laws, eco-

nomic

history-all are

taught there;

many histories are

taught there,

but no one

teaches history."

I fear that these

direct,

clear-sounding

words did little to

help the

candidate. I read in

the College

records of

the deliberation of January 1910: "M. Bedier [the administrator of the

College]

informs his

colleagues that M. Berr

has

changed the title of

the

course he

wishes to

offer,

and that

he henceforth

proposes this

name,

'Theory and

history of history.'

M.

Bedier says, in this con-

nection,

how

well

he thinks

of the works of M.

Berr and of

his useful

Revue

de

synthese

historique.

M.

Bergson

associated

himself with M.

Bedier's

remarks." A

little

later,

Henri

Bergson

presents

the

pro-

posal of which

he was

the main

supporter. "He

analyzes," says

the

record of the

meeting

"and

explains

the

proposal,

indicates

that it

arises from a

just

appreciation

of

the

actual condition of

historical

studies,

but

he leaves to

the historians

[of

the

College]

the

task of

deciding

as

to the

possibility

and

desirability

of

creating

a course

in

historical

synthesis."

That is to

say,

Henri Berr was

abandoned

by

his

supporter to the

enmity

of the historians on

the

spot.

The vote

came,

Berr

received not a

single aye.

Miraculous

In 19

10,

therefore,

Henri

Berr was

already,

to

his

own

surprise and

no

doubt

in

spite

of

himself,

the black

sheep

of

the

university

estab-

lishment, a position which Lucien Febvre later occupied with even

more

eclat,

as also did Marc

Bloch, though

in

lesser

degree.

No

doubt

the reason

was,

as

much

as

the

ideas discussed in

the Revue which

disturbed the

quiet

of the

establishment,

the fact

that Henri Berr

had

begun to assemble

around

himself

a

group of

lively,

active,

enthu-

siastic, and

assertive

intellectuals who came from all the

fringes-historians, geographers,

economists,

sociologists, biologists,

anthropologists,

and,

of

course,

philosophers.

If I

am

not

mistaken-

but can one err in view of all the evidence?

-

French intellectual

life,

as

no doubt

elsewhere,

depends on

small

groups,

active

minor-

ities,

salons

of

today

and

of times

past,

circles, coteries,

editorial

offices, minority

political

parties. Consider the role

in

the

astounding

contemporary

American

literature of the house

opened

in Paris to

friends

and

passing acquaintances by

the

intelligent

and

passionate


13/21


Gertrude Stein.

The

Revue de

synthese historique

was

more than

the

articles,

fine

though they were and which

one has pleasure in

re-reading even today; it was

also meetings, conversations, exchanges

of information and ideas. At 14 rue de St. Anne, "one entered," as

Lucien Febvre,

who was

among

the

first visitors, reminisced, "and in

a small

study,

rather

narrow, depressing and dark, one found behind a

desk a young man, svelte, sober

but elegant in manner.... Many

visits, always in the small study. Young and old. On the left,

I

still

can see Paul Lacombe, sometimes

sleepy and silent, then suddenly

awake, alert, petulant, the habitue of

habitues,

an

original mind that

played its part with authority in

the first contacts of the

Synthese."

Other names should obviously be mentioned: Henri Hauser, Frangois

Simiand,

Abel

Rey,

Lucien

Febvre,

Paul

Mantoux,

and

later Marc

Bloch. If

Henri Berr wrote little,

and when he

did write perhaps let

his pen move too facilely, the fact is that his main

contribution was to

summon, speak, instruct,

discuss, listen, bring together, and lose

himself in dialogues and innumerable

small councils. After 5

P.M.

every day, or nearly, he opened

his

doors

to visitors, preferably at his

office

at 2

rue

Villebois-Mareuil.

He

was above all

good company, a

man of

intelligence, prepared and

skillful

in

talk.

No doubt this slow, patient,

multiple

work

would have borne

fruit

sooner

if

the war had not come

in

1914. It

was

only

after

1920 that

Henri Berr carried through the

task

so much talked

of, planned for,

projected,

and in

the

end

only

partially completed.

In that

year

he

started his

monumental

collection,

Evolution

of Humanity (Albion

Michel);

he founded in

1925

the

Centre

de

synthese,

and a

little

afterwards,

his

very

famous

Semaines

de

synth0se.

The review con-

tinued,

but

changed its title

in

1931

to become

Revue

de

synth?se.

The

disappearance

of the

adjective

"historical" was

symptomatic:

philosophy-universality-came

to

reign supreme.

I

do

not

wish and indeed

cannot

assess the

multiple prefaces

Henri

Berr

wrote

for the

fine

books

of

his

Collection,

about

which the

university

establishment

liked

to

jest.

From

my point

of

view,

the

essential

thing was,

in Lucien

Febvre's

words,

the

"group

of

active,

lively, combative, conquering

men" around

him,

and thanks

to him. A

group

of

heretics, according to the

wise;

but

were

they

not needed?

Henri Berr, administrator of heresy: this fine title would have sur-

prised, but

would

not have

entirely displeased,

him.

The

Semaines were the

medium for his marvelous

activity.

In

1933,

for

instance,

the

Semaine

was dedicated to the notions

of

science and laws of science.

Mathematicians, physicists,

a

biologist,

psychologists,

a

sociologist (Maurice

Halbwachs),

a historian

of sci-


14/21

460

Fernand Braudel

ence, an economist,

and Paul

Langevin,

"the

greatest

of our

philoso-

phers of science,"

came

together.

Lucien

Febvre

also.

"I

was there,"

he wrote,

"and

I

listened to

these men who

sought, with burning good

faith, to delimit, settle, and measure precisely the ravages made in our

theories by the great advances of modern physics. And behold, from

this concert of

voices, normally separated

and who

scarcely

listened

to

one

another,

there

emerged

a

harmony: they

said the

same

things

with

different

accents; they

made

everyone conscious, humanly con-

scious,

of

the

fundamental

unity

of

the human

spirit.

A

great les-

son ...

.which

... has ended for

us;

a lesson which ceased

to be ab-

stract.

It

had,

if I

may say so,

taken on a human form."

These words indicate the sort of activities that went on in the circle

set up around Henri Berr between 1900 and 1910,

and

constantly

renewed thereafter. And it was in this circle that the desire was born,

belatedly, to make

a more

combative journal

than the Revue de

synthese, one that

would be

less

philosophical,

based

on

concrete new

researches. And it

was this

desire

-

I

would gladly say

this necessi-

ty-that finally gave

birth to the

Annales.

But the birth was slow.

Marc

Bloch

and

Lucien Febvre

met one

another

at the

University

of

Strasbourg,

where

they

were

both

appointed

in 1919.

They

waited ten

years to launch

their

review,

in

1929. During that long interval, they

collaborated regularly

with Henri

Berr.

Lucien Febvre traveled ten

times from

Strasbourg

to Paris

for

one such

joint enterprise.

And it

was at the Centre de synthese that

I

met him for the first time in

October

1934

in connection with a

marvelous discussion

of human-

ism.

Moreover,

Lucien Febvre was

the inspirer, the man centrally

responsible, for the Semaines which, in my opinion, were by far the

most

successful of all the

activities

of the

Centre

on the

rue

Colbert.

In 1938, the Semaine on sensibility in history was in essence the

work of Lucien Febvre. He even dreamed at that time of taking over

the Revue de

synth0se. Perhaps

he would

have done

so,

save

for the

Second World War.

All the

same,

the creation

of

the Annales in 1929 involved a

break.

At least it assumed

that significance

in

time, especially

after the

war,

during

the

years

of

increasing

solitude

through

which Henri Berr

passed

from

1945 to 1955. The break between father and son, one

might think, and I have thought so. The father scarcely complained.

Everything happened silently. The announcement of the new

review

in

1929 made no allusion to the Revue de synthese. But was that not

in

itself significant? The destruction by Henri Berr's

heir of

the

abundant

correspondence

he

had with

Lucien

Febvre, especially

dur-

ing

the interminable

years of the war of 1914- 18, deprives

us of the


15/21


decisive documents. But the matter is settled; assuredly, the thought

of Lucien Febvre

was

formed and nourished, as he himself has said,

in the Synthese.

111

The justification

-

but is

justification

needed for

any project?

- of the

founders of the

Annales

was the

immense intellectual success

of

their

joint labors between 1929 and 1939.

There

was

no common

ground

between the Revue de synthese historique, the

Revue de

synthese,

and the Annales.

The

Synthe'se opened itself

too much to

theoretical

discussion,

had

too

many

ideas

that

passed

from the scene like

phan-

toms or clouds. With the Annales we are firmly on the ground. In its

pages,

men of times

present

and

past appear

with their

concrete

problems, "alive," as Gaston Roupnel has said. Certainly, collabora-

tors

of the

Revue

de

synthese

took

part

in

creating

the

Annales;

but

in

changing

abodes

they changed

demeanor and tone.

The

house of the

son

-

it

was

the

joy

of

life,

of

understanding,

and also of

attacking,

arguing;

it was

the

house of

youth.

Add the

exceptional

talent

of

the

two

editors,

far and above most of

us,

and who can be

compared only

with the greatest historians writing in French

-

with Henri Pirenne,

Fustel

de

Coulanges, Michelet. Add, finally, that at Strasbourg,

France

set

up

in

1919

the

most

brilliant

university

our

history has

known. The Annales had no trouble in finding there the best colla-

borators

-

Andre

Piganiol,

Henri

Baulig, Charles Edmond Perrin,

Georges Lefebvre,

Paul

Leuilliot,

Gabriel Le Bras.

But their

success,

at

the most fundamental

level,

was the success of

an editorial

collaboration, marvelously managed

and

unique

in

the

history of French historiography.

Years

passed.

From

1946

to

1956

Lucien Febvre

was in fact the

sole

editor of the Annales;

from

1956 to 1968 1 was,

in

fact,

sole

editor in my turn. But it

is

undeniable that the great,

the

very great,

Annales are

the

volumes

published

from

1929

to

1939.

The

force of their impact was enhanced by the fact that they came

at a time

of satisfied

and

widespread mediocrity

in French historio-

graphy. Almost all of the university, insofar as it entered into the

matter at

all,

was

hostile. Marc

Bloch could not

get

into the

lVe

section of the Ecole des hautes etudes. Twice he tried in vain to enter

the

College,

and it was

only

in

1936

that

he was able to enter

the

Sorbonne

in succession to Henri Hauser.

Lucien Febvre entered the

College,

of

which he became one of its

glories, only

on his second

attempt.

Henri

Hauser,

their

friend

and fellow

combatant,

was

not

admitted to the Institute. At the Revue historique,

where

I

often

met


16/21

462 Fernand

Braudel

people between 1933 and 1935,

what established

figure did not criti-

cize the Annales?

I

disputed

regularly with Charles

Seignobos, who,

despite

his

age,

was an adversary who, eyeglasses

on the alert, took

great pleasure in provoking others. (But it was thus that I learned to

like him.)

In

short,

the

hostility

was perfectly obvious. That

is

why the

Annales

were so

lively,

condemned to

be so:

the journal

defended

itself and

struck out eagerly,

not for personal reasons, but against

pretentious and

puerile obstinacy. The list of

the Annales' enemies

was impressive. Marc Bloch,

the more moderate

in his critique, was

often

pitiless.

Lucien Febvre amused and was amused; he brought

to

his articles a Rabelaisian joyousness.

Reflecting

upon

the

matter,

I

think that this combative atmosphere

contributed to

the exceptional quality of the first

Annales. In

1945,

in

effect,

no

more

hostility;

all the

youth

of the

university

turned

toward

the

Annales

kind of

history, following

Lucien

Febvre,

Ernest

Labrousse,

and

myself.

The

Sorbonne

had lost its aggressiveness,

even while

refusing

to

change

its

style. "We simply

cannot

remake

our

courses,"

said Charles Moraze (about 1945),

one

of

the

masters

of the Sorbonne who became famous later.

In

1929,

by unprecedented good luck, the

hostility

stood firm.

Everything

in history was to be done

or redone or

rethought

con-

ceptually

and practically. History could not transform

itself except by

incorporating all the sciences

of man as auxiliaries

to our profession,

and

by mastering

their

methods,

results, and

even points of view.

Lucien

Febvre,

who

wrote the advertisement

that

opened

the

first

issue of

the

Annales, said so

without mincing words, with a

forceful-

ness which

has to be imagined

today because, with the passage

of

time,

his views now seem

altogether expected.

He denounced isolated

research, either by historians

on the one hand

or by specialists

in

social studies who

concerned

themselves solely

with the

present

on

the other.

He

denounced specialized history

in which

everyone

viewed his field as though it

were enclosed by high walls; also

sociol-

ogists interested

only in

"civilized" peoples or in "primitives"

and

who paid no attention to one

another. "It is

against these serious

schisms,"

said Lucien

Febvre,

"that

we

intend

to rise. Not by

means

of articles about method, not by means of theoretical disquisitions,

but

by

means

of

examples,

by

means

of

achieved results

The

ex-

ample

of

workers of different

backgrounds

and special-

izations . . .

who will

show the results of their

research

on

subjects

within their

competence

and of their choice."

In this phrasing, if

one

notices

especially

the words I have

italicized,

there

is an allusion

to


17/21


the manner of the Revue de

synthe'se,

but also a

reassertion of

the

leitmotiv

of that Revue. The real

novelty

was

that debate centered

on

a single focus

of research:

a

single science,

history,

confronted all the

rest. More than this, as far as the privileged science of history was

concerned,

even

though

it

kept

the

entire social

spectrum

and

all

levels of consciousness within

its

domain, nonetheless it

was

econom-

ics above

all that was attended to. The first

Annales, following the

much

admired pattern of the

Vierteljahrschrift

far Sozial- und Wirt-

schaftsgeschichte

was

entitled

Annales d'histoire

e'conomique

et so-

ciale.

Thus the opportunity arose for

Marc Bloch to establish himself,

through

this

auxiliary

activity,

as the

greatest

economic

historian of

his country.

The

gap between the

Annales and the Revue de

synthese widened.

For

Henri Berr "society

included economics," and

the Annales there-

fore only cast light upon

"an aspect of the life

of societies which has

long remained

obscure,

and

to which the Marxians drew

attention." A

pin

prick, which provoked

others. "The Annales," Lucien Febvre

wrote

later, "which Henri

Berr always followed after, far in the

rear . . ."

Thus

the

Annales, during

the

first ten

years

of

their

existence

were,

I

repeat,

the

fruit of a constant

collaboration,

of an

unparalleled

friendship between Lucien Febvre

and Marc Bloch. This friendship

with its logical polarities, its

agreements, its

exceptional

results

was at

the heart

of

the

enterprise.

From

1919,

when

they

met at

Strasbourg,

until

1944,

when Marc Bloch was shot

by

the

Germans,

this friend-

ship

of

twenty-five years

explains

their

common

achievement,

marve-

lously

in

unison.

In his

dedication

to

Lucien Febvre

(1941)

in his

Me'tier d'historien

(published only in 1949), Marc Bloch explained the relationship aptly:

"We

have

long

striven

together

for a more

comprehensive

and

more

human

history.... Among the ideas

I

intend to advocate, more than

one

assuredly

comes

directly

from

you.

As to

many others,

I

cannot

truthfully

decide

whether

they

came from

you

or from

me,

or from us

both.

I

flatter

myself

that

you

will

often

approve. You

will occasion-

ally

savor what

I

write.

And all that

will

create one more tie between

us."

"Yes," said Lucien Febvre in commenting on these words, "yes, in

all

that time

we

had

nothing

but

an

exchange

of

ideas

-seized, seized

again

and

intermingled."

Observe

on both

sides

the

trustful,

affectionate

tone,

and in the text of

Marc

Bloch,

if

I

am not

mistaken,

a

touch

of

deference.

"You

will

occasionally

savor what

I

write." Not

only

were

there

many

and

strong

differences of

character, tempera-


18/21

464

Fernand Braudel

ment, intelligence,

and

personal

taste between

Lucien

Febvre

(1

878- 1956)

and Marc Bloch

(1

886-

1944),

there was.

also

a

difference

of age

which

should not

be

forgotten,

especially

at

the

beginning.

When

they met

for the first

time, at the

University

of

Strasbourg

in 1919, Lucien

Febvre noted:

"Marc

Bloch was

there,

who seemed

very

young to me. One

is always

very young

at 32

in the

eyes

of a man

of

40."

And

he

continued:

"Bloch was there,

ardent,

contained,

full

of an

unyielding

desire to be of

service, suddenly in

confidence questioning

me as one questions

an

older brother."

Lucien

Febvre already

had a book behind

him (his

magnificent thesis

on

Philip

11

and the Franche Comte

dated

from 191

1).

He was

the

elder,

the confessor, the initiator; in short, the master. Marc Bloch, at that

time,

was still in a certain

sense a student.

And

the

young

men

(among

them my

good

friend Henri

Brunschwig)

who

had the

good

fortune

to listen to

these

remarkable professors

at Strasbourg,

were

not

deceived.

One,

Lucien

Febvre, was a

master,

fully developed in

his

teaching

and thought;

the other,

Marc Bloch,

was

a master just

emerging

from apprenticeship.

No

doubt some

trace

of this relation-

ship always

remained,

which

explains

Marc

Bloch's tone at almost

the end of his life. But when in 1929 they undertook the enormous

task

of

the Annales

together, they

assuredly

were marching in

step.

Their concert was so perfect

that, in many

cases, if one does not

look

ahead to the

signature,

an

article by Marc

Bloch

could be

attributed

to

Lucien

Febvre.

It

is clear

that

Marc Bloch's style

was modeled on

Lucien Febvre's. But they finally

created,

the two of them,

with

their

turns

of

phrase

and

special

vocabulary,

an Annales

style,

with a

literary quality,

to

be sure, but

which irritated

their adversaries

to the

marrow. Is history, perhaps, though aspiring to be a science, a matter

of

writing,

of literary style?

These

two men,

what

were they? Unfortunately,

I

scarcely

knew

Marc

Bloch

personally,

having

seen him

only

three

times

in Paris in

1938

and 1939.

He

was

the

son of a

great

historian,

Gustave

Bloch,

specialist

in Roman history,

long

a

professor

at

the Ecole

normale

superieure;and

then at the Sorbonne.

His

son,

Marc

Bloch,

winner of

the

school

competition

while a student at the

Ecole

normale, graduate

in

history,

won a

fellowship

for

study

in

Germany

at the

universities

of Berlin and

Leipzig (1908-9),

and then

held

a

post

in

Paris in the

Thiers Foundation.

In

1920

in

Strasbourg

he

published

his

thesis,

Kings

and

Serfs:

A

Chapter

in

Capetian

History. By

1929,

when

he

took on the

editorship

of the

Annales,

he had behind

him

several

publications,

among

them

his

great

work,

Thaumaturgic

Kings


19/21

Personal

Testimony 465

(1924),

whose

inspiration went back

to

a

suggestion from

his elder

brother,a doctor

of great distinction,who died prematurely.

Lucien

Febvre, born in 1878 at

Nancy, the capital of Lorraine,was

in fact

the son

of parents from Franche

Comte.

His father, a

gradu-

ate

of

the

Ecole

normale

and

a

teacher of grammar,

assigned by

chance

to

the

Lycee

of

Nancy, made his entire career there.

Lucien

Febvre

completed his secondary school and even began higher

stud-

ies at Nancy.

I

accused him in jest of

having kept a bit of the Lorraine

accent,

which

I

am

able to

speak

and can claim

to recognize. But

without

repudiatingLorraine, Lucien

Febvre felt and wished all his

life

to be a

man of Franche

Comte'-enthusiastically, and when the

occasion arose, with a bit of animusagainst the Duchy of Burgundy

and the

neighboringSwiss cantons.

A student at the

Lycee

Louis

le

Grand

and

at

the

Ecole normale,

he

graduated in

history

in

1902. Next he was on the staff

of the

Thiers Foundation in

Paris.

It

was

there, surely, having finished with

instruction,

hat

he

worked on his

thesis.

It was

then that he, a "small

young man," knew Henri

Berr, who liked later, not

without some

malice,

to recall

old times when Lucien

Febvre

would

come to

ask his

advice or submitarticles to him.

Unfortunately,

I

have not

been

able to

read

any

of the

youthful

letters to Lucien

Febvre, many of which have been

preserved. The

man must therefore

be understood from

the

outside. Suffice

it to

emphasize,during

these final

years of his

youthful

development,

his

very lively

taste for literature, as shown by his attraction

to the

elegant

instruction of Joseph

Bedier,

his sympathy with

Gustave

Bloch

and Gabriel

Monod,

the historian

(and

even more the man and

professor). A socialist, or socialistically inclined, he listened to the

evening

lecturer

Jean Jaures project

his dreams.

On

the other

hand,

he

was allergic to

Henri Bergson,

as much

if not more

so

than his

friend and

inseparable companion,

Henri

Wallon.

Finally,

he was

inspiredby

Lucien

Gallois (1857-194

1),

the

geographer,

disciple,

and

friend of

Vidal de la Blache

(whom

Lucien

Febvre

also

knew).

Lucien

Gallois

was an

extrordinary

eacher. And

throughout

his

life,

Lucien

Febvre remained a

professed

geographer,

a marvelous observer

of

land, plants,

men, countrysides. The Earth and Human

Evolution,

published

in

1920,

is

a fine work which has not been

superseded

or

replaced,

as

the

geographer

Pierre

Gourou,

a

good judge

of

the

subject,

said

recently.

But the most

important

observation

is

that Lucien Febvre had

matured

all at once.

His

thesis, Philip

11

and

the

Franche

Comte


20/21

466 Fernand Braudel

(

191

1),

which

Flammarion

is

in

process

of

reissuing in a pocket

edition and which will

probably soon be translated into English, is a

masterpiece

which

realized

ahead

of

time

all

the futureprogramof the

Annales.

In

1972

this book has

not

aged,

and

still

ranks, without even

a wrinkle,

with the

best

and

most recent French

regional

stud-

ies-those

by

Emmanuel

Le

Roy Ladurie, Rene Baehrel, or Pierre

Goubert-a

most

exceptional

record

indeed.

To

have seized

upon the

entire

past

of a

province,observing

it both in its

historical reality and

in its

geographicalaspects,

is

that not, to

use

a recent expression, to

achieve

"global thought,"

the

only

form of

history capable of satis-

fying us now? Much later he

commanded a tremendous capital of

reflection and reading. He had a universal curiosity and a gift for

understanding verything,even matters he met for the first time. He

was always admirablyattentive

to what others had to say, knowing

how to listen-a rare

quality-and

how to

cut to the heart of an

argument,

no matter

how

complicated.

He

wrote with

disconcerting

ease.

And

with

all this

went

the

prodigy

of his

discoveries, of

his

ideas, expressed

in

telegraph

form,

to

be sure,

because he

was not

naturally

inclined

to

careless

speech, although

he could

tell stories

admirablywhen he felt like it. In short,a man as receptive as he was

generous,

he seemed to me a bit like

the Diderot of his

times. All by

himself

he

was

a "bank

of

ideas for

a

generation."

And

in the first

Annales,

there

was also

the

same

passion

and lust for

polemic

and

argument

as

in the

Encyclopedie

of

the

"philosophes"

of

the

eigh-

teenth

century.

Obviously, I have not saidall there is to say, nor entirely explained

the men

and works thatgave

rise

and life to the

Annales.

For

instance,

I

should have shown how

Lucien Febvre yielded

to

the

ardor of

Marc

Bloch

in

the

area

over

which he had become

master: economic and

especially

rural and

agrarian history.

Lucien

Febvre

gave way gladly.

His

drivingcuriosity

turned

more

toward the

history

of

states

of

mind,a

line of

investigation

that culminated n

his

Rabelais, though

it had

started,

to

be

sure,

as

far back

as

1924

with

his

Martin Luther.

From

that

time

onward,

the

major

focus of his

research andpreoccupationsturned in this direction.His last book, of

which I saw the finished

manuscript

before

his

death,

but

which has

mysteriously disappeared,

was entitled Honor

and

Fatherland.

It

explored

a field

where

little

has

yet

been

done,

that

of

collective

states

of

mind, being

a

study

of the transition from

fidelity

to a


21/21


person-the prince (that is, honor)

to

fidelity

to. the nation

(patri-

otism).

The

history,

in

short, of the birth of the idea of fatherland.

Nor have I said that

the Annales, despite their vivacity, never

constituted a school in the

strict sense,

that is to

say,

a

pattern

of

thought

closed in

upon

itself.

On

the

contrary.

The

password

for

the

Annales was

nothing

more

than

passion

for the

past-but

that is

a

great deal. And joined with that passion there was the

search

for

all

the

new

possibilities,

a

readiness

to

accept changes

in

the

way prob-

lems

were

put, according to the requirements and logic of the

hour.

For past and present

mingle inextricably together. On

that point, all

the successive editors of

the Annales agreed.

And yet, who will not smile to see me write a history "histori-

sante," as Henri Berr would say,

or

"evenementielle,"

as

Paul La-

combe put it?

I

have spoken of men, of occurrences.

But it is very

evident that this

little stream,

narrow

and

lively,

from the

Synthese

to

the

Annales, ran through a vast countryside, during a

particular epoch

of

history-a much

disturbed one, from 1900 to 1972, as all will

admit-and

in a

particular country,

France.

And "France means

diversity," as Lucien

Febvre said. Is it by chance that

Henri Berr,

Lucien Febvre, Marc Bloch, and myself all four came from eastern

France?

That

the

Annales began at Strasbourg, next

door

to Ger-

many

and

to German historical thought?

Finally, was

I

right to

decide more than four years ago that it was

in the tradition of the

Annales, as

I

understood it, to

hand over the

management to young

men: Jacques Le Goff, a medievalist; Emma-

nuel

Le

Roy Ladurie, a

modernist;

and Marc Ferro, a

specialist in

Russian

history?

I

have found myself directly disagreeing

with them.

But,

thanks

to them, the old dwelling has become a

house of youth

once

more.

Documents

Fernand Braudel, Personal Testimony