The Annales School: An Intellectual History

A new approach to the study of history emerged in France in the late 1920s around the history journal Annales dhistoire conomique et sociale. The Annales school as it came to be identified grew to be the preeminent twentieth-century movement in historical scholarship. Its bold agenda of a “total history” embracing all the social sciences captivated historians worldwide. Numerous Annales historians have gained international reputations among them the “founding fathers ” Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre as well as Fernand Braudel Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie Franois Furet Philippe Aris Jacques Le Goff and Georges Duby. In The Annales School Andre Burguire explores the origins and evolution of this group that still widely influences the study and teaching of history. Intimately involved in all of the publishing decisions and direction of the Annales since 1969 Burguire is uniquely well qualified to write this intriguing story. Drawing on firsthand experience and his own training as a historian he offers fascinating portraits of the key figures of the movement. He deftly addresses such matters as the complicated relationship between Bloch and Febvre the engagement of the Annales school with other historical currents such as microhistory and social anthropology and the schools gradual shift from the socioeconomic to the sociocultural. He also steps back to assess the long-term contributionsand failuresof the Annales school. Burguires account of the Annales school the first by an insider is a major contribution to the study of French intellectual history during the twentieth century when French thinkers played a large role in developing new approaches to the social sciences.