Who are considered to be the founders of the Annales School of historiography? Discuss their works.

Historians Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre are considered as the founders of the Annales School of historiography.

Foundation of the Annales

The attack on history had left Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, two young historians then in a far away corner of the French academia, Strasbourg, very restless. They were dissatisfied with the kind of history they had studied and were teaching. They were sensitive to the insights the younger discipline could provide. In the face of this, Bloch and Febvre launched the journal Annales d’histoire economique at sociale in January, 1929. Initially, the journal focused on the issues of contemporary concerns, but as the time passed it turned increasingly to medieval and early modern history, the ones practiced by Bloch and Febvre.

In the editorial of the journal’s inaugural issue, Bloch and Febvre emphasised the necessity and advantages of interdisciplinary research. They were also keen to constitute “all history” and “true history”. True history was not being counterposed here to false history but to any form of partial history. Thus, they created space for meeting the challenge of other disciplines as well as incorporating their insights.

Consequently, historians found new themes to explore. Bloch himself created a comprehensive and grand structure in his study of feudalism by looking at its all aspects in his book, The Feudal Society (1936). He spent a considerable time living in the French country side to sensitise himself to the remains of that society.

Febvre on the other hand was keen to explore the area of emotions and beliefs. He wrote the book, The Problem of Unbelief in the 16th Century: the Religion of Rabelais (1942) keeping the new themes in view. His essay, ‘Sensibility and History–How to Reconstitute the Emotional Life of the Past’? set the tone for the history of mentalities.

History was thus starting to become part of Social Sciences. In 1903 Francois Simiand had shown the way for history to enter the arena of social sciences in his essay, ‘methode historique et science sociale’. The essay was reproduced in the Annales in 1960 by Fernand Braudel to enable young historians to comprehend better the dialogue between History and the Social Sciences.

Following that a new autonomous discipline economic history emerged. In their essays, Ernest Labroussse (‘The Crisis of the French Economy at the end of the Ancient Regime and the beginning of the Revolution’, 1944) and Fernand Braudel (‘The Mediterraranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II’, 1949) sought out the long-term trends in history that would help us understand and predict social and economic change.

Braudel maintained the theme in his later works. Labroussse concluded that unlike in the sphere of industrial economy, where over production leads to economic crisis, in agriculture underproduction of food grains lies at the base of a crisis situation which then spreads to other sectors of economy and society. On the other hand, Braudel had studied the extremely slow change in the ecology around the Mediterranean and the long term and long distance impact of intercontinental trade.

One branching out of from this long-term history was the history of the climate. Emmanuel Leroy Ladurie was among the early historians of the 1960s who introduced this new theme into European historiography.

This new frontiers and problematics demanded new vision of history, new sources and new methods of investigation. Economic changes were not left to general impressions. They had to be based on quantitative data. 

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