The Annales School

The Annales School of historiography, widely considered as one of the most important developments in the twentieth-century history-writing was founded by Lucien Febvre and Mark Bloch in 1929. The movement has changed through time and the different incarnations are called 'generations'.

The First Generation

The Annales movement was named after the scholarly journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale (Annales of Economic and Social History) edited by Mark Bloch and Lucien Febvre in 1929. The journal focuses more deeply on social and economic history rather than traditional approach to history on politics and government.

The Founders

The leaders of the Annales movement, Febvre and Bloch studied in University of Strasbourg. The inter-departmental cooperation during their university years led them to the idea of studying history using a holistic approach such as anthropology, economics, geography, psychology and sociology. This holistic approach separates the Annales movement from the empiric approach to history.

A New Historiography

The Annales movement was distinctive for its stance against the established empiric school of thought. Instead of focusing on politics and individuals, the historians of the first generation of the Annales school of thought focused on social groupings, collective mindsets and long-term continuities and changes. They did not only rely on primary documents, but made use of a wide range of sources, including maps, folklore and literature.

Opposition to Empiricism

Annales historians criticised positivism, which concentrated on the analysis of short periods and rebelled against empirical history which focused on politics, great individuals, and chronological events. Annales School also rejected dominance of Leopold von Ranke’s scientific-nationalist method.

Mentalités

The Annales movement was also distinctive for the increased attention paid to the mindsets of entire groups, known as mentalités. Lucien Febvre was the first historian to call for a study into the history of emotions in 1941. He believed that 'the emotional life [is] always ready to overflow the intellectual life'.

The Second Generation

Fernand Braudel’s History of Mediterranean world in 16^th Century is a seminal work of Annales school. He emphasized geography as determining factor and looked at history on a wider scale- ‘total’ and ‘global’ history.

The Third Generation

The third generation of Annales historians branch out in their interests and approaches to the study of history. This includes interest on gender studies the female historians by Christiane Klapisch, Mona Ozouf and others who studied a wide range of subjects including family, labour and women. Many members of this school of thought tried to link the traditional Annales historiography to the American trends of economic history, popular culture, psychohistory and symbolic anthropology.

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie

One of the foremost historians of the latest generation of Annales historians is Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie. He used interrogation transcripts to reconstruct the village. Also has written on the history of climate and its effect.

Each generation of the Annales school of history made important contributions to the study of history and each branched into innumerable sub-sections which assist in covering a wide range of human history. The Annales movement was revolutionary in its time and took a radical new approach to the study of history.