The Historian, Autumn 1991 v54
n1 pp. 112-3.
The French Historical Revolution: The
Annales School,
1929-89. By Peter
Burke. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991. Pp. vi, 152.
$27.50.)
This brief introduction to the Annales
school demonstrates yet again that in Clio's house there are
many
mansions.
Although Peter Burke confesses that he is a fellow-traveler of this
party (he
edited the writings of Lucien Febvre), he remains objective and
critical
throughout his presentation. In analyzing and evaluating the important
works
of the chief representative of the Annales,
he focuses on the main
themes of
this school (and all in a text of a hundred-odd pages, a noteworthy
achievement, indeed).
In dividing the Annales
school into three chronological periods--the 1920s to 1945, 1945
to
1968, and
1968 to 1989--Burke traces not only the evolution of this historical
school but
its transformation as well. The last, if seen from the longue durée,
may
signify its decline. For after having rejected the history of events
and the
politics of states, many Annalistes are
beginning to return to these
older
themes. Thus, the party has become fragmented, and the unity of outlook
that
characterized it in the past is no longer recognizable.
Lucien Febvre and Marc
Bloch are duly considered the founders of the Annales school. Burke
shows,
however, the influence of their predecessors who had already broken
with
traditional history, limited as it was to political, military, and
diplomatic
events. This "New History" took the whole of society for its oyster
and began to examine mentalités and
feelings of not only the elite
groups or ruling classes. History "from below" became another of its
concerns.
The author devotes a
long chapter to the work and influence of Fernand Braudel, and although
rightly
impressed with The Mediterranean,
Burke does not hesitate to cite its
critics.
Although skeptical of Marxism, he never minimizes the important
contributions
of Marxist scholars such as Ernest Labrousse, nor does he fail to admit
that a
number of leading members of the Annales
(such as Le Roy Ladurie and
Franqois Furet),
have a Marxist background.
In this, Burke does not always see
the more subtle arguments of Marxist scholars or of those influenced by
Marx.
He points out, for example, that critics of Braudel deny his geographic
determinism just as they attack the economic determinism of Marx. Yet,
only
"vulgar Marxists" (to use Marx's own phrase) fail to see the
symbiotic relationship between ideas and "the economic base." Surely,
recent years have shown
that political ideas modify and transform this base. If, as Burke says,
"there has been a swing back towards voluntarism;" it can hardly be
denied that those revolutionary movements that have embraced Marxism
are voluntarist,
just as the doctrine of predestination (a theological determinism)
never
discouraged Calvinists from voluntarism (109).
The Annalistes have
been criticized for excluding people from their studies in favor of
impersonal
forces. This cannot be said of Burke, whose writings on Louis XIV,
Montaigne, Vico,
and Febvre demonstrate that for him, at least, man is still the measure
of all
things.
Morris Slavin
Youngstown State University