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Biography of Fernand BraudelName: Fernand BraudelBirth Date: August 24, 1902 Death Date: 1985 Place of Birth: Luneville, France Nationality: French Gender: Male Occupations: historian Fernand Braudel Fernand Braudel (1902-1985) was the leading exponent of the so-called "Annales" school of history, which emphasizes total history over long historical periods and large geographical space.Fernand Braudel was born August 24, 1902, in the small town of Luneville in eastern France. His father was an academic administrator. As a young agrégé in history, he went to Algeria in 1923 to teach in a lycée and to work on his thèse d'état, which was to be on Philip II of Spain and the Mediterranean. His thesis director, Lucien Febvre, made the fateful suggestion that Braudel invert the emphasis--the Mediterranean and Philip II. In 1935 he went to Brazil to teach in the university in São Paulo, Brazil, returning two and a half years later to France just before World War II, with an appointment in the IVe Section of the Ecole Pratique des …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…therefore his relevance to the fundamental assessment of large-scale, long-term social change. His intellectual voice was stentorian--a firm line but one uncluttered by dogmatisms. His was a unifying influence, respectful of many strains but impatient of pomposity or foolishness. Above all, Braudel and the Annales school stood as a challenge to the narrow, the petty, the arrogance of power in the name of enduring realities, and the social change that is slow but inexorable. Further Reading A description of "the Annales paradigm" is to be found in Traian Stoianovich, French Historical Method (1976), to which Braudel wrote a foreword. Two appreciative articles, one by H. R. Trevor-Roper and one by J. H. Hexter, plus an autobiographical essay by Braudel, are to be found together in the Journal of Modern History (December 1972). A long critical article by Samuel Kinser is in the American Historical Review (February 1981).Daix, Pierre, Braudel, Paris: Flammarion, 1995. |