Fernand Braudel

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Fernand Braudel (August 24, 1902–November 27, 1985) was a French historian. He revolutionized the 20th century study of his discipline by considering the effects of such outside disciplines as economics, anthropology, and geography on global history[1]. He was a prominent member of the Annales School of historiography, who concentrated on meticulous historical analysis in the social sciences.

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[edit] Life

Braudel was born in Luméville-en-Ornois, in the département of the Meuse, France, where he also lived with his paternal grandmother for a long time. He studied at the elite Paris Institute of Political Studies (better known as Sciences Po). His father, who was a natural mathematician, aided him in his studies. Braudel also studied a good deal of Latin and a little Greek. He loved history and wrote poetry. Braudel wanted to be a doctor, but his father opposed this idea. In 1923, he went to Algeria, then a French colony, to teach history. Returning to France in 1932, he worked as a high school teacher and met Lucien Febvre, the co-founder of the influential Annales journal, who was to have a great influence on his work. With him, he travelled to Brazil in 1935 to "build" the University of São Paulo, returning together with Febvre in 1937. In 1939, he joined the army but was captured in 1940 and became a prisoner of war in a camp near Lübeck in Germany, where, working from memory, he put together his great work La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéen a l'époque de Philippe II (The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II). Part of his motivation for writing the book, he said, was that, as a "Northerner," he had come to love the Mediterranean. After the war, he worked with Febvre in a new college, founded separately from the Sorbonne, dedicated to social and economic history.

[edit] Work

In 1962, he wrote A History of Civilizations to be the basis for a history course, but its rejection of the traditional event-based narrative was too radical for the French ministry of education, which rejected it [2]

Besides La Méditerranée, his most famous work is the three-volume Civilisation Matérielle, Economie et Capitalisme, XVe-XVIIIe (Capitalism and Material Life, 1400-1800), which first appeared in 1979. It is a broad-scaled history of the pre-industrial modern world, presented in the minute detail demanded by the school called cliometrics focusing on how people made economies work. Like all his major works, it mixes traditional economic material with much description of the social impact of economic events on everyday life, and gives much attention to food, fashion, social customs and similar areas.

Braudel claims that there are long-term cycles in the capitalist economy which developed in Europe in the 12th century. Cities and later nation-states follow each other subsequently as centers of these cycles. Venice and Genoa in 13th to 15th century (1250–1510), Antwerp in 16th (1500–1569), Amsterdam in 16th to 18th (1570–1733), London and England in 18th and 19th (1733–1896). He argued that "structures" — a word he uses to mean many kinds of organized behaviours, attitudes, and conventions, as well as literal structures and infrastructures — that were built up in Europe during the Middle Ages contributed to or were perhaps responsible for the success of European-based cultures up to the present day. Much of this he appears to attribute to the long-lived independence of city-states, which although later subjected by geographic states, were not always completely suppressed -- probably for reasons of usefulness.

One feature of Braudel's work is his evident compassion for the suffering of marginal people.[3] He points out the obvious: that most surviving historical sources come from the wealthy (or at least literate) classes — those who are either rich or aspire to be. He gives importance to the apparently ephemeral lives of slaves, serfs, and peasants, as well as to the urban poor, and shows their contributions to the wealth and power of their respective masters and societies. Indeed, he appears to think that these people form the real material of civilization. His work is often illustrated with contemporary depictions of daily life, rarely with pictures of noblemen or kings.

Braudel has been considered one of the greatest of those modern historians who have emphasised the role of large scale socio-economic factors in the making and telling of history[4]. He can also be considered as one of the precursors of World Systems Theory.

SUNY Binghamton in New York has a Fernand Braudel Center, and there is an Instituto Fernand Braudel de Economia Mundial in São Paulo, Brazil.

[edit] Recognition

After he had published la Méditerannée, Braudel went into the Bibliothèque Nationale and applied for a library card. He was handed a short form to fill out. Under "Nom," he wrote "BRAUDEL, Fernand"; under "Métier," he wrote "historien." He was turned down. He then wrote The Structures of Ordinary Life which delineates how all social structures from table manners to petty bureaucracies place limitations on one's possible actions.[citation needed]

[edit] Works

  • La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéen a l'époque de Philippe II 3 vols. (Originally appeared in 1949; revised several times)
* La part du milieu (vol. 1) ISBN 2-253-06168-9
* Destins collectifs et mouvements d'ensemble (vol. 2) ISBN 2-253-06169-7
* Les événements, la politique et les hommes (vol. 3) ISBN 2-253-06170-0
  • Ecrits sur l'Histoire (1969) ISBN 2-08-081023-5
  • The Mediterranean in the Ancient World
  • Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme, XVe-XVIIIe siècle
* Les structures du quotidien (vol. 1, 1967) ISBN 2-253-06455-6
* Les jeux de l'échange (vol. 2, 1979) ISBN 2-253-06456-4
* Le temps du monde (vol. 3, 1979) ISBN 2-253-06457-2
  • Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Centuries, 3 vols. (1979) English translation by Siân Reynolds
* The Structures of Everyday Life (vol.1) ISBN 0-06-014845-2
* The Wheels of Commerce (vol. 2) ISBN 0-06-015091-2
* The Perspective of the World ('vol. 3) ISBN 0-06-015317-2
  • On History (1980), English translation of Ecrits sur l'Histoire by Siân Reynolds
  • La Dynamique du Capitalisme (1985) ISBN 2-08-081192-4
  • The Identity of France (1986)
  • Ecrits sur l'Histoire II (1990) ISBN 2-08-081304-8
  • Out of Italy, 1450–1650 (1991)
  • A History of Civilizations (1995)
  • Les mémoires de la Méditerranée (1998)
  • Personal Testimony Journal of Modern History, vol. 44, no. 4. (December 1972)

[edit] References

  • Pierre Daix, Braudel, (Paris: Flammarion, 1995)
  • Giuliana Gemelli, Fernand Braudel (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1995)
  • Hufton, Olwen. "Fernand Braudel", Past and Present, No. 112. (Aug., 1986), pp. 208–213.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations, translated by Richard Mayne (New York: Penguin Books, 1993).
  2. ^ Richard Mayne, "Translator's Introduction" in Fernand Braudel, "A History of Civilization," (New York: Penguin Books, 1993), pp. xxvi-xxvii.
  3. ^ Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations, translated by Richard Mayne (New York: Penguin Books, 1993).
  4. ^ i.e. Fernand Braudel, "The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II" (Berkely: University of California Press, 1996)

[edit] External links

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André Chamson		 Seat 15
Académie française
1984-1985		 Succeeded by
Jacques Laurent
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