Fernand Braudel

Fernand Braudel , born the August 24th 1902 with Lumeville-in-Ornois (Meuse) and deceased the November 27th 1985 with Cluses (Haute-Savoie), is one historian French.

Fernand Braudel is one of the most popular representatives of “the École of Annals” which studies inter alia civilizations and the movements of long life in opposition to the event-driven history.

Biography

Childhood and influence

Fernand Braudel is born in 1902 in a small village from the Meuse, Lumeville-in-Ornois, to forty kilometers in the south of Bar-le-Duc. His/her father, teacher in Paris region, have his family fasteners there. Of this outing in the country Lorraine that he so much liked in his youth and that he will evoke in his old age, he will keep the notion of the importance of the daily life of the people. “I remain a historian of country stock”, can he say with pride.

Fernand Braudel is quickly conscious of the weight of the History in this area border: it is a 12 year old very patriotic boy who sees the war passing so close to the liked area.

“Instead of having France in front of us, around us, us, Lorraine, let us have it behind us. We are leant in France. ” “Us, Lorrains” shows the attachment with its roots. Its dream of youth is to make a career of professor in Bar-le-Duc. “If the University had been nice at my place, I would have been named in 1923 with the college of Bar-le-Duc, I would have made all my career there”. Its diploma of higher learning is devoted to Bar-le-Duc during the first three years of the Revolution.

Formation

It joined the school in Paris in 1909, and will have a school and university course of a surprising brevity. Received with the Aggregation of history in 1923, at 21 years it is named professor of 1924 to 1932 in Algeria: with Constantine (in Algeria) then in Algiers. From 1932 to 1935 he teaches with the colleges Pasteur, Condorcet and Henri IV in Paris before being integrated, of 1935 to 1936, in the French mission of teaching to the Brésil, with São Paulo. In 1937, it integrates the Practical École of the High Studies as a director of the section philosophy of the History. This period of formation is located in the wake of Lucien Febvre, his future reader.

The influence of Lucien Febvre, whom it met on a boat in the Atlantic while returning from Latin America in 1937, and of the geographers which formed it in years 1920 make of Braudel a direct heir to Paul Vidal of Blache. This genesis explains the choice, then deeply innovative, to take for subject of thesis a space. the Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world at the time of Philippe II , constant in 1947 and published in 1949, will remain without question the philosopher's stone of Braudel and a monument of the historiography of the XXe century. But the growing threat hitlérienne involves the mobilization of Braudel in the army in 1938. Captive fact following the French capitulation, it is held in Germany of 1940 to 1945.

Released, it directs from 1946 to 1968, at the beginning with Lucien Febvre then only, the review Annals , before leaving the place to Jacques Le Goff. It founds in 1949 the Historical Research center which will become in 1975 EHESS. It occupied a Pulpit with the Collège de France in 1949 (Pulpit of History of Moderne civilization) where it taught until 1972. It will chair of 1956 to 1972 the Life section of the practical School of the High Studies (created in 1947 and succeeding Lucien Febvre), It will write a series of methodological articles which it will join together in 1969 in the book Ecrits on the History . He wrote also the Identity of France and launches out at the end of the years 1950 in a monumental work, material Civilization, Economie and Capitalism of the XV at the XVIIIe century in 3 volumes and published in 1960.

In 1962, it founds the House of the social sciences in Paris thanks to the financing of the foundation Rockefeller. Its reputation is world: it is corresponding many foreign academies, in particular those of Budapest, Munich, Madrid, Belgrade and receives the nomination of Honorary doctor of several Universities, in particular Oxford, Brussels, Madrid, Warsaw, Cambridge, Yale, Geneva, Padoue, Leyde, Montreal, Cologne, Chicago. These writings will be represented in the whole world: the Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world at the time of Philippe II will be, with the wire of its republications, published in English, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, Italian; but also in Serbo-Croat, Chinese, Hungarian, Korean, Russian, Bulgarian… He is elected with the French Academy, on June 14th, 1984, with the armchair of André Chamson. He dies on November 27th, 1985 after having restructured French research and having taken part in the development of a new historical method, whose the Mediterranean was an good example.

Work

the Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World at the time of Philippe II

Mobilized in 1938, it is captured and made prisoner of war in Germany between 1940 and 1945. It exempts courses of history to his held comrades and it begins the drafting of its principal thesis. The cards and the notes which it accumulated per thousands in years 1930 are put in safety by his wife Paule Braudel and they is thus while trusting its only memory that it puts in writing all its knowledge on the Mediterranean at the time of Philippe II . Its thesis, constant in 1947 and published in 1949, carries on the Mediterranean world at the time of Philippe II; it gives him the title of arts doctor. It has a considerable repercussion among the historians, until in the non-specialists.

The fundamental contribution of its work lies in:

the voluntary inversion of the object studied (the Mediterranean with the detriment of Philippe II) compared to the guns of the dominant political history then;
the implementation of an new approach of historical temporality.

It divides this time into three parts:

the almost motionless history, whose fluctuations are quasi-unperceivable, which milked with the reports/ratios of the man and the medium (influence of Vidal of Blache);
slowly agitated history, a social history, having milked with the human groups;
event-driven history, that of the agitation of surface.

The thesis is republished with many recoveries, including in book of pocket.

Material civilization, economy and capitalism, XV^e-XVIII^e century

The year 1979 marks the second peak in the leading career of Fernand Braudel. In this work, Braudel defends in particular the idea that the Capitalisme is not an ideology but an economic system worked out gradually by the strategy game of capacities.

Grammar of civilizations

In this work published in 1987, Braudel describes in a precise way mentalities, the Identité S and the specific characteristics of each Civilization in the world (civilization arabo-Islamic, Chinese, Mongolian, Indian, African, European…). This work seems to have inspired Samuel Huntington for his work headlight: the Shock of civilizations .

The review of the Yearly

Taking the continuation of the cofounder of the review, Lucien Febvre, it directs 1946 to 1968 the re-examined '' Annales '' which publishes then the articles of Roland Barthes, Emmanuel Roy Ladurie or Georges Duby.

Decorations, price

Commander of the Legion of honor

Honorary doctor of many universities:

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