Historiography

Evolution of the historical thought

Antiquity: birth of the critical history

The first Greek chroniclers, who were interested especially in the myths of foundation (the logographe S), practiced already the account of the events: their narration could be based on the writing, as at Hécatée de Milet (second half of sixth century BC). With the V {{E}} century before the Christian era, Hérodote d' Halicarnasse is distinguished from them by its will to distinguish truth from the forgery: this concern is in the middle same “investigations” or “research” of this last. Indeed, at the time, the history does not have the same direction as today: it means “investigation”.

With Thucydide, especially, this concern is moulted, less than one generation after, in critical spirit, founded on the confrontation of various sources, oral and written. Its Histoire of the Peloponnesian War could be seen like the first works truly historical.

Polybe, perhaps while seeking to write a work of geographer, approaches as for him with the II {{E}} century before the Christian era the question of the succession of the political regimes to explain how its world entered the Roman orbit (in the Pragmateia , translated by Histoires ). It is the first to rather seek intrinsic causes with the course of the history than to evoke external principles.

The Middle Ages: the time of the chroniclers and the hagiographal ones

The history with the Middle Ages is mainly written by hagiographal, chroniclers, often members of the episcopal clergy and close to the capacity, or by monks. It consists of genealogies, rather dry annals (chronological lists of events concerning the reigns of the sovereigns - royal annals - or the succession of the abbots - annals monastic), of lives (biographies in edifying matter, like that of the Saints mérovingiens or, later, kings de France) and finally of Histoires who tell the birth of a Christian nation (of a gentis ), exaltent a dynasty or, on the contrary, fustigate the malicious S from the Christian point of view.

This history is nun, with the direction first, and registers the actions of the Men within the framework of the intentions of God: thus, the ecclesiastical Stories as that of Bède Worthy the ( the ecclesiastical History of the English people at the beginning of the 8th century) take part especially in the description of the extension of the Catholic church to the borders of the ground and towards the end of time, from the point of view augustinienne.

Lastly, it is necessary to wait the 14th century so that the chroniclers are interested in the people, large absent from the production of this period, for example with Froissart.

Rebirth until the 20th century

During the Rebirth, the Humanisme gains the history while bringing to him, by the means of the redécouverte of traditional Antiquity, a taste renewed for the study of the old, Greek or Latin texts, but also of new supports of study: thus develops an interest for the inscriptions (the epigraphy), for the ancient currencies (the Numismatique) or for the treaties (the Diplomatique). These new “sciences” of the modern time contribute to enrich the methods of the historians: in 1681, Dom Mabillon indicates which are the criteria which make it possible to determine the authenticity of an act in the Re diplomatica , in particular by the comparison of different sources.

However, the movements of reform bring back the history in the bosom of the church, or at least maintain it in the idea that the course of the events is dictated by a higher force, immanente or not.

At the time, the history is not different from the geography, nor even of the natural science. However, it is divided into two parts:

general history (history with the current direction of the term),
and the natural history (natural science and geography).

This broad direction of the history is explained by the etymology of the word (see Antiquité above).

The question of the unit of the kingdom that the wars of religion in France pose, to the 16th century, gives place to work of historians who belong to the current of “the perfect history”; this current attempts to show that the political and religious unit of modern France is inescapable, because presents as of the Gallic origins (Etienne Pasquier, Recherches of France ). The yoke of the Providence, at Bossuet ( Speech on the universal history , 1681), tends as for him to devaluate the significance of any historical change.

In parallel and during the whole of the modern period, the history is an instrument of the capacity: it is put at the service of the princes, of Machiavel to the panegyrists of Louis XIV, among which one counts Jean Racine.

At the 18th century, finally, a major change takes place: the spirit of the “Lights” and its philosophy on the one hand, the discovery of the otherness of the other cultures with “exoticism” on the other hand, cause a new rise of the critical spirit. This one is exerted mainly in the questioning of the cultural prejudices and traditional universalism.

The tendency is expressed at Fénelon, which is interested in manners of the body of the nation. It is also present at Voltaire in his Histoire of the empire of Russia under Pierre Large the or in the Century of Louis XIV (1751). Lastly, a similar spirit exists in England with Edward Gibbon in has History off the Decline and Fall off the Roman Empire , often shortened in Decline and Fall (1776 - 1788). But this last, which makes precision a major aspect of the work of the historian, also indicates by its work the limits of the history of the end of the 18th century: this one, subjected to morals, puts forth judgments in favor whereas its object remains limited.

The 19th century: romantic history with science érudite

The 19th century is one period rich in changes, at the same time in the manner of conceiving and of writing the history.

In France, this one from now on is regarded as a intellectual discipline with whole share, distinct from the other literary kinds, at the beginning of the century, whereas the historians professionnalisent themselves and that are founded the Public records French (1808). In 1821 is created the National school of the Charters, first great institution for the teaching of the history.

In Germany, this evolution had taken shape earlier and the history was already present in the universities of the modern period. The institutionalization of the discipline gives place to it to the implementation of vast building sites having for goal to join together and transcribe systematically the sources. Most known of them is undoubtedly that of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica , launched in 1819.

The history gains a dimension of scholarship there, still of topicality. Thereafter, the discipline draws from this scholarship and its new institutional framework its claim to compete with sciences, especially when these last make their great great strides at the end of the century.

Taking part in MGH and the meeting of the Latin inscriptions in a Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum , the German historian Theodor Mommsen, which is that par excellence contributes to give to the scholarship critical bases, in particular in its Römische Geschichte (1854 - 1856).

In France, as of the Years 1860, the historian Fustel de Coulanges writes “the history is not an art; it is a pure science, like physics or geology”.

However, the history remains recipient of the debates of its time: it is then influenced by the great ideologies, like the Libéralisme with Alexis de Tocqueville and François Guizot.

It is especially influenced by the Nationalisme, even the Racisme: with the war of 1870, Fustel de Coulanges and Theodor Mommsen tear, transposing in the historical debate the ideology of their nation.

Each historian then tends to emphasize qualities (“genius”) of his people in his writings: the period is that of the foundation of the great “national histories”.

In France, the “romantic” historians - among whom it is necessary to quote Augustin Thierry (1795 - 1856) and Jules Michelet (1798 - 1874) - draw up a history where the quality of the reflection and the critical exploitation of the sources slice with the preceding productions. But the history, if it becomes more and more a science, does not remain about it less one art, the blazing style of Michelet the exalte at the most point.

This methodological progress does not prevent them, for as much, to be in favor while wanting to contribute to the triumph of the political ideas of their time: A. Thierry thus expresses the motivations which led it to become historian: “In 1817, concerned about a keen desire to contribute for my part to the triumph of the constitutional opinions, I put to seek in the books of history of the evidence and the arguments in support of my political beliefs. Without ceasing subordinating the facts with use that I wanted some to make, I observed them with curiosity, even when they did not prove anything for the cause that I hoped to be useful” (foreword with the Lettres on the French history ).

Michelet, by its reading of the French revolution ( History of the French revolution , 1847 - 1853), also contributes to the definition of the French nation against the dictatorship of the Bonaparte, then against the dismemberment of France after the demolished of Sedan, occurred little before its death.

With the III {{E}} Republic, finally, it is the taught history which becomes a tool of propaganda to the training service of the citizens. This exploitation has to continue at the 20th century.

Ernest Lavisse (1842 - 1922), for example, thus introduced the French colonial company in Algeria into its French history, elementary course (1913): “In the year 1830, the king Charles X sent vessels to attack the town of Algiers, because the Algerians did much wrong to our trade by stopping and plundering our ships. The city was taken. Then Algeria had to be conquered”.

The history became a “social science” in what it is presented in the form of a scientific discipline anchored in the company.

The 20th century: “scientific” history with the “burst” history

At the beginning of the 20th century, the history acquired an uncontested scientific dimension.

Positive” or event-driven history “

Installed in the world of teaching, érudite, the discipline is influenced by an impoverished version of the Positivisme of Auguste Count. Claiming with objectivity, the history tightened the limits of its object: the fact or the isolated event, replaced in the center of the work of the historian, is then regarded as the only reference answering the requirement of objectivity correctly.

Also, this “event-driven history” is restricted to establish relations of causality, substituent thus a speech which wants to be scientific with the Rhétorique.

Its principal transformation comes then from external contributions: the Marxism, initially, introduced the economy into the concerns of the historian. Then, the upheavals political, technical, economic or social that the world knows, without forgetting the world wars, unrelentingly come to disturb the field of the history.

It is while being released from the positivism which has it a time marked that the discipline is really renewed. New “auxiliary” sciences appear or develop considerably: the Archeology, the Demography, the Sociology and the Anthropology, of which the Structuralism the influence.

The School of the Yearly

In France, is born with the turning from the Années 1930 a current from thought, called school of Annals because it had been constituted around a review bearing the name of Annales of history economic and social , which increases the field of the discipline, requests other sciences, in particular sociology, and more generally transforms the history while moving away its object from the event-driven framework and by registering it in the long life.

The history of the Annales is initially the economic and social Histoire: the periodic review is founded by Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch in 1929. After the tragic bracket of the war, it finds in Fernand Braudel, from now on at the sides of L. Febvre the continuator of the work of the Thirties. This last, indeed, “introduced social sciences in history”: he resorts for the first time to the Géographie, the political economy and the Sociologie to work out his thesis of the “economy-world”.

The role of historical testimony changes: it remains in the middle of the concerns of the historian but it is not any more the object. From now on, he is regarded as a tool to invent the history, tool which can be taken in any field of Knowledge.

The vision of the Moyen-âge, in particular, changes completely following a critical second reading of the sources which makes the good share so that they do not mention (Georges Duby). Excesses, also, can exist: such is the case of the exclusive quantitativism which animates a similar step, that of the new economic history of on the other side of the Atlantic.

Privileging the “long life” at time court of the “event-driven history” in the wake of the Yearly , several historians propose until today reconsidering the field of the history in the wake of the review: among them, one can quote Emmanuel Roy Ladurie or Pierre Goubert.

The “New history”

The denomination, made popular in 1973 through the publication by Pierre Nora and Jacques Le Goff To make History , indicates the current historiographic which animates the third generation of the Annales . The new history is before all the “history of mentalities”: it is a question of establishing a serial history of mentalities, i.e. collective representations and mental structures of the companies. With it, the field of the history still widens and the discipline is interested more in the phenomena of long life.

“Burst” history

The history is today more than ever before plural, being divided into several branches or specialities; it “is also burst” in the sense that some of its branches do not communicate between them, even on neither subject more nor common object.

Thus, the history includes/understands today the Microhistoire, which is interested in the specificity of the social phenomena, the history of time present, created there is a score of years and which is interested in the great ruptures of our time, and many transverse stories like the Histoire of the women and the kind, history of the sensitivity, or history of the company. Since two or three decades, with shifts according to the periods, the cultural Histoire records a clear rise to power.

And still, very recently, of new tools already influence, in their turn, the historical debate: they are, to quote only them, the Climatologie and the Génétique.

The place of the history vis-a-vis the social sciences

The history is a social science. This one is thus found on the same basis as the Sociologie, the Psychologie, the economy… Its vocation is to include/understand the place of the Man in his company. The reports/ratios which these various movements will maintain can go from the conflict to the co-operation. The goal is from here explaining the relation of the history to the other social sciences.

It is at the any end of XIXère century that sociology, under the impulse of Emile Durkheim, Gabriel Tarde and Rene Worms develops in France. But in sociology, one will retain especially the appearance of the school durkheimienne during this time. This one defines the methodology of sociology in the Rules of the sociological method in 1895 and the bracket in its research on the Suicide in 1897. In 1898, Durkheim organizes sociology around the review the sociological Year while being surrounded of sociologists like Maurice Halbwachs, Marcel Mauss, François Simiand, Paul Fauconnet or Célestin Bouglé.

The new discipline must impose its rules, be institutionalized and especially, find its place vis-a-vis the prevalence of the historical matter. That Ci is then firmly installed by the methodical School which, taking again the German model, had been formed in 1870 following the French defeat against Germany. The Debate then will start between 1895 and 1905 between the two matters. Durkheim indeed tends to regard the history as a simple technique of collection of the facts to the service of sociology, sociology being only being able to generalize and include/understand the logic of the events. Thus the historians positivists Charles-Victor Langlois and Charles Seignobos will be opposed to the school durkheimienne, proposing an allocation of the functions which remains currently anchored in mentalities: the history will deal with the past, the sociology of the present.

However this rupture of time will be exhausted under the impulse of several historians. Thus Henri Berr, founder of the Revue historical synthesis tries since 1900 the sociological bringing together with the historical step. The most famous “rassemblor” is without question celebrates it historian Fernand Braudel who, taking the reins of the school of Annals in the direct line of Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch, will not cease calling the reunification of the social sciences to the history. “The History that I call upon is an able new history to renew themselves and be completed to put at bag the richnesses other social sciences its neighbors” (re-examined the History ); geography, ethnology, the statistics, the economy, the right and the sociology which he will consider more scientific “than the History, articulated better Our methods are not their, but our problems, yes well” (re-examined the History ). Braudel will remain besides always in liaison with colleagues like the sociologist Georges Gurvitch, the demographer Sauvy, the ethnologist Lévi-Strauss… One can find certain resemblances besides.

The mitigated history is not without pointing out the vision of Gurvitch which distinguished several forms from time, when Lévi-Strauss distinguishes the history like being interested in the conscious facts and the ethnology like being interested in the unconscious facts, Braudel affirms that the school of Annals is interested in them two, and finally Braudel does not hesitate to invite the historians to follow the models that Alfred Sauvy realized, mathematical model, charged to analyze the population.

Does there exist a hierarchy in social sciences? The history is with the crossroads. Do there exist auxiliary sciences? Braudel answers: “in my spirit, any social science is auxiliary, in turn, from/to each other” (incorrect sentence, to check)

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