French Studies In History, Vol. 1 The Inheritance

341 Pages·1988·59.537 MB·English

by  Maurice Aymard, Harbans Mukhia

French Studies in History
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VOL. I
THE INHERIT ANC:E
Editors
MAURICE A YMARD
HARBANS MUKHIA
Orient Longman
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FRENCH STUDIES IN HISTORY:!
THE INHERITANCE
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Acknowledgments
It is with a deep sense of gratitude that we wish to acknowledge the
help rendered by Dr. Monica Juneja in translating such of the papers
included in this volume as had not already been translated. Monica
completed the job with admirable competence and grace that often
took her beyond the call of duty; without her help it would have been
unthinkable for us to undertake this project.
A large number of other friends too contributed in very many
different but indispensable ways to the completion of this project;
their insistence on anonymity is but a small measure of their
immense generosity.
We are also extremely grateful to the Maison des Science de
l'Homme, Paris, for its readiness to help in whatever way help was
needed.
Orient Longman went out of their way to publish the volume in
record time; we are beholden to them for their concern with so many
of our anxieti~s.
THE EDITORS
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The publishers gratefully acknowledge permission given to reproduce/translate the
following articles:
The editors of Anno/es for the Editorial ·To Our Readers' (1.1.1929): for A. Koyre',
'Newton, Galileo and Plato (6, Nov.• Dec. 1960); and for Pierre Gaubert, 'In Beauvasis:
Demographic Problems of the Seventeenth Century' (7,4:1952).
Edward Arnold Publishers for 'Land and Labour' from Georges Duby. Rural
Economy ond Country Life in the Mcdicvo/ West.
William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. for 'Sustenance' from Fernand Braudel. Civilisation
and Capitalism: Fifteenth to Eighteenth Century. Vol. I: The Structures of Everyday
Life.
The Harvester Press Ltd. for 'Quantitative History: The Sixth Section of the Ecole
Pratique des Hautes Eludes' and 'The History of Rain and Fine Weather' from E.
Le Roy Ladurie, The Territory of the Historian.
The editors of Population for Jean Meuvret, 'Food Crises and Demography in France
during the Ancien Regime' (Oct-Dec. 1946). Presses Universitaires de France for
f
'Economic Fluctuations and the Individual' from Lo Crise de/' economic roncoise a /a
fin de /'Ancien Regime et au dcbut de la Revolution and for 'The Wrong Track' from
Jacques Dupaquier. Pour la Derr.ogrophie Historique.
Routeledge and Kcgan Paul Ltd. for 'Sensibility and History: How to Reconstitute
the Emotional Life of the Past' from P. Burke (ed.). A New Kind of History from the
Writings of Lucien Fcbvrc: and for 'A Contribution Towards a Comparative History of
European Societies' and 'The Advent and Triumph of the Watermill' from Marc Bloch.
Lond and Worh in Medicvo/ Europe: Selected Papers.
SEVPEN for 'Seville and the Atlantic (1504- 1650)' from Huguette and Pierre
Chaunu. Seville et /'At/antique (1504- 1650).
The University of Chicago and Weidenfield and Nicholson for 'History and the
Social Sciences: The Longue Duree' from Fernand Braudel. On History.
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Contents
Introduction 1
MAURICE AYMARD & HARBANS MUKHIA
Tr. Monica Juneja
CONTINUITY AND Cl-lANGE IN HISTORICAL
UNDER ST ANDING
To Our Readers 33
EDITORIAL, ANNALES
Tr. Monica Juneja
A Contribution Towards a Comparative History 35
of European Societies
MARC BLOCH
Tr. J.E. Anderson
History and the Social Sciences: The Longue Duree 69
FERNAND BRAUDEL
Tr. Sarah Matthews
Sensibility and History: How to Reconstitute 102
the Emotional Life of the Past
LUCIEN FEBVRE
Quantitative History: The Sixth Section of the 121
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes
EMMANUEL LE ROY LADURIE
Tr. Ben & Sian Reynolds
TWO SPHERES: THE STRlJCTURAL AND TI-IE
CONJlJNCTURAL
THE STRUCTURAL SPl-lERE
Land and Labour 141
GEORGES DUBY
Tr. Cynthia Postan
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Sustenance
168
FERNAND BRAUDEL
Tr. revised Sian Reynolds
The History of Rain arid Fine Weather 192
EMMANUEL LE ROY LADURIE
Tr. Ben & Sian Reynolds
The Advent and Triumph of the Watermill 215
MARC BLOCH
Tr. J.E. Anderson
Newton, Galileo and Plato 243
ALEXANDRE KOYRE
'fr. Monica Juneja
THE CONJUNCTURAL SPI-IERE
Economic Fll1ctuations and the Individual 263
C.E. LABROUSSE
Tr. fv1onica Juneja
Food Crises and Demography in France 278
during the Ancien Regime
JEAN MEUVRET
Tr. Monica Juneja
'fhe Wrcmg Track 288
JACQUES DUPAQlJIER
Tr. Monica Juneja
In Beauvaisis: Demographic Problen1s of the 293
Seventeenth Century
PIERRE G<JUBERT
Tr. t-.1onica Juneja
Seville and the Atlantic {1504- 1650) 316
HUGUETTE & PIERRE CI-IAUNU
Tr. Monica Juneja
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... . .
' :Jt•·•-
Introdi1ction
MAURICE AYMARD & Hl\RBANS MUKHIA
In France, during the last twenty years or so, history has come to
occupy a position in intellectual life and on the publishing scene
which it had never known before. No doubt, earlier too, specialists
had been able to rouse a wider public through their writings and
debates: we need onl¥ think of Michelet. of Lavisse, Aulard or
Mathiez. But their stakes were then distinctly poli~ical. as has been
demonstrated by studies of the Third Republic.1 They were linked to
the formation of the French nation, to the assertion of its identity in
the face of more powerful neighbours-England and then, above all,
(;ermany-and to the debate on the French Revolution which had
effected, or claimed to effect, a rupture within the continuity of
a
historical evolution and whose status as founding event was being
precisely affirmed or contested. They accompanied, in their own
fashion, opposing transformations within a state, an economy and a
society on the brink of choosing between democracy, liberalism and
authoritarianism, between agriculture and industry. egalitarianism
and the renewal of hierarchies ....
The recent ascendancy of history in France rests on entirely novel
premises. Even though the problems studied are very often chosen
from within the national territory. they are treated merely as an
instrument or an occasion, if not a pretext. The avowed objective is
resolutely methodological: to revitalise history, its methods, content.
problems and ambitions. Lucien Febvre had already underlined the
importance of the problem over that of the geographical area. The
value of a problem posed by the historian lay in whether it could be
located elsewhere, concurrently or otherwise. and whether it would
thus lead the way to comparison which, by definition, transcended
the frontiers of European states and even the boundarif's of the
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2 French Studies in History; I
.
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continent itself. Such was clearly the first paradox of a history whose
development had undoubtedly taken place- as is the case with
almost all schools of historiography-within a national context, but
whose proclaimed ambition was an international one. Marc Bloch
articulated this when he wrote: 'There is no history of France. but a
history of Europe,'2 an assertion picked up later by Fernand Braudel
to which he immediately added: 'There is no history of Europe, but a
history of the world', even as he was seeking to establish the 'identity
of France'.3
Why this transformation was engendered in France and not
elsewhere remains to be explained. It is further necessary to retrace
the stages of its evolution in France itself, and then abroad where it
went as far as determining the orientation of historical studies
suffice it to think of the way history-writing in America, during the
late sixties and early seventies, swung from the field of 'humanities'
to that of 'social sciences'-and facilitating, if not prompting, the
formation of an international milieu of historians whose areas of
specialisation are being increasingly defined through thematic
categories-economic, social or cultural history, the history of
writing, of witchcraft, criminality etc.-and less in geographical or
national terms. (This has been rendered possible by the increased
mobility of historians. notably American. though also European,
many of whom are now working on countries other than their own.)
Posed in these terms, the question is difficult to answer without
recourse to history, to a precise recounting of the successive stages of
evolution. An imperative date of reference here is 1929, the year in
which, through the efforts of Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, in the
intellectual milieu of the University of Strasbourg4 a new journal was
born, the Anna/es d'Hisloire Economique et Sociale. Rebaptised a
number of times till it acquired, in 1946, its permanent appellation
Annales-Economies, Societes, Civilisations-the periodical has,
somewhat mistakenly, been identified with the transformation of
history-writing itself. for which the responsibility as well as-in the
eyes of its adversaries- the shortcomings would end up being
imputed to an 'Annales School'. Many have sought to ascribe to the
'Annales School' a coherence of programme and a cohesion among
individuals which it has clearly never possessed. Needless to say,
things are more complex. though Annales does provide a convenient
point of reference and. owing to its preeminence, has come to
represent an orientation and attract the most innovative of research.
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Introduction
3
But as we come closer to our own times. any attempt to delimit the
frontiers of the journal becomes an increasingly artificial exercise:
other periodicals have adopted, in their own fashion, the model of
Annoles whose own fighting spirit has, in the wake of success,
somewhat dissipated. There is no longer any school of history which
openly opposes Annoles. the diffident protests emanating from
Marxist5. ex-leftist6 or, more simply, traditionalist7 horizons
notwithstanding.
The year 1929 marked the beginning of a worldwide economic
crisis which upset the fragile equilibrium of all European countries.
But it does place us within the intellectual and moral climate of
France during the 1920s: she had just won the war- and thence a
certain euphoria - though a particularly heinous war which had.
above all. been won only due to the intervention of the United States,
marking a turning point in the history of Europe. The latter could still
nurture the illusion of being capable of bringing peace. an illusion
which was shattered in 1945. For Europe, then, it was a decisive
moment in history and it is not a mere coincidence that the initial
interest displayed by the journal in contemporary history and the
major transformations under way in the current epoch progressively
declined, giving way to a history centred on the Middle Ages and the
early modern period. in other words, on the origins and successive
stages of the evolution of Europe and its expansion. The decline of
Europe in the twentieth century urged the historian to retrace the
entire course of a supremacy, now on the wane. going back to its
origins. to the reorganisation of its settlements and its agriculture
within the framework of feudalism, and to the earliest economic
achievements of the cities of the Netherlands and northern Italy.
But however crucial the specific historical context of the inter-war
and the post-Second World War years may have been to the birth of
Annoles and to their changing orientation in the years to come, the
intellectual origins of the periodical have to be traced. thirty years
earlier, to the turn of the century. During these years, within a clin1ate
of fierce competition amongst the social sciences, history was called
upon to rejuvenate itself or to retreat in the face of more dyndmic
disciplines: geography. notably the breakthrough effected by human
geography through the contribution of Vidal de la Blache. Deman
geon etc. and sociology, in the wake of the colonising thrust of the
Durkheimian School.0 Both staked their claims to a con1plete control
of human society, in its concrete spatial environment (geography) or
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4 French Studies in History: l
in the totality of its social. cultural and institutional forms of
organisation. Sociology. as part of its progran1me envisaged the
fusion of social sciences into a single discipline, effecting thereby a
decisive scientific mutation through which the description of isolatecl
events would be substituted by a system of laws based on a set of
statistical regularities among a certain number of variables. In turn,
this inspired the founders of Anna/1,.c; to resume the task of unifying
the social sciences-but this time revolving around history. 1nore
open to a dialogue in that it was more favourably disposed towards
borrowing from other disciplines methods. concepts. typologies and
hypotheses. The example of sociology further engendered a concern
for a more scientific history which would, transcending the short
term and the individual event, define patterns of long term evolution
('conjunctures') and identify relatively stable relationships between
social groups and facts. Sociologists (M. Halbwachs), economists (C.
Rist) and psychologists, all came to be associated with this
enterprise.
Viewed in this perspective, the history pioneered by Annales
acquires a meaning only within the intellectual milieu of the
twentieth century. l-Iowever, the success of the operation initiated by
Lucien Febvre and Ma1·c Bloch in 1929 brings us back to the narrower
historical context of the post-War years, that is to the last four
decades. The founcling of the Sixth Section of the Ecole Pratique des
Hautes Etudes (which in 1975 became the Ecole des Hautes Etudes
en Sciences Sociales) for the study of economic and social sciences
dislocated some of the concrete factors of the situation. Henceforth,
the historians of Annoles had at their disposal, apart from the
journal itself, an establishment for teaching and research-teaching
based exclusively on original research and not on the repetition and
reproduction of conventional knowledge- created outside the Uni
versity and competing with it. furnishing them with a base for
experimentation and development. Here they were able to bring
together the disciplines among which they wished to stimulate a
dialogue--between history, sociology and economics at the outset,
and then with psychology, anthropology and linguistics- and
recruit individuals whom they considered most suited to the
enterprise: an original mingling of personalities drawn from well
known universities, and young researchers still on the fringes of
academic life, to which were added in the sixties a number of foreign
scholars such as I. Sachs, D. Thorner, E. Balasz etc., often living in
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