The beautiful and rich France is charming and colorful, with classical and modern coexisting, and material and spiritual progress together. Fashion, perfume, wine and Citroën cars are popular all over the world, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower and the Champs-Elysees are fascinating, the literati Hugo, Maupassant and Balzac are famous all over the world, the great thinkers Rousseau, Voltaire and Montesquieu are influenced by broadcast far. Of course, proud French people look back on the turbulent 20th century and often think with some sadness that France is in decline. However, at least in the field of history they can be proud of a great school and a master historian. This school is known as the Yearbook School, and the master historian is Fernand Braudel.
Braudel (1902-1985, also translated as Browder), the second-generation leader of the Yearbook School, long-term theoretical founder and practitioner, honorary doctorate of many famous universities, academician of the French Academy of Sciences, known as "French National Treasure" the reputation. Throughout his life, he was diligent in thinking and writing, focusing on three major themes: the Mediterranean, capitalism and France. Braudel has written three epic masterpieces: "The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II", "Material Civilization, Economy and Capitalism in the 15th and 18th Centuries" , as well as the uncompeted work The Character of France. Almost every one of his masterpieces takes 20 to 30 years, and when readers read it, it is like enjoying a majestic historical documentary. In addition, he is also the author of "The Dynamics of Capitalism", "On History", "Mediterranean Archaeology: Prehistory and Ancient History" and "Outline of Civilization History", and left a large number of manuscripts that are no longer published.
As far as the general characteristics of Western historiography are concerned, the 18th century saw the popularity of philosophy of history, the 19th century was when historicism was all the rage, and the 20th century was the birth of new historiography and its global expansion. The yearbook school is the mainstream representative of new historiography, and the name of Braudel has always been associated with the yearbook school. An indispensable basic element for the emergence and development of a school is to have a group of scholars who have been passed down from generation to generation, to form a unique set of theories and methods, to write a series of heavyweight works, and to establish a fixed academic position. The German Rank School has been able to dominate for decades, largely due to these factors. The same is true of the yearbook school. The founders of the mountain, Marco Bloch and Lucien Pfeiffer, took the lead and established the basic system of the school. Braudel was nominally the second-generation successor, but was actually the third founder of the Yearbook School. Because it was Braudel who carried forward the yearbook school and made it truly global. The third generation, Le Valladuri, Le Goff and others, forge ahead and abandon change. As far as theories and methods are concerned, although several generations of scholars of the Yearbook School have their own emphasis, they all emphasize the integration of historical research, the bottom-up view of history with ordinary people as the main body of history, and the diversification and synthesis of specific research methods. change. In addition to Braudel's numerous treatises, Bloch's Feudal Society, Le Valladouri's Montaillou, and Le Goff's St. . In the construction of academic positions, the Yearbook School has provided a successful example. In 1929, Bloch and Feffer founded the "Yearbook of Economic and Social History" at the University of Strasbourg, which is regarded as a sign of the establishment of the yearbook school. During the period of Braudel's presidency (1956--1968), it developed from an elite reading to a worldwide academic journal. During the period (1958--1972) of the sixth department (Department of Economics and Social Sciences) of the French Institute of Higher Experimental Studies (1958--1972), Braudel succeeded Feffer and built it into an academic center of French humanities and social sciences. All French social science researchers are proud to have worked in the Ministry. In the 1960s, Braudel founded the "House of Humanities" that exists today. This is an international academic platform dedicated to supporting humanities and social sciences research. It aims to establish a two-way communication system of "inviting in" and "outgoing", which has greatly promoted the influence and reputation of the Yearbook School.
Braudel's contribution to the yearbook school is obvious to all, and his own academic achievements also complement the development of the yearbook school. He is very energetic, and he can spare enough time to complete a large volume of treatises and a large number of theses in addition to the heavy editorial and administrative affairs. Braudel's life can be said to be a microcosm of the vicissitudes of life in France in the 20th century. In the turmoil like the end of the world, France retreated from a huge colonial empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to a member of the European Union system. A large number of former French colonists immigrated to mainland France. His academic research is deeply influenced by the changing times, and it is reflected in his writings.
"The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II" is Braudel's famous work, extended and revised from his doctoral dissertation. Braudel became a prisoner of war after the fall of the Maginot Line in 1940 and was held in a German fascist prisoner of war camp for five years. He basically completed the thesis in the special environment of the prisoner of war camp. His 1,300-page dissertation was approved in 1947 and was an immediate sensation when it was published in 1949. Supporters praised it as an epoch-making historical work, because the Braudel system is unique, with a broad and novel vision, rich and detailed information, and calm and elegant writing. Opponents sharply criticized him for being a geographer rather than a historian, for failing to focus on the political events and great men that traditional historiography is most concerned with. Specifically, Braudel distinguishes historical time in this book into geographic time, social time, and individual time, which are called long, medium, and short periods, respectively. Geographical time is the history of human beings and the living environment, and its changes are extremely slow, like the unfathomable seabed. Social time is a social structure and trend, and such deep-rooted forces are like deep-sea undercurrents at work behind events. Braudel explained: "'Structure' refers to an organic, tight and fairly stable relationship formed between social reality and the masses. For us historians, structure is undoubtedly architecture and framing, but It is a very durable reality. Some structures exist for a long time and become a constant factor that is passed down from generation to generation and continuous: they control the flow of history. Or hinder the development of society.” Individual time is a changing event and character, that is, a political history that changes frequently. These events and characters, while exciting, have limited impact compared to the setting and structure. With this in mind, historians should pierce the historical cloak of political events and uncover the hidden forces that affect collective existence. Starting from such a theoretical structure, he analyzed or reconstructed the Mediterranean history of the Spanish King Philip II in three parts: the environment of the Mediterranean world, the slowly changing structure and situation, and the major historical events. In his view, human beings are first and foremost prisoners of Mother Earth, and then prisoners of various social structures and trends, even if the powerful kings and various great figures in events are but prisoners of circumstances, structures and trends. Therefore, the talents and great deeds that Philip II showed were nothing but the product of structure and tendencies. This insight is largely related to his prisoner of war experience, and it is difficult for anyone without first-hand experience to understand his unique feelings about the environment, structure and trends. we are in bradell In the fascinating narration, one can't help but feel the looming color of historical pessimism. The special writing environment creates Braudel's unique ideological color. Like the "Emperor of Philosophy" Marcus Aurelius, he tried his best to think about the ultimate motive behind events, and opposed to simply exaggerating the role of wars and great men. In Braudel's description, there is almost no trace of human influence on the natural environment. Although he did not make clear predictions or make judgments about the future and destiny of mankind, he was also not optimistic. In this book, Braudel extensively draws on the achievements of other disciplines, and applies a large number of research methods in economics, such as anthropology, statistics, geography, etc., to realize the transformation of historical research from a single-line and one-dimensional model to a multi-line and multiple comprehensive model. evolution. As a result, he broke through the thick barriers between history and other disciplines, and also broke the disciplinary boundaries within history. So Braudel later concluded: "For a long time, we have looked at the experience and research of these adjacent sciences because we have recognized that it is refreshing to get in touch with them or to follow their paths. On our part, Might as well give them something."
Braudel's other famous book "Material Civilization, Economics in the 15th to 18th Centuries"and Capitalism, a classic work on capitalism studies. In the opening chapter of his "Capitalism and the 21st Century", Huang Renyu once quoted the textual research of the word "capitalism" in the book. The era of capital described by Marx and Engels is aggression and war of sword and fire, naked exploitation and oppression, class struggle and national revolution. Braudel uses a different research model. The subject of his research is a 400-year period that explores the "structure of everyday life," the fundamental part of economic problems, namely material life; Activity; depicts the "world time" when capitalism emerged and affected the world, that is, the history of the development of the capitalist economy. Braudel has both overall induction and generalization in this book. There are also detailed descriptions and statistics. It has certain significance for readers to fully understand capitalism. Braudel also intentionally ignores major historical events between the 15th and 18th centuries, such as the Reformation, the Dutch Revolution, the British Bourgeois Revolution, and the American Revolutionary War. Perhaps he did consider these events to be nothing more than "dust that dissipates in an instant"; perhaps it was because the books on them were already so numerous that he did not need to waste any more time. Of course, we can easily see from Braudel's citations that he is not very familiar with Chinese civilization, and many of his views are extremely far-fetched.
Braudel is a scholar who pursues the truth, but he does not show the face of a historical authority, but integrates profound personal emotion and humanistic concern into his writings. Born in the countryside, he is familiar with and loves French country life, and uses the time period theory to investigate French history in "Characteristics of France: History and Space" and "Characteristics of France: People and Things". In his later years, he paints country life fondly, and is actually a former farmer's reminiscence of pastoral life that has become history. So the history of France is like a meandering river, flowing through the heart of Braudel. Braudel poured an almost religious zeal on France in his writings. With him, academic research can have no borders, but historians have their own homeland. It is precisely because of this emotion that he often makes too many trivial descriptions in his treatises, which affects the coherence of his thinking.
Braudel is famous all over the world for his writings, but his career is not smooth sailing, but often encounters setbacks. For example, he once wrote the textbook "The History of Civilization" for French middle school students, trying to study world history according to the mode of civilization and promote his historical theories and methods, but he met with fierce opposition and died prematurely. Braudel was the most popular French historian in the United States, but professional historians in the United States were initially almost all negative about Braudel's theories and methods. In 1968's "May Storm", the younger generation criticized him as a representative of orthodoxy, which gave him a great shock. In the third generation of the Yearbook School, Braudel's usual grand research system is no longer the mainstream trend, and the once critical narrative and political history is rejuvenated.
Braudel, the most influential historian of the 20th century, has both the extraordinary literary talent of Herodotus and the visionary vision of Polybius. The spirit of evidence of unbelief. He wrote a powerful piece of 20th-century historiography, becoming an inescapable landmark—though not all that perfect. After all, Braudel did not and could not transcend the structures and situations that bound him.
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