nm0091: right that's a clash with something i was going to announce so 
Wednesday first of December what's coming around if if you're interested or 
think you might be interested in er continuing er and doing a an M-A course er 
and maybe going on from there doing research or whatever er we are have a 
session next er week for you er so no obligation so just pop along if you're 
interested and you'd like to know more about it basically er tomorrow afterno-, 
er next er week er first of December in the afternoon er if you can't make any 
of those times and er would like to see the people obviously you can drop in at 
another time but that that's the idea is to sort of just give you a a general 
sort of intr-, in-, introduction to the idea of er er carrying on in the 
academic world rather than getting into the outside world er some of us have 
never got out you see so we er can't imagine why anyone else would but er no 
it's a good thing have a have a look at it 
nm0091: 
the Annales the early years sounds like some sort of epic doesn't it you know 
like Godfather one the Annales year year one or the early years er i always 
start a sort of started with three men and a journal but the way i want to 
start it is with i tell this story it's completely true i i went to this er 
lecture it's now about eighteen months ago which was the worst lecture by a 
historian i have ever seen in my entire life i know you've experienced a few 
[laughter] you think but i tell you this was stellar this was absolutely 
stellar and it was by someone who's widely believed to be one of the greatest 
historians in er er practising today and because he was you know a great man 
enormous quantities of people were there it was in the senate house in er of 
every historian you've ever read i think who's still alive was there watching 
this thing and he's introduced and he's a French guy and he spoke with a sort 
of slightly Antoine de Caune accent which added to the ch-, sort of charm of 
the occasion er obviously and he 
spoke complete drivel [laughter] it was absolutely amazing most of it related 
to a an overhead which he had which was a graph and as graphs do it went up and 
then it came down and then went up again and then it went down and the entire 
hour was spent with him sort of saying and it goes up here [laughter] and he 
obviously didn't know how to sort of turn his own graph p-, er his own O-H-P so 
he had a man in a j-, sort of uniform a flunkey [laughter] with a sort of crest 
who sort of march out and sort of like take and put on the next one up down you 
know and then he'd sort of talk about this it was absolutely terrible of course 
he hadn't realized which you know is one of the early techniques they tell us 
when we're learning to be lecturers that you actually point at something on the 
O-H-P machine you know and you can see the finger it's so he didn't realize 
this absolutely enormous lecture theatre the O-H-P was about twenty feet high 
and he had a small stick and he 
was jumping up [laughter] pointing up down up and it was absolutely and of 
course you know at these occasions like this you know great man everyone's real 
like really embarrassed [laughter] really really truly embarrassed so whenever 
he cracked a joke there was like hysterical laughter [laughter] you know just 
like that actually and then it stopped you know you knew that everyone was 
think-, oh my God we've got to s-, sort of go back to it and you know at the 
end of it and everyone applauded and er w-, said what a great lecture it was at 
the end of it obviously because he is a great man and that is the moral of the 
story we were all sitting there and suffering because this guy is supposed to 
be the living embodiment of the Annales School whose early years my link er we 
will be talking about today he was Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie as i say a very very 
fine historian on a terrible off day and the only reason as i say people were 
there people were so respectful people 
were so silent people laughed at his jokes er people didn't tell him how 
appalling it all was was because of this sort of sense of er awe almost or 
certainly incredible respect which people have for the Annales tradition which 
he as i say is the sort of latest embodiment for so this is serious stuff this 
is stuff if you like that historians take with that sort of er er seriousness 
when c-, you know when faced by a a bad lecture of these stellar proportions 
they s-, they still hang on i-, hang on in there so people put up with it 
because as i say he's a a living embodiment of a historical tradition which is 
revered the Annales er which i guess we would say since over the last fifty 
years if we took it back say to the Second World War we'd say with Marxism it's 
probably been the most influential er what should we say tradition of 
historical scholarship er in er in world history not just in England but in 
fact in England in some ways it's not as important as as elsewhere but in w-, 
in global er er terms 
in nineteen-forty-five it was still very much a French er thing and i think the 
early years which i'll sort of take through to the to nineteen-forty-five this 
er er today will be about er er that sort of French phase if you like but it's 
in the fifties and particularly the sixties and seventies that the the 
tradition er the school the Annales School goes global gets an enormous er sort 
of er er wide le-, wide er er level of er respect across the world and it's a 
form of social history a form of social history and that's something i'd hold 
on to and talk about which is very much admired and very much emulated and what 
we're looking at today is the origins of that er movement as i say as in the 
last fifty years incredibly influential among er historians and it starts 
around a journal a journal which still runs and which er now i'm going to do 
what i this terrible lecture did and sort of point upwards er but er which 
starts in nineteen-twenty-nine has gone through a number of titles it's changed 
its titles i 
couldn't remember the exact date actually but a few years ago er now er and a 
journal which has had a very great level of continuity and consistency in 
editorial policy we still re-, have it in the er you know every every history 
department which has a library has the Annales and we have the Annales so you 
can go and check it out and we've got it back i think in a-, in in this library 
through to the forties i don't think we go back to nineteen-twenty-nine but you 
can get the whole set in most er most er er libraries which go back that far 
and its foundation in er nineteen-twenty-nine by two men er Lucien Febvre who 
is b-, er the editor from the early years and died in nineteen-fifty-eight and 
Marc Bloch the er medieval historian who was killed by the er Nazis in er 
nineteen-forty-four and the other great figure er of the Annales Fernand 
Braudel which before he died in the early nineties he he was you know the heir 
to the Annales tradition which Le Roy Ladurie has followed up on er who was the 
editor of the er who er no 
sorry that's not er that's a mistake he's editor from er the late forties er 
through to er his death in the nineties so a sort of tremendous er continuity 
and then this man here Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie who comes on stream in the 
nineteen-sixties and is still in fact on the editorial er board so a n-, a 
tradition if you like i mean i've been to it's one of those things where when 
there's a conference people say well let's get s-, get some member of the 
Annales tradition to talk about the Annales School and so they c-, they have 
the lecture heading the Annales School by Le Roy Ladurie or whoever and the 
first thing they always say is there is no Annales School it's not a school 
it's a scholarly tradition it's a you know a school suggests there's a doctrine 
and as we see you know a single doctrine or a dogma is something which it 
doesn't have the er but on the other hand it has a sort of r-, approach which 
is consistent enough for people to sort of pick it out as a tradition if you 
like or a school of er 
school of thinking and it represents and it represented i think in nineteen-
twenty-nine what Lucien Febvre actually sort of s-, thought he was doing he 
described it as a new kind of history so let's put that on the board and put it 
in inverted commas a new kind of history but quote from Lucien Febvre pan in 
you know as this is the you know we're doing this filmically after all pan in o-
, in nineteen-twenty-nine to a small Parisian garret actually i'm making this 
up [laughter] now i don't know [laughter] nineteen-twenty-nine two men however 
in are are sort of sitting round a table at least er er together talking about 
this new journal that they're going to establish one is Lucien Febvre who's er 
a sixteenth century er specialist the other is the medievalist very 
distinguished as he becomes er Marc Bloch they're young men they survey the 
histori-, the histor-, historical scene as i'm sure some of my younger 
colleagues do today and they look around and they say well look at 
all those bloody fuddy-duddies at the top of this er this m-, this er academic 
establishment you know they've been trained in another generation they have a 
sense er they are out of touch with interesting things that are going on er in 
the in the world what they do in nineteen-twenty-nine they look round and say 
well the the sort of high spots of the historical profession are in the 
Sorbonne you know sort of Paris er university er represented by er actually in 
many ways looking back at what is a very fine historian but who becomes a sort 
of like whipping boy for er hang on sorry i'm s-, completely misspelling that 
er Seignobos Charles Seignobos good historian but for them you know the the 
worst imaginable influence on history at the Sorbonne because the type of 
history that he represents and the type of history that he does represent is we 
on this course would say would be essentially Rankean i guess it would be that 
the historian by now has become even more professionalized because there are 
universities with university history departments in a way that there weren't 
when Ranke wrote where people specialize in particular periods so we have an 
intense sense of specialism er where the history is text based usually based on 
texts in archives which are drawn from official government er repositories 
government theref-, er sorry er history therefore which is essentially small 
scale in its orientation er not only small scale but you would say perhaps they 
didn't use the word but politicocentric in which politics is absolutely at the 
heart of what they do just as it di-, it was for for von Ranke er a minister 
dies a king rises to power er a mistress falls from power or whatever you know 
that so that type of history which is moreover narrative highly narrative in 
its er mode of exposition sh-, tells a story if you like the story is a 
chronicle of er of the state if you like or the politics of the state er 
history which is intensely Eurocentric in other words where what is of 
you know what historians do is European history first of all and secondly when 
they look outside Europe it's nearly always with the er imperial er gesture 
about their their they their their view of the rest of the world so the rest of 
the world just comes into the story the narrative if you like as places to be 
subjected to European power that is why they're in history if you like so 
intensely Eurocentric highly positivistic by which we mean shall we say 
emphasizing a cult of facts and these facts are derived from archives and 
they're put together by the historian out there trying to find out how things 
really were just a little motto from the past there er and put together in this 
narrative mode and so the historian's like a sort of er you know the 
historian's out there on the beach the beach is the archive and you pick up the 
pebbles and you sort of like take them home and you arrange them in a sort of 
like a beach-like structure and that's that's your er that's what the historian 
does 
or he's like a butterfly collector if you like he collects the butterflies puts 
them in a nice little case that's that's history it's small scale it's sa-, 
safe it is p-, highly professional it is these two men say intensely boring you 
know i mean it's got its skills it's got its expertise you know it has its 
place in the world all the rest of it it s-, feels confident about itself but 
in nineteen-twenty-nine is history shi-, m-, purely and simply about butterfly 
collection if you like or pebble er amassing er pebbles after all this is a 
moment of intense er turbulence er in not just European history or French 
history although it is in that but in world history is too nineteen-twenty-nine 
after all is the year of the world crash the economic slump of the great crash 
of er nineteen-twenty-nine it's absolutely halfway as you know er though they 
didn't know that at the time of course between the two world wars at this sort 
of moment of intense European er tension er erupting onto the European 
scene are not just sort of new politicians new mistresses new kings or whatever 
but collective forces collective political forces fascism communism er 
collective political movements if you like are very much there in the f-, in 
the forefront er of political er events and new forms of politics new types 
ways of doing thing are er emerging and that is a a patte-, er er tha-, that is 
a development which has its irrational as well as its rational side you only 
have to think about the ideology of Marxism or or or fascism history seems to 
carry on with butterfly collection or amassing its pebbles blithely 
disregarding anything that's going on in the outside er world and indeed and 
this is part of the charge which Febvre and luci-, Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch 
bring against the history not only are is are historians unresponsive and you 
know completely immaterial to this sort of thing other intellectual traditions 
are open to this type er to to to this sort of spirit of turbulence and change 
and trying to understand it and historians seem to have opted out that's the 
it's a sort of intellectual treason of the clerks if you like they've sort of 
moved out of er interest in in you know th-, the the the realities of their own 
day so professional has history become that they're completely uncommitted 
completely uninvolved unengaged you only however have to look at other of the 
disciplines which are current at that time to realize a whole bunch of other 
intellectuals are interested in these things er far more than historians in 
economics obviously the er economics schools Marxism or anti-Marxist schools 
like er Schumpeter or or or whoever er in sociology you've got the influence of 
Max Weber who's trying to you know whose disciples after all have tried to 
understand society how society works you've got Durkheim and Pareto er you've 
got er er in anthropology you've got people like James Frazer you've got 
Malinowski going out to the South Seas trying to sort of understand the ways in 
which 
other societies operate n-, not just through the sort of imperial lens if you 
like but in terms of their own er values and er er and societies in Freud we've 
got er sorry in psycho-, er in psychology and in psychoanalysis we have Freud 
trying to understand the irrational in human er nature historians and this 
would be the charge have nothing to say to these men and women there is as it's 
as if history has so shut off not just from the wider world but from other 
intellectual er disciplines er that it has become you know completely out of er 
out of phase with its own age out of phase with other er er disciplines and 
Lucien Febvre and er er Marc Bloch try and change all that and two the two 
people funnily enough that they say are most influential looking back on these 
early days and say what were we trying to do and who influenced us they say 
well two people were crucial to us and one was they could have said if they 
were German they would have said Max er Weber obviously but the French sort 
of equivalent in some ways of er Weber Emile Durkheim his idea that i mean his 
study of suicide as a mass phenomenon of of modern urban society his er 
analysis of religion as a social fact which er i mean which again you can see 
very much in Weber er as well his his idea on s-, er on society as something 
which has to un-, to be understood in its own terms if you like and something 
which just a political er glance at will you know not do justice to the variety 
the richness and the complexity of any past er er society and the other person 
that they pick up on and this is a totally you know if you asked er just about 
anyone they wouldn't know who the hell this is er Vidal de la Blache Vidal de 
la Blache is a geographer actually i think geography you know this is one of 
the big most int-, interesting and in-, influential aspects of the Annales 
tradition the sense that history takes place in space somewhere you know it 
doesn't just happen anywhere space isn't just a neutral thing that you sort of 
think 
oh it could have happened here there or everything space actually er counts er 
the spatial that history the past if you like has a spatial dimension which 
historians have wi-, with their politicocentric just politics you know small 
scale all the rest of it s-, close periodization they've lost sight of this and 
so what er Bloch and er er er Febvre try and pick up on is a sense of space so 
it actually matters that the House of Commons and the House of Lords are close 
to each other but distant as well and you can't get in f-, to one from one to 
the other very er easily it actually matters that er the er that certai-, that 
Versailles is where it is for example and that there are political social 
economic cultural consequences if you like which come from the fact er the 
facts of space which historians have completely er er er sort of er disregarded 
so what Febvre and er Marc Bloch try and er do d-, what they try and sort of 
attempt if you like is to open eyes or take away blinkers 
or the way the which they'd describe it open doors onto other disciplines 
history has become closeted in itself a little sort of historical ivory tower 
the idea would be let's and they they have a wonderful quote which is in the 
editorial of the first i-, issue i-, er where they say you know if you go into 
universities it's as if you've two groups of people passing each other in the 
corridors that and they don't know what the hell they're doing each other are 
doing they're the social scientists the economists the sociologists er the 
psychologists in one camp the historians on the other they just have no way of 
talking to each other they're in the same building even you know but they don't 
er don't relate they don't communicate and one of the first things they try and 
do is to have basically and establish as a as a house rule of this new journal 
which they're establishing in nineteen-twenty-nine er the Annales an open door 
policy onto any type 
of er human or social er science anything which talks about and the way they 
talk about it is man anything man is the object history is one angle into it if 
you like but for it for it to be a good history it has to be a history which 
somehow connects up with what hist-, what non-historians do er who are 
interested in man as well what sociologists psychologists er er geographers and 
all the rest er do so straight from and i think you know if you're talking 
about crucial things if you like for the for the Annales group you would say 
interdisciplinary an open door policy if you like from history into other areas 
of er histori-, o-, of er er analysis of society and of analysis of man in er 
in society and that is a line that is a line which is held to very very firmly 
i mean extremely polemically i should say er in the nineteen-thirties and 
nineteen-forties as i say poor old Seignobos gets a regular whipping you know 
in the pages of the editorials to the journals he's the sort of bad old 
history they want to get rid of you know they want to introduce this sort of 
vibrant and interesting er sort of er type of er history which is open to other 
disciplines which is anti specialist and anti small scale and anti small scale 
which thinks about society as something big which thinks about big process if 
you like er not just small scale er stuff going o-, on in er i-, in someone you 
know in a ministerial cabinet or in the king's bedroom er or or whatever 
interesting no doubt though that would be er they're against the idea that the 
past has to be studied solely through or by centring or privileging the 
political element society the past is about more than just the political elite 
more than just what is found er in archives it is therefore a history which 
will be open to the idea that other forms of evidence exist in the past which 
are non-written so in other words you can only get at certain forms of of the 
past and understand the past fully if you turn yourself 
into for example a geographer an archaeologist a field wor-, walker or worker 
er or or or whatever so other types of sourc-, er visual sources as well why 
not if you're working on the Middle Ages why not for God's sake look at 
manuscript illuminations why not why just as medieval historians would do at 
least in the Seignobos er model just look at what's written underneath them the 
visual can be as as as important er an element of er understanding the past as 
as as as written er sources anti-Eurocentric so in other words let's be 
interested in well in a way it's a sort of Rankean thing like you know your 
understanding of the past in its own terms let's try and understand er the 
Trobriand Islands or er east African tribal groupings in their terms as as 
societies in the past not just in terms of you know the Europeans came and they 
started to have a history er and that history is only refracted through the 
relationship they have with the er er metropolitan power let's think about how 
that society works let's 
let's let's work on it as a sociologist of of of another type of society a 
society they call a primitive society we wouldn't use the term er today so much 
er er but you know open up a a way from Eurocentrism to a more sort of measured 
acceptance that all types of societies er are er susceptible to a historical er 
gaze and it's a history moreover which isn't as individual orientated it's not 
the great men of the past you know Colbert Louis the Fourteenth and all that 
shower it's what about the peasants what about the workers what about s-, these 
wider social forces can we understand the past in terms of them because if they 
are as they are in the nineteen-twenties and thirties such a shaping influence 
er on on politics on the way societies are being conducted in this period 
surely we need as historians to understand how these things operate in the in 
the past so this will be a new kind of history as Lucien er Febvre a new shall 
we put it again paradigm a new in another way a new 
paradigm for history a history which moves out of the the Rankean er paradigm 
with which to a certain extent we're still all familiar er and offers a new 
type of history open to the social the social er as the crucial element for 
understanding er people in the past let's so that's the sort of theory what 
about in practice how does it actually pan out what what does the new kind of 
history mean apart from people standing on their editorial soapboxes and 
mouthing off every so often about this that er and the other so let's have a 
look at some new kinds of history er according to Bloch some some new kinds of 
history read Marc Bloch's Historian's Craft that's what you got to do on the 
that's the next seminar er that will give you an insight into some of the 
things i've just been saying and it will be an attempt to to theorize if you 
like to talk about er what this new kind of approach which i've been outlining 
actually means for the practice of history how a historian will actually er 
work and that book written in the nineteen-forties is a 
sort of handbook or vade mecum if you like of this new kind of er history er 
but i think as a general rule i think it remai-, it it's it's true to say that 
histor-, and i think it's a great book and it's a terrific read and all the 
rest of it but however good it is historians are probably better at doing 
history than talking about it it's a general rule you know that we're better at 
being historians than talking about being historians or understanding or 
theorizing the historical process and i think Marc Bloch Lucien Febvre are you 
know they have their theory but w-, you have to look at their work if you like 
to understand exactly what's going on what is new what is novel what is er 
innovatory let me take a book to start with b-, from Lucien Febvre er he writes 
a book which is called Unbelief well it's translated as Unbelief in the Age of 
Rabelais Rabelais the sixteenth century er er writer madman writer and what 
he's doing there he's picking up the question of atheism now th-, 
atheism would be a good thing for a French historian to be interested in 
because anticlericalism since the eighteenth century has been one the dominant 
and you know sort of endless tropes of French history anticlericalism so in a 
way what Lucien Febvre is doing is saying well let's go back to the sixteenth 
century and you know what is anticlericalism there can people you know are 
people anticlerical is atheism possible if you like er in the er er sixteenth 
er century and he's coming up against many people who've looked at Rabelais and 
said you know this is a you know this an anticlerical like a classic sort of 
third republic anticlerical er writer who sort of endlessly criticizes the 
church endlessly satirizes religious figures sends up with great humour and er 
er sort of brio er many essential er s-, er sort of aspects of the sacred what 
Febvre says is we can only answer that question if we understand the context 
and the values in wh-, with which Rabelais er was 
was working that to import you know our sort of sense of what anticlericalism 
is or might be or whatever from the nineteenth or twentieth century and import 
it into the sixteenth century is committing what Marc Bloch in that book calls 
the cardinal sin of the historian and the cardinal sin of the historian is 
anachronism bringing in other words your values your ideas from a later period 
and just plonking them in the middle of the sixteenth century i don't know if 
you've ever seen that famous er Hollywood picture of er j-, er er with Marlon 
Brando as Marc you know Julius Caesar r-, it's a really great er nineteen-
fifties edition and Marlon Brando is Marc Anthony it's great it's great but 
they're i-, they're all around Marc Anthony saying friends Roman countrymen and 
they all at the end of the speech hurl up their hands from their togas and you 
see several people are carrying carrying wi-, wristwatches so you think oh my 
God that's completely ruined it for me i'm a historian i 
can't enjoy anything where there is anachronism er in it well the cardinal sin 
of the er of the historian for Bloch is anachronism w-, if we a-, want to 
understand what atheism is in Rabelais' age we have to think about it not in 
terms of a checklist of points we've got from the nineteenth and twe-, 
twentieth century we have to think about it in terms of the own values and 
ideas and belief systems of the sixteenth century and Febvre says if you try 
and do it that way and his argument becomes atheism is unthinkable in the 
sixteenth century it is unthi-, because there is no and this is a a phrase he 
uses which has sort of entered the er historical vocabulary there is no mental 
equipment for a sixteenth century person to think about a world in which there 
is no God there is no mental equipment outillage mental er there is no mental 
equipment for him to er him or her to do that so you can only think in terms of 
the beliefs with a o-, of a a belief system of a particular er 
period er God is so rooted into the er er sort of ways of understanding matter 
the ways of understanding society the way of understanding men and women in 
society that it is impossible to suddenly sort of lift them out of the of the 
picture it is impossible therefore to be an atheist you can be critical of the 
church you can be you know s-, er criticize certain views ab-, which the church 
holds but it's impossible to believe i-, in no no God because otherwise you 
wouldn't you wouldn't exist okay there would be no way of thinking about about 
yourself so what he's saying is that pe-, the collective attitudes of people 
are resistant to certain types of things okay that there is a sort of well the 
term which again if you think Annales if you think Annales you think this word 
mentalités you think a few other words as well but er which we'll talk about 
mentalité less ideas well i don't mean ideas you know the ideas of the past 
what we mean is if you like like that mental equipment idea if you like the 
sort of preconditions of having ideas the mental frameworks with i-, which 
people are equipped er with which they do their thinking okay the mentalités 
the underlying okay and we're using a metaphor there but the underlying set of 
values and sort of frameworks of belief er which people have and the idea will 
be and i'll give you an illustration of that in a in a minute that people in 
the sixteenth century have a set of mentalités of mentalities er which are 
resistant to them thinking certain types of things okay atheism is literally 
unintelligible er in the sixteenth century because of this sort of importance 
of mentalités many s-, historians of the sixteenth century now i think looking 
back would say well this is nonsense in fact you know we need to think about 
ideas differently and you know that he's been much criticized on that point but 
i want to s-, insist on it here because i think it's such a good 
illustration of the way of thinking of the of the Annales and they say you can 
think about atheism and that there's atheists in the m-, Middle Ages and all 
the rest of it but they they do still think of it in terms of the mental 
structures the mental structures that'd be a way to think about it of of the 
past and understanding beliefs only in terms of those mental er structures 
nm0091: let's switch to another type of er er Annales style new kind er of 
history and er through Marc Bloch well Marc Bloch there are two great books 
which you might er have read if you've done any French history or medieval 
history one is French Rural er History er well it's translated as French Rural 
History which is er a wonderful exemplar i think of the and which he sort of 
goes back and just talks about the countryside and the place of the countryside 
in French history and how it's formed and how important it is and what its 
important changes er are this is a history which is done with Bloch as 
a historian and an extraordinarily gifted historian but also as a an 
archaeologist as an expert in place names as a student of the landscape er er 
et cetera et cetera so it's a it's a good example of that sort of open door 
sort of multidisciplinary interdisciplinary sort of approach which is very much 
at the heart of the Annales er tradition the other work which he er again if 
you've di-, er did medieval society you might have done this er feudal society 
which again at the time i mean now we think oh feudal society big deal at the 
time it was actually seen as extraordinarily innovatory that one could take all 
those which existed which were called feudal er in the Middle Ages and try and 
work out if you like what Weber would probably have called a sort of ideal type 
of u-, of er feudal society how feudal societies operate so you don't not just 
talking about one you know er where there's a king or there's a duke or a a 
vassal or whatever you're talking about ha-, ha-, er feudal society as as a 
generic group as a sociologist would 
look at say modern societies or mass society er or whatever so history the 
historian becomes in feudal society a sort of retrospective sociologist writing 
the sociology of the past okay so those two examples i would give you an exam-, 
er you know is sort of examples of this er tradition but let me er report on 
the another book which i think is one of his best i really really love this 
book er and he wrote it in nineteen-twenty-four it's not one of his most famous 
books but it is i think er very striking it's the book and those of you who've 
done my course on er medicine will know me know me heard me banging on about 
this before so i apologize for that but it's a book which appeared in nineteen-
twenty-four er only translated in English interestingly in the late er nineteen-
seventies which is about the royal touch and the royal touch is the belief that 
er from the Middle Ages onwards from sort of twelfth century it really kicks in 
although there's some sense that it might have existed before then but 
the belief is that the kings of France and England er have miraculous powers 
thaumaturgic powers p-, miraculous powers and that individuals who are 
suffering from a disease which becomes called becomes known as the king's evil 
the king's evil and which is scrofula scrofula er which is er tuberculosis 
scrofula of the of the lymph gland especially er essentially er scrofula so a 
skin disease it's a very disfiguring skin disease er that er they have the 
miraculous powers er over of curing this so that every well quite frequently in 
the er er in the sort of er royal year the ceremonial year various individuals 
would be wheeled out suffering from this disease and the king will touch them 
king of England king of France would touch them and say God i the king touches 
you actually what he says is the king touches you and God cures you and then 
they go away and the idea is they should be cured now anyone looking at this as 
a sort of Seignobos style historian you know 
politics you know important political stuff political narrative you know this 
is this is irrational crap you know this is this is superstition you know we're 
not intere-, that's not really something a historian needs to be interested in 
you know because it's just the sort of you know the sort of stuff of history 
which isn't terribly terribly interesting or certainly very er important er and 
it's irrational it's about popular irrational beliefs and we know it couldn't 
possibly happen 'cause we're all good positivists er we don't believe in this 
er sort of thing so Bloch is taking something which is if you like in the 
dustbin of the historian's cra-, er er the historical er community okay 
something which is there we've got some records of but no one's really er 
looked at much apart from a few antiquarians who've not really put it together 
and what bl-, what er Bloch says is let's well let's look at that as a belief 
system as part of a belief system which when you 
think about it is incredibly enduring you know now we may be very er sort of 
sceptical about the efficacity of the royal touch in this way i should think we 
mo-, nearly everyone would be er er sceptical about that but nevertheless how 
do we explain that something which is coming in in the er in the er twelfth 
century lasts centuries nearly a millennium er in fact because the last 
touching for the king's evil er is done er in England er in the early part of 
the seventeenth century by er sorry eighteenth century by Queen Anne er Samuel 
Johnson in fact if you you know the er dictionary man goes and tries to be 
touched by the for the king's evil but they don't give it to him they don't 
touch they refuse by then in France they're carrying on way into the w-, well 
up to the revolution Louis the Sixteenth had his coronation touches well over 
two-thousand people for the er scrofula er er so they're lining up in in fact 
and when the Bourbons come back after eighteen-fifteen i'm er sh-, sure you 
remember all this stuff er 
Charles the Tenth is touching them at his coronation in eighteen-twenty-seven 
so this is a belief which goes twelfth century nineteenth century and there's 
no shortage of people turning up so what's going on you know something which 
must be irrational is going on now if you say well it's just superstition it's 
irrational but surely the irrational irrational beliefs irrational mass beliefs 
are actually quite an interesting topic in a Europe which is dominated by 
Nazism and fascism so maybe we could you know try and understand what's going 
on there if you like in much the way a sociologist or a cultural analyst or 
whatever of the nineteen-twenties would be trying to understand er er an-, and 
the un-, understand the er er s-, stand-, this er in in their own society and 
what we have therefore is a study of why people and how people believe and how 
beliefs are kept in place if you like i mean and there is a that is a 
multilayered story obviously just establishing what was happening is important 
but 
was is going on there as well what he picks up very clearly er obviously as you 
would expect is the way in which the kings of France see that this is a good 
thing for their own authority and their power to be attributed this miraculous 
er power so in fact in becomes part of dynastic propaganda in both England and 
France er that they have this sort of miraculous power so if you're up against 
your over mighty subjects you know it's not a bad thing to have up your sleeve 
that you're also well known to be a miraculous er miracle er worker and indeed 
that does happen without any question of a doubt it gets written in to the 
propaganda story the pr-, the script if you like and er of of the of the dynast 
of the dynasties but also it f-, infiltrates into the rituals of kingship the 
way in which kingship operates over this particular period and so maybe power 
isn't just about er in other words kings sort of having passing laws or 
parliaments passing laws which are then you know believed or not believed or 
put into effect or not put into effect maybe one the things one one of one of 
the ways in which power operates is through irrational beliefs is through the 
promotion of ideological er sort of takes on what power er consists in okay i 
haven't put that very well that that basically er the royal touch i-, er is 
built into royal ceremonies royal rituals er roy-, r-, er royal procedures in a 
way which plays up er the importance of their power and obviously you know 
becomes part of absolutist power if you're a king by divine right what better 
proof that you're of divine right and therefore not to be resisted er than that 
you can perform er er miracles so it's interesting in the interest in the 
rituals the ceremonies and the symbols of kingship and seeing that as part of m-
, of political authority not just er you know er what er s-, a Seignobos type 
of historian would er look at it's a multiperiod thing you know this is talking 
about a millennium this is not Marc Bloch talking about as a medievalist he's 
going from the 
Middle Ages and ending up in the nineteenth century it's er a it's er ori-, 
it's a er around a problem if you like a problem of belief not a not a sort of 
you know what happened in so and so a ministry it's a a massive political and 
sociological problem and it is moreover something which is a story which cannot 
be told as a chronology okay so the narrative mode which is the sort of 
classical as we know Rankean sort of approach you know you tell a story in a 
very straightforward way is simply not possible with a story like that so you 
have deal it with it in layers you have to sort of like outline what the 
propaganda element is what the ceremonial element is if you like and and to 
sort of have a much more structured and less narrative a br-, you break up the 
chrono-, chronology if you like break up the narrative and and er er sort of er 
er re-, reconceptualize the modes of er er narrat-, no no not modes of 
narrative well d-, m-, modes of er er the word's gone d-, out of mind the way 
in which 
you you argue yeah modes of argumentation let's say that okay course one of the 
interesting things he then gets into is why do people believe you know okay 
it's i-, you know you can say well they're encouraged to believe because the 
symbolism and all the rest but but wh-, how come you know you'd expect if all 
these thousands of people turning up then they're all going away they've been 
touched by the king's er hand and they well presumably not all of them are 
going to be cured in fact one would think an-, none of them would be cured and 
yet they still carry on believing this well he has a sort of analysis of this i 
mean one of the crucial elements in it obviously as you probably er have 
guessed is what's called the the placebo effect which we still see tog-, today 
if you you endlessly turn up to your doctor and ask for medicine medicine 
medicine medicine after a while they give you a sort of like bit of chalk and 
they say we've got this great new drug try this er they don't tell 
you it's chalk and you you consume it and then you go back and you say that new 
that medicine you gave me is fabulous i loved it and it really works in other 
words auto-suggestion er can be a you know crucial part of cure and presumably 
that's what's going on you know these people are going up there and they're 
sort of being touched and they thi-, they've oh i feel much better now they say 
and they walk away actually also scrofula's quite a good disease to have that 
effect moreover because it's one of those diseases where the symptoms come in 
and then they go into remission so actually the cure might just be that some of 
the symptoms of the horrible skin disease disappear so people think they've 
been cured so in other words you have to understand why people believe 
something which is not you know which is falsifiable you know we no unless you 
believe in miracles there is no way that these things could could occur yet 
people still do believe in them 
and one of the other and i think it's a fascinating and er absolutely on the on 
the spot on the ball sort of er analysis that he does he says what is 
interesting is that you know the be-, the belief stops in er the practice shall 
we say stops in the early eighteenth century in England e-, early nineteenth in 
France if it had carried on there would still be people lining up er but the 
point is by the end the political elite have given up on the belief they don't 
en-, actually it's the p-, it's the kings who don't believe in their miraculous 
power which is the real reason for the decline of this not you know that people 
have all become much more enlightened or whatever it's because the kings have 
no longer belie-, er belon-, longer believe this and i think he says the m-, 
the sort of sign of this and i think it's a wonderful little historical touch 
he says if you look at w-, the what they said the traditional s-, traditional 
er formula they use when the kings touch the s-, scrofula person so i'm sort of 
beckoning not towards you namex there [laugh] but it's just generally they they 
sort of er the king er the king touches you le roi te touche er Dieu te guérit 
God cures you so the king touch you God cures you like that he says what is 
interesting in the well it's right in the end of the seventeenth century but it 
becomes current in the eighteenth century period of re-, relative religious 
indifference and er er secularism the s-, the formula changes and the king says 
le roi te touche the king touches you Dieu te guérisse may God cure you okay a 
shift from the indicative to the subjunctive which he says in opens up a space 
of uncertainty a space of uncertainty which in that you know in terms of a s-, 
symbolic structure which has lasted for over half a millennium is absolutely 
fatal to the belief because it shows that kings are no longer believing that 
the ki-, the divine power is sort of shooting through their bodies and out of 
their their fingers there is an 
element of doubt an element of uncertainty an element of scepticism so 
wonderful work i think which is picking up on this idea of mentalités which 
can only be understood in a way in er long t-, periods of times and by breaking 
up breaking apart completely fragmenting the normal way in which history er is 
done so what i've been trying to er open up today is what is seen at the time 
in France particularly comes more widespread a-, a-, after later on elsewhere a 
new kind of history a history resolutely orientated around the social er er a 
history which understands the social not just in terms of professional 
historical expertise but in terms of an open door policy an interdisciplinary 
approach er to the er to the past and if you're looking at the twenti-, la-, la-
, late twenties and thirties and you look at this work you this is a a book of 
this is an edito-, these editorials this is a journal of contestation of you 
know outsiders trying to shake the Bastille of the historical er establishment 
er it's a crusading period for a new kind of history what happens just after 
the Second World War is that the values have totally changed because the 
Bastille falls essentially the Sorbonne the type of history which is 
established by er Seignobos and the Sorbonne that traditional Rankean view is 
completely overtaken as higher education in France and the historical sort of 
structure of the profession if you like in France after forty-five is 
completely changed they bring in new types of er er sort of er research schools 
which are headed by the Annales group Marc Bloch has died in nineteen-forty-
four Lucien Febvre is still very much around and he becomes the director of 
this sort of new research school er which has all these other groupings all 
these other sort of social scientists within it and they have a historian and 
this very celebrated historian er withi-, wi-, at the heart of it now 
that seems to me you know a crucial thing for understanding the Annales as a 
phenomenon as an intellectual phenomenon because from ninet-, nineteen-forty-
five nineteen-forty-six onwards they are at the heart of the sort of 
intellectual establishment they cut you know they storm the Bastille they've 
taken over the establishment they have now institutional power for implementing 
if you like for putting into effect for encouraging for stimulating this new 
kind of history right across the board and i think actually if you're 
interested in intellectual patronage i think you know these guys are experts at 
it they really do a very very er good job and what they try and introduce and 
the term is being used by Lucien Febvre quite quite a lot in the thirties but 
then particularly in the forties and fifties is in this sort of institutional 
framework where historians sit down with to to dinner and lunch and have a 
drink with sociologists and psychiatrists and all the rest of it let's go for a 
total history a history which brings it all in which isn't all those 
Seignobosian 
you know politicocentred na-, narrative all the rest of it but which tries to 
sort of understand the past as an ent-, as a total entity okay and in nineteen-
forty-nine er if you look at the editorials he says we've found the man for the 
next generation the dauphin if you like the succession for the Annales School 
will pass to a man called Fernand Braudel what we have worked for Lucien Febvre 
says is precisely the type of work which Braudel introduces in nineteen-forty-
nine just as i've said in nineteen-twenty-nine you know there's a sort of like 
seismic shift if you like in the in the way in which history is practised in 
France in nineteen-forty-nine the appearance of Braudel his great work on the 
Mediterranean er offers a new er oh well a sort of in some ways a continuation 
and exemplification of the of the new er er of the new kind of history which 
Febvre and er Bloch have er outlined and allows us to go into part two the 
Annales the later years er which will be my er topic next week