nm0093: good morning how are you all all right good just a few notices just a 
reminder after this er er today er one o'clock in room H-four-o-three there's 
an open day for potential graduate students so if you're thinking of going on 
doing er er graduate work postgraduate work in er this university or elsewhere 
go along and er chat er have a discussion room H-four-o-three secondly this 
same time next week and in this room there will be a session for er students 
for third year students er er a sort of careers session b-, w-, there'll be 
publicity going up over the next week but it's targeted at you er so if you're 
thinking you might like a job at the end of all this [laughter] er [laughter] 
whatever er that is that could be helpful and useful for you so trees b-, er 
book that time this th-, this place one o'clock 
after the lecture next week and there'll be a session and then thirdly i'm told 
that there is a er sign up notice about library skills er sessions er aimed at 
second and third year students intended to focus on library reference and 
bibiliographical sources in the library and also remote sites accessed via the 
Internet er this is i mean i know you probably all know all this stuff anyway 
but particularly if you're going to do a long essay associated with your 
special subject or whatever this year this could be very helpful for you so 
there there there is a er two two times so it's on a sign up basis it'll be on 
the board one is er actually good lord it's today i wonder why i've been given 
this to to talk today it's at one o'clock so er there's again there's another 
clash er there for you er so i would just turn up and it's in er library 
training room i-, floor one of the library 
nm0093: 
the Annales we left it last week er just in the post-war moment er in which f-, 
academic life in France as most of the wester-, the rest of the western Europe 
is re-, reorganizing itself if you like in the aftermath of er er the war and 
as i argued what happens then is that er an intellectual grouping associated 
with a history periodical the Annales er which in the s-, from its inception in 
nineteen-twenty-nine through the thirties had been a crusading a crusading 
journal if you like for a new kind er of history er secures a very firm 
institutional base at the heart of the of higher education and er er the 
research establishment er within er er within France and that what that stood 
for was er a greater openness in French er in the French historical 
establishment er thereafter er towards social economic and cultural history i 
mean the the journal ref-, rec-, renamed itself as i as i mentioned last time 
the Annales has gone through a number of er changes of name er rech-, changed 
its name to Annales 
well it's usually E-S-C économies economies sociétés societies civilisation 
er economy soci-, s-, e-, economic history social history cultural history 
that's the sort of triad of values which this new type of history of the 
thirties had established a move away from the politico er er e-, political 
elitist type of narrative history which had been as i was arguing was the norm 
in er French historical departments or establishments er hither-, hitherto and 
that and this is the last point i i left you with really it is at that moment 
that there appears a work which would be the flagship if you like of the 
Annales approach which er Lucien Febvre who is the s-, the do-, doctoral 
supervisor the doctoral er of of this doctoral dissertation er f-, Lucien 
Febvre says i-, it's everything we've been looking for and waiting er for it 
will be the work of a man Fernand Braudel who had spent most of the er Second 
World War in a prisoner of war camp in Germany and there had written on old 
school er notebooks the 
core of a thesis which he'd researched er in the nineteen-thirties in a number 
of er er locations er which were sustained as a thesis and which was published 
in nineteen-forty-nine as The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the 
Age of Philip the Second published in nineteen-forty-nine author Fernand 
Braudel Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of er er Philip 
the Second the sixteenth century er broadly speaking this a classic work and if 
you're doing the Annales you do Braudel you know about this er er this work he 
had been a pupil of er Lucien Febvre a doctoral student working under Lucien 
Febvre in the nineteen-er -thirties he'd had a number of postings including one 
in São Paulo in er Argentina but had spent as i say most of the war in a 
concentration camp where he was sort of writing up very good place to write up 
i would think a as long as you can get paper and pen a conc-, a concentration 
camp doesn't have the sort of 
diversions of er er other sort of er er localities bit grim sometimes i'm sure 
but er er er publishes it nineteen-forty-nine goes into a re-edition in 
nineteen-seventy-two it is one of the classics of twentieth century 
historiography why what's so special about it and more pertinently for what 
we're saying now how does it link up to er that new kind of history why is it 
seen as a sort of er a role model a flagship of this new genre of Annales style 
history well one thing you can say about it absolutely it is not the kind of 
small scale study which Febvre and Bloch had argued before history had been 
obsessed with before you know ministries and er kings and all the rest of it it 
is er a massive it has a massive focus it is at the heart of the study is the 
history of a sea the Mediterranean Sea not even a small sea er a very big er er 
sea it's not small se-, er er small scale it is non-Eurocentric because one of 
the interesting things about this is er one of the numerous things which are 
interesting about it is that it is er a s-, er the Mediterranean is a er a sea 
which abuts on two three er continents and therefore you can write a history 
which is not as Eurocentric as most of the history had been written er hitherto 
he's as interested in other words in the southern and eastern shores of the er 
Mediterranean as its er European er er er er fringe as well it is very clearly 
an anti well even yes i think anti certainly non but even anti politicocentric 
er text as well and er br-, Braudel tells the story how of how when he was 
starting his er doctoral research he he wanted to work on the diplomatic 
history of the age of Philip the Second er and indeed that study is still there 
but it's encased er i-, within a much broader er framework as as er we'll see 
it is fourthly avowedly and very sort of magnificently interdisciplinary er 
sociology economics cultural history er demography i think that's coming in as 
well in other words the study of population in the past through 
quantitive er er m-, er materials assembled in any way through parish records 
or or whatever i think that's one of the big you know developments in post-war 
French history the way in which population history gets written into er the way 
in which French history er er is done and the other discipline i think which it 
draws very heavily on and which again goes back to the Annales sort of paradigm 
is geography er you know this is a a geographical history in fact sometimes 
called geohistory Braudel's geohistory as it you see that sometimes in er 
referred to er it's got a hero this st-, story this narrative but the hero's 
not a man or a woman it's a sea er the sea is absolutely at the heart the the 
you know the topic of the of the of the book and he goes on i mean one of one 
of the other works which he does which i think isn't quite as er as er sort of 
earth shattering as this really er on capitalism in the early modern period 
which again is goes on from this and tr-, tries to see er do a history of not 
just the s-, 
the Mediterranean but of the whole the whole world a sort of global history er 
which brings in the geographical factors in particular and which is very 
interdisciplinary er a-, and whatever so extremely interdisciplinary and this 
is something which he continues er with and another i think central feature of 
the work which i'd really highlight which i think is what brau-, one of the 
things that Braudel brings to er the Annales framework or the Annales paradigm 
and gives it a sort of very distinctive feel about is his notion of time so 
when i'm talking about fernel Fernand Braudel's time i'm not just thinking of 
the moment of Fernand Braudel the advent of for-, Fernand Braudel in the late 
forties i'm thinking also of his notion of er er er time it links his notion of 
time links back to those critiques of narrative and political narrative which 
Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch were making agai-, er er in the past er against 
that sort of political emphasis er er o-, on er er l-, er against that idea 
that history had to be told through the narrative of a ruling elite or a king 
or a ministry er or whatever and implicit in that against the idea that time is 
something which is linear linear and can be followed by a narrative er mode so 
you just you know history is what happened next er er if you like and that 
comes out er in in the way in which history er was and to a certain extent is 
written by many er er people not only is it unilinear is it it is also 
homogeneous er so basically it follows the same frameworks as political history 
how many of us not have not read something like you know Society in the Age of 
er Louis the Fourteenth or Population in Society in Victorian England so 
accepting the political framework and working within er with those for Braudel 
time i think had little to do with dates of kings and ministries er but rather 
time er pulsates to social economic cultural even geographical er rhythms in 
the preface to The Mediterranean World he 
says he sort of started on this biography well this diplomatic history rather 
of er Phillip the Second and he decided he'd work not just on Spanish 
diplomatic documents but as many diplomatic documents as he could so he look-, 
went all over the Mediterranean all over Europe looking at other er er records 
and he said there came a moment there came a moment and he got interested in 
population and society and economics and all the rest of it there came a moment 
when he s-, he s-, said he suddenly had a sort of moment of realization that 
Philip the Second who after all was going to be the hero the centre the 
absolute centre of this study was and i'm quoting more acted upon than actor he 
was plus agi qu'acteur he was more acted upon er than actor now this obviously 
is recalling and i think probably fairly consciously er the i-, er in in by 
Braudel the idea outlined by Marx in The Eighteenth Brumaire that man as er 
Marx put it makes his own history but not under conditions of his 
own choosing okay and that what i-, ca-, we can see if we're not careful as 
human freedom of choice or freedom or or or or will can sometimes be 
conditioned by social economic er all sorts of other factors which are having a 
determining but not always conscious influence on the actions of a particular 
er er person so i think from that from that moment of realization that Phillip 
the Second more acted upon than actor more a a pawn if you like in the in in in 
the in the web of er complex and interlocking determinisms than someone 
absolutely at the heart of and on top of the action which er was taking place 
under under his reign er i think Braudel builds and i-, constructs a really 
quite complicated so i'll take some time over it but i think important notion 
of time how the t-, historian should deal with er time which is after all the 
substance of what historical work is about or it certainly its mode of er er 
the way in which it unravels basically what Braudel goes on and says i from 
this realization is 
that maybe i was too obsessed and maybe other historians have been too obsessed 
with the surface if you like of the past they've just sort of like gone for the 
big political actors you know kings queens ministers er or whatever and they've 
told the story of the surface okay er a king dies a minister falls er a war 
breaks out a war ends er or whatever this is if you like the history of events 
this is er to give you another word er phrase which if you do Annales you have 
to know the Annales you have to throw this in event history or l'histoire 
événementielle entiel so you know this is definitely dinner party talk here 
l'histoire événementielle sort of narrative history event history er at the s-
, surface at the topmost surface er of of the past the most visible the most 
newsworthy if you like part of history and what Braudel argues is the 
historian's job is not just to record that not just to tell that story but also 
to er see the forces which are 
underlying it and which condition and determine it as well and the metaphor 
which he uses to to sort of get this sense that that sort of top level that 
surface level of event history is only one dimension or one a-, level of the 
story the metaphor he uses is of the sea he says basically what historians have 
been interested in the past is like the froth of history the froth you know the 
little waves going up and down a king falls war breaks out and all the rest of 
it that sort of level they followed the surface level of the er of the ocean 
but there are tides if you're the do the er if you're an oceanographer you need 
to know about tides if you're an oceanographer you need to know about the deep 
the linear history the surface history l'histoire événementielle is only one 
of what he s-, argues are three levels of if you like er of of of time which 
the historian has to try and deal er deal with now those three levels are in 
fact in The Mediterranean and Mediterranean World 
the three sections in which he he he does he divides the book and there is an 
event history as i say he started off doing diplomatic history of Philip er the 
Second and there is a sort of diplomatic history of the reign of Phillip the se-
, er Philip the Second but it's the third part and i think that's quite 
symptomatic in other words it's probably not the most important the most 
important is what comes first er and second and part one is if you like the 
deep the o-, the oceanic er metaphor the deep those deep and barely mutable 
structures within which men of the six-, and women of the sixteenth century er 
lived things like mountains islands population densities rivers if you took 
just a a if you sort of were talking about er a particular er moment like the 
sixteenth century then you know it would you wouldn't notice any move you 
wouldn't notice any history to those phenomena 'cause they seem to be immutable 
if however you took the long the the long perspective if you like if you put 
your 
framework around the sixteenth century but stretched it out if you like er you 
might see some movement after all rivers silt up er mountains have railways 
driven up through them or or or under them so in other words even geography eve-
, even some of the most er apparently unchangeable aspects of the past of of of 
of the environment in the past have their own history but for doing that you 
need to study not you know fourteenth of July seventeen-eighty-nine attack on 
the Bastille you need to see things in the long term or again the great 
Braudelian word and again something to drop a phrase to to use the longue 
durée long duration so in other words there are only s-, there are some 
historical realities which are only graspable if you take the perspective of la 
longue durée the long long er duration and so if you look at that ch-, er er 
chapter on er er the first chapter it's a very brilliant chapter er of the er 
Mediterranean Mediterranean World you'll find him talking about the 
geographical realities of the sixteenth century and these immutable realities 
but in terms a-, and using evidence which can be from the twelfth century or ma-
, might even be from the twentieth century because it's only taking the long 
framework the long longue durée that you can get that sort of er er sense of 
what the realities were in in that particular er moment what about is there 
anything between if you like la longue durée the sort of the deep of the of 
the oceans and the surface well i-, yes he says there is a second layer er 
between er the er the two and this is if you like the oce-, ocean metaphor 
tides so m-, you know waves move up a little bit of froth a little bit of froth 
er here or there or whatever but there are also tides moving them almost you 
know imperceptibly to the human eye but they are clearly er moving them er not 
not er er following the sort of very longue durée type of er time scale but a 
sort of midway 
time scale pitched between events and underlying er structures and here he's 
thinking of things like price er cycles or population trends or cultural trends 
things which you know classically might last a generation or a generation or 
two so we think of the sixteenth century we think of the price revolution er 
the er the incre-, well i'm sure you all remember this from basic two er the 
rise in prices which you know goes over the whole of the sixteenth century and 
then the seventeenth century we have a deflation of prices so you know these 
are these are the tides of history if you like which the historian also has to 
try and er realize between the events the you know day almost daily or yearly 
occurrences and these very sort of immutable history er er underneath his-, the 
past for the historian the historian's time Braudel's time then has layers it 
is not a unilinear sort of movement nor is it homogeneous you know y-, you when 
he when he's looking at er er er 
some of the sort of geographical factors he's drawing evidence from outside the 
sixteenth er er century and each of these levels each of these layers is 
following its own its own logic its own logic and its own rationality and its 
own rhythm its own temporal er rhythm and what the historian's task for Braudel 
is is firstly to be aware of and to work within that sort of tripartite 
division of the past you know event history at the top trend history if you 
like to call it undern-, er underneath and then sort of basic long term 
structures underneath to to work within that and to work for a history which 
combines those in a single single view a-, and provides what he calls a total 
history er a history which takes everything in and that means that our notions 
of historical causation must inevitably change fairly radically if we see time 
and if we see the past in those terms because if for example you know 
classically why does you know Philip 
the Second you know send an armada to er to England in er whenever it is 
fifteen-eighty-eight or why to go to war in in er er nineteen-fourteen a an 
event history type of er approach well would look at the actors involved and 
try and to say think well he said that he thought that he intended to do that 
he got this wrong he thought someone else was doing it so in other words in 
terms of intentions and actions and purpose of actions by the individuals er 
involved but Braudel is saying what we need to do is to see that within the 
wider frameworks of trends and u-, und-, underlying er structures which can 
explain er er the way that er er this this actually happened so these long term 
factors can have their impact er on er er er on on why things happen when they 
do and what the way in which we think about causes for historical er actions 
let me give you an example of that 'cause i can see that sort of look of we 
call it the historiograph-, hiri-, historiography dazzle or bafflement which 
you know 
it's a sort of well known clinical condition that we always see sort of 
spreading around the room at particular moments let me give you a particular 
example of how that type of structural approach to causation bringing in the 
idea of different temporal rhythms er might actually er work and the w the one 
i'm going to take is someone who who actually writes in the Annales i don't 
know what you know m-, we don't always people don't always say that he's a 
member of the Annales School but it's a particularly good example i think which 
will bring this out Labrousse Ernest Labrousse writing in the er er er thirties 
and forties and writing about one of the great you know er events of history 
the French Revolution i would say that wouldn't i as a French revolutionary 
historian but er why did you know big historical question why did the r-, the 
why was there a revolution in seventeen-eighty-nine why did Bastille fall on er 
July the fourteenth er er s-, er where am i er seventeen-eighty-nine 
er July the fourteenth seventeen-eighty-nine what what's going on there now how 
are you going to tell that story i mean one way of doing that is to say well we 
need to concentrate on what Louis the Sixteenth thought he was doing and then 
we need to look at what the estates general and then there are people like 
Mirabeau and we can see the interlocking the intermeshing if you like of 
political actions and all the rest of it er going on er in one way er or the 
other so we could do that and it'd just be about politics it wouldn't be a 
problem okay there'd be a revolution Louis the Sixteenth was not a good king 
didn't manage the population didn't mo-, manage society well er government fell 
apart there was a revolution so you could do that sort of history Labrousse is 
an economic historian he says well let's think of it in this in these in these 
three levels of of causation let's think of it at first of all about the fact 
that er of what's happening in the eighteenth century the 
eighteenth century is a period of prosperity in in France and in most of 
western Europe you've got the overseas empires you've got er i-, er the 
emergence of capitalism you've got ag-, agrarian improvements you've got 
general le-, rising levels of er prosperity across the board as far as one can 
see spread out over the century as a whole you know this is one of those sort 
of things which people sort of are dimly aware of you know people in memoires 
they sometimes say you know people look fatter than er in the portraits of my 
grandfathers or you know things er people have things which they never had a 
generation ago so there's a sense that they'll of growing er prosperity the 
underlying trend if you like the sort of longue durée type of thing is one of 
general improvement general material improvement and moreover and the other 
dimension to that would be a gradual increase in prices prices for most goods 
are going up but going up sort of fairly evenly in a way which is actually as 
as Labrousse says 
secreting profits it's allowing profits to be made it's allowing m-, er capital 
to be invested it's allowing anyone who produces to do er pretty well whether 
you're a peasant or a or a noble or or whatever so you've got that level of 
temporality if you like over the eighteenth century looked at as a whole things 
are doing well however from about seventeen-seventyish seventeen-seventy 
seventy-three seventy-four we go into what he calls an intercycle er we don't 
need to know what that is but what he means basically is that a recession there 
there are probl-, there are economic problems for reasons i won't go into but 
basically prices start oscillating a bit more widely wildly er there are er 
sort of er problems in certain sectors of the economy er there's a growing 
problem which people start worrying about of poverty which seems to be rearing 
its head so there's a sort of in the context of general prosperity there's a 
definite temporal downturn okay so there's a speeding up if you 
like at at one level of history er of of of things that are going on and then 
let's take a third level of temporality in seventeen-eighty-eight seventeen-
eighty-seven was bad enough but seventeen-eighty-eight there's a terrible 
harvest it's one of the worst harvests in er the eighteenth century and prices 
go through the roof and when they go as high as they do rising four five six 
times from normal that means many many people are going to be unable to afford 
er what they er enough food to eat they won't be able to a-, afford anything 
else there will be a slump in demand there will be a f-, a collapse of many 
industries there will be more unemployment people will have even less money to 
pay for for for for goods which are going through er through the roof and it so 
happens that when we think about not just the you know the very broad 
temporality but when we think about you know prices and the price of bread 
which most people live on in the er late eighteenth century let's 
think about you know how the price of bread varies well the crucial unit of 
time for thinking about the price of bread is the calen-, is the sorry the 
harvest year 'cause you know the harvest comes in price falls 'cause lots of 
stuff on the market lots of grain on the market and then gradually that food 
will be eaten up and prices will drift upwards at the end of the cycle just 
before the harvest now that's what always happens but put it in the context of 
okay general prosperity so maybe people's expectations were a bit higher than 
er before but then an economic downturn in the seventeen-seventies so people 
are starting to think well maybe of discontent maybe not too happy about things 
then suddenly in seventeen-eighty-seven and eighty-eight very bad harvests and 
by the summer of seventeen-eighty-nine there is no food to be had price of 
bread is gone through the roof in fact the highest price of bread in the 
eighteenth century with one 
exception which we doesn't doesn't count for various reasons 'cause it doesn't 
fit my theory er but er for the highest price for the er eighte-, in the 
eighteenth century the price of bread is just before the harvest is gathered in 
er in seventeen-eighty-nine and seventeen-eighty-nine's not a bad harvest in 
fact so if we said that was just before we would say it was probably the middle 
of July seventeen-eighty-nine in fact we might as well say it was the 
fourteenth of July er seventeen-er -eighty-nine okay and it's true if you look 
at his graph in fact they do the prices do actually fall er b-, by late July er 
and au-, and August they sort of wa-, wander around but the highest point is 
reached in the whole of the eighteenth century the price of bread in seventeen 
seventeen-eighty-nine so in other words what is going on here this is another 
story completely from the one which a political historian a traditional 
political historian would have done of the Ancien Régime's collapse which 
would 
emphasize the collapse of government the problems of intentions of rulers the 
unruliness or turbulence of particular politicians or whatever it is suggesting 
that those players those historical players those historical actors are 
themselves being mobilized are being acted upon are being conditioned by these 
these very real social and economic realities which are working in this very 
sort of temporally differentiated way so we need to know that the eighteenth 
cen-, if we want to know why there was a revolution why there was a storming of 
the Bastille in seventeen-eighty-nine sure we want to know about politics in 
seventeen-eighty-nine but we also need to know about that the eighteenth 
century was a period of prosperity we also need to know at another temporal 
level that that prosperity has a sort of hiccup downwards er from the seventeen-
seventies and we need to know about the temporality of the harvest year because 
that is one of the crucial conditioning 
facts of economic social cultural and political life if you like er in the er i-
, i-, i-, i-, in this period so i think Labrousse is a very is a wonderful 
example it seems to me of the way the type of history which Braudel is is is 
asking for let's to understand causes in history we have to accept that it's 
not the actor's time and the actor's conceptions which will give us the answer 
to everything we have to think about the way those ideas those answers if you 
like are structured er within social economic er and er er cultural and other 
er sort of er er frameworks and seventeen-eighty-nine the analysis of seventeen-
eighty-nine is how those structures come together how they mesh and it's from 
that meshing that you get a revolutionary er er event the way in which and let 
me just add ano-, throw in another term er the way in which the structures mesh 
er is sometimes called la conjoncture and that again is a term which is thrown 
together but 
basically it's the it's the way in which the the the structures these 
underlying structures are actually coming together are actualizing themselves 
if you like so sometimes this sort of er duality between reality and conj-, 
structure conjoncture those are the terms which er er er reflect the sort of 
Annales er approach now let me just th-, out of that throw a few er 
consequences if you like it's a very long section this isn't it er part two 
yeah i should have done that earlier er i always like to divide it up into er 
sections er one of the interesting things of that notion of time the idea that 
time is layered but that also we have to think in very broad very big terms as 
well in terms of longue durée er is that that gets you closer for many 
respects to many social scientists er and their the concepts and methods which 
they use because sociologists economi-, economists and whatever are obviously 
introduce-, int-, int-, interested in ups and downs of events and all 
the rest of it but they're more likely to be inter-, interested in trends 
they're more likely to build models which are based on a sort of static er you 
know er an essentially static sort of er er er framework which contains 
mobility contains movement er within it so in other words i think by offering 
er this structured history by o-, by emphasizing elements of immobility as well 
as mobility by taking your eye off the ball if you like oh what a great 
metaphor i've just discovered for thinking about the Annales yeah you take your 
eye off the ball and you look at the field and you look at the players and you 
look at God i could really work with that er [laughter] that one i'll have to 
work that in next year i think er you actually you you have a different sort of 
conception and one which is going to open out towards other er social er 
sciences and i think the other thing which i'd say about er that that model is 
that this becomes the model of how history is done in France 
and initially in France then it's very much imitated er elsewhere the sort of 
three tiered model and if you look at some of the great some of the greatest 
works by French historians since the Second World War have followed this sort 
of model where they start like Braudel in the longue durée you know the 
structures and all the rest of it and then they move through trends and the 
sort of conjoncture er with er er the sort of middling rhythm if you like of er 
life and then they go to the events if you like the the sort of where where 
things are actually coming coming through and i think in that model so open to 
the social scientists so open to sociology economics and and whatever er 
political history gets very short shrift political history which has been the 
centre the absolute centre of er er hi-, what the historian's craft essentially 
er for for for much of the er nineteenth and twentieth century sort of Rankean 
becomes an a p-, afterthought if you like to these 
rea-, the real stuff of history which is social economic and trend and all the 
rest of it an appendix maybe even a parson's nose er to er to history and that 
type of total history and this is a problem i'll come back to may u-, wa-, er 
erase the importance of politics at the heart of history and that's something i 
will t-, certainly talk about a short second section there we now i'll now 
transport you couple of generations later the Montaillou er moment enter stage 
left er Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie that man i introduced you to as you know having 
given the worst lecture in er er western civilization er nineteen-sixty-six he 
writes his thesis a thesis which again is very much in the Braudelian mode you 
know different levels and all the rest of it which is called The Peasants of 
Languedoc The Peasants of Languedoc it's a brilliant book he's a brilliant 
writer er crap lecturer brilliant book er brilliant writer and it's a 
exemplification of 
the Annales method everyone goes lyrical about it Braudel everyone what i think 
is one of the things that interesting about it is that er he uses a wider range 
of sources to work out what he calls a total history of a province the province 
of Languedoc from the bottom up if you like trying to see the the the history 
and the er er the way in which that society operates over the longue durée the 
early modern period er sort of late Middle Ages through to the eighteenth 
century in in terms of a society as a whole it's a wonderful exemplification of 
historical sociology and again if you look at the preface i always think the 
prefaces of these important books is very very interesting you know when you 
get beyond the acknowledgements to my wife and er that other n-, unnamed woman 
who's my wi-, mistress but you don't you you you don't you notice don't er you 
know this way to pay particular attention obviously but he says one of the 
things he's interesting he says i-, you know i started 
by looking at you know er land registers actually i was looking at land 
registers trying to follow those through in the longue durée classic sort of 
Annaliste er sort of er move and i suddenly realized he says that i was through 
these through these documents i was getting the sense of the of a regional 
economy breathing you know so the trends you know period of prosperity period 
of you know deficit or er er decline period of prosperity so you thr-, this 
sort of of a of a of a province a whole area's history being written from 
within from a particular source of a er excellent source the these land er er 
registers and he realizes he says that he'd gone in to the archives with 
questions and he realized at that moment that the c-, the archives were asking 
questions of him er and i think there's a very good symbiotic moment which 
every historian actually any historian who's a decent historian actually er 
feels you go into an archive with a hypothesis or a set of hypotheses and you 
realize 
after a while that you hypotheses are not only wrong but you're asking the 
wrong questions you need to listen to the archives you need to listen to what 
they're telling you to reframe your work er so that you can go go on brilliant 
writer brilliant book becomes one the editors of the Annales and follows on 
from Lucien Febvre who dies in the er er er late fifties writes on all those 
sort of other sort of social scientific things he writes on very interesting 
history of climate he writes all sorts of things on rent coin history of coi-, 
coinage he's interested in the history of f-, er physical anthropology 
historical epidemiology loads and loads of di-, of different and interesting er 
things and then in the late nineteen-seventies he publishes a work this is the 
one i'm emphasizing Montaillou where i think he he does something different he 
t-, he takes the Annales in a different direction or he tries to i think er and 
he's doing something which is at an angle from if you like the inspiration 
er of the Annales hitherto Montaillou er appears in nineteen-seventy-eight is a 
tiny little village in the Pyrenees and it's basically the history of that 
village er and that village is important or at least we know anything about it 
'cause most of the Pyrenean villages we don't know anything about any time 
before the twentieth century we know about it because it was the home of the 
Albigensian heresy and because it was the home of the en-, er Albigensian 
heresy the inquisition moved in on it and er there's one particular guy who was 
the bishop of nearby Pamiers er in the in the Languedoc er called Jacques 
Fournier who's sent there as an inquisitor and the point is that er Le Roy 
Ladurie makes a big point about is that Fournier was a peasant himself so he 
knew peasants he knew you you had to ask them lots of questions and always 
distrust them and always ask them and re-ask them and be careful for the ruses 
of peasant er peasant life because what he's trying to do is to root out 
er heresy and so there are endless long interrogations which we have in Latin 
but we have them er of Fournier interrogating these people about their heresy 
now you could write a very interesting book about just the ideas of these these 
people but the point is that er what er er Le Roy Ladurie does is to using that 
wonderful source base talk about effectively well to write essentially a social 
anthropology of a village in the fourteenth century er asking the questions if 
you like which an anthropologist would be asking if he or she went into a 
Polynesian or er er African or whatever village as a sort of er participant er 
and followed and tried to understand what the impor-, how kinship works in this 
village how how neighbourhood counts what's the importance of the household 
what are what are the rhythms of the year what are the important symbolic e-, 
er er er e-, events in in in in this village's er history and how can er how 
can this heresy establish itself and what is there distinct about this 
particular 
village er which gi-, makes it the home of this heretical er movement and how 
does that heretical movement sort of er tie in with other beliefs er er which 
these villagers have it's a phenomenal book it's in fact a best-seller in 
France for years and years er and and years er as i say he's g-, got almost 
this sort of social anthropologist's eye it's that one of the things that er pe-
, er peasants spend much of their time doing in the fourteenth century when 
their just hanging aro-, hanging out together is er picking nits off each other 
er this a sign of sort of close affection and he's got wonderful things about 
mothers sort of you know just talking to the neighbour sort of going through 
their children's hair but then this also lovers in bed are sort of like sorting 
through each other's er bodies sort of like picking the nits off don't try it 
it's it's likely to bring you enemies rather than friends i assure you 
[laughter] er so you know this in other words the material life the just the 
the the the nitty bitty gritty stuff 
of everyday living in other words is available to you er through this er sort 
of lens and he has wonderful sort of personas there's a sort of local er er 
priest who's a sort of fixer mafia figure come he-, heretic as well it's a it's 
an incredibly highly coloured er picture and i think it what it does is do 
total history in a completely different way to Braudel this true to the 
inspiration of Braudel in wanting to write a total history w-, a history with 
everything in even nits and nit picking but on the other hand it's completely 
different from Braudel 'cause Braudel had taken things at the level of a sea or 
even of a globe if you like has taken the big picture er if you like what's er 
Le Roy Ladurie is going into er er is is a sort of anthropological er mode and 
i think this does mark a shift in much of what the good writing in the Annales 
er in the late i-, in er i-, well from the seventies but late sixties seventies 
and into the er eighties is that anthropology is taking over and becoming 
one of the if you like pilot sciences or the the sort of leading edge 
disciplines which historians are trying to open out to and learn from and try 
and integrate into their own er er analyses er one of the things some of you 
may have done when looking at basic er two is you might have done the history 
of witchcraft and you'll certainly have read Keith Thomas' well you mightn't 
have read it but you will have looked at er Keith Thomas' massive Religion and 
the Decline of Magic and you will know and that's a very similar sort of moment 
you know where he's trying an anthropological take to understand why there are 
witchcraft accusations in Essex or wherever or East Anglia whatever in the the 
f-, er fifteenth century and where he learns and where he learns a a a a an 
approach or or method to do that is in the method of the anthro-, s-, the 
English anthropologist Evans-Pritchard among the Azande so in fact you read 
peasant life or or or or or rural life in er sixteenth seventeenth century 
er er er Essex through the prit-, through the lens of the anthropological take 
on witchcraft in a twentieth century society er in af-, Africa so whereas you 
know geography is still important soci-, sociology economics don't don't get me 
wrong on that but i think this there is a definite growth of interest in 
anthropology and particularly cultural anthropology er which Le Roy Ladurie is 
sort of er er bringing up and er er and retelling you need to understand the 
whole tissue of human relationships er at this demo-, demographic cultural 
social and economic and whatever er sort of level so i think the Montaillou 
moment i don't know why i put S there is is sort of the same inspiration of 
total history getting it all in if you like but on a totally different 
framework not the globe not the universe a tiny Pyrenean village for a couple 
of couple of years but in a way if you read it you'll see it is a a a a total 
history of a different sort so what next 
beyond er Montaillou what is in beyond Montaillou well the Montaillou book as i 
say is enormously im-, important it gives this anthropological twist and i'll 
come back to that when looking next er er term at the sort of cultural cultural 
twist cultural turn which much history takes in the er er er seventies and that 
feeds certainly into the tradition of the Annales and the Annales has continued 
you can s-, can read it s-, it still has the same idea of total history you 
will s-, still find masses of non-Eurocentric history you'll find a bit of 
politics in there but it will be interest in political symbolism or political 
structures rather than e-, event history masses of social history it's one of 
the great social history er er journals and from its success in France in the 
forties and fifties what's happened in the sixties seventies eighties it goes 
global it becomes a massively tra-, everyone is translated er er they all go on 
lecture tours of er America they become p-, er celebrities and all the rest of 
it er so that Le Roy Ladurie could turn up as he did in London and give this er 
execrable er lecture which i i witnessed but what are the problems is the 
Annales maybe too successful difficult to say that isn't it really but maybe 
maybe there are problems from being so much part of the establishment er maybe 
there is an tendency towards complacency for just being institutionally so er 
well er connected maybe entering the celebrity society goes to people's er 
heads maybe it's difficult to keep a single model or a single paradigm even 
when inflected in the way that Le Roy Ladurie has has t-, tried to do in the 
seventies on the road as a viable and sort of er desirable er sort of er 
paradigm how do you in history remain a brand leader er if you like to bring it 
into Warwick er terminology er i think there are now looking around in the 
nineteen-nineties lots and lots of question marks against er er the Annales 
i'll look at some of these next term when sort of picking 
up the story and taking it further in particular the way in which the move 
towards cultural history has er er er sort of shifted things but i think this i-
, er many of the initial inspirations are still there and that they're still 
totally laudable if you like the idea of an open door policy the idea of 
genuinely interdisciplinary work even if much of that interdisciplinary er the 
the mix of that interdisciplinary work er er has has shifted and changed around 
in different particular ways but if i can give you just one 'cause i know we're 
running out of time one particular problem area i think in the Annales approach 
er which i think i would hold on to and worry about if i was you it is the way 
in which as i said earlier politics is almost erased almost erased from the 
sort of range of interests of the historian er of the Annales er kind that 
social you know that in a way it's a sort of oscillation thing you know 
political history narrative history small scale history was so 
dominant when the Annales came in they're punching in the nineteen-thirties 
they punched all that out of the way they established their own paradigm and 
politics disappeared it was endlessly pilloried and and caricatured as event 
history if you ever you want to hear look at a a a a a face of contempt and 
disdain you only have to look at an Annaliste when he talks about event history 
it's that sort of th-, sort of thing traditional historians have been involved 
in we nous des Annales we of the Annales we think you know society structures 
and all the rest of it actually actually count in some ways i would say well 
what ab-, you know a moment to interrogate that sort of structural approach 
where structures dominate is the event the event i mean a good event i think 
would be nineteen-sixty-eight Paris May turbulence in pa-, how do you when 
you're talking about structures work out something like May sixty-eight you 
could try a sort of Labroussian model but frankly it 
it wouldn't work and by writing history only or th-, or ne-, almost solely in 
terms of social and economic trends and structures aren't you in risk of losing 
the political element the element of chance the element of accident the element 
of politics as well and rather than sort of s-, do a w-, a wonderful sort of 
reach come back political history all is forgiven maybe one of the the sort of 
tasks which many his-, historians have got interested in in the nineteen-
eighties and nineteen-nineties is how you reinvent history political history so 
that it can learn from some of those sort of interdisciplinary and wide open 
and sort of er structural sort of approaches of the Annales but try and do it 
in a way er which is not just er sort of er trivial and trivializing but which 
actually er can help us understand the ups and downs the the the events the 
exceptions the accidents as well the structures the continuities and er and the 
underlying deeps er of history right thank you