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French Scholarship in Modern European History: New Developments since 1945Author(s): Edward R. TannenbaumSource: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Sep., 1957), pp. 246-252Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1872382.
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL
ARTICLE
FRENCH SCHOLARSHIP IN MODERN EUROPEAN HISTORY
NEW DEVELOPMENTS
SINCE
19451
EDWARD R. TANNENBAUM
EFFECTS OF
THE WAR-RECOVERY
FRANCE
was
demobilized nd technicallyat
peace from July 1940 to
August 1944.
French historians,
however, were isolated from
the world outside occupied Europe.
The Vichy
regime and the German occupation authorities
enforced certain
specific policies that limited his-
torical scholarship, such as censorship
of books
and
the
press, occasional
interference
in
univer-
sity administrative policy, and
sporadic depor-
tations.
In
addition, many scholarly journals
suspended publication
(though the Revue his-
torique
continued
to
appear
on
a
reduced
scale),
travel within
the
country
was often difficult,
and
funds and
facilities
for
research
were lim-
ited. A few noteworthy general
workswerepub-
lished
during
this
period,
but numerous schol-
ars,
because of their isolation, became preoccu-
pied with local history
of
various
kinds.
During the Allied reconquest
of Europe sev-
eral million
books and manuscripts
were
lost
when libraries and archives
in northern and
northeastern
France
were wholly or partially
destroyed.2Many
of
the
gaps
were
filled,
how-
ever, by
1948. The
National
Library restored a
large
number
of
damaged
manuscripts, the Sor-
bonne
contributed thousands
of
books to start
a
new
library at
the
University
of
Caen, and an
organization created by the Allied ministers of
educationreplaced many English
books and pe-
riodicals.
By
1949 most
of
the
prewar
French
journals
were
appearing again.
Those that did
not resume
publication
were
replaced by
new
ones
of
an increasingly
diversified nature, rang-
ing
in
emphasis
from
political
and
institutional
1
This paper was delivered
at the annual
meeting
of the
American Historical Association in
Washing-
ton, D.C.,
in December 1955.
2
For a detailed description
of these losses see
Salvo Mastellone, "Biblioteche, archivi e riviste
francesi,"
Rivista storica italiana,
LX (1948),
182-91.
history to economic, social, cultural, geographi-
cal, colonial, and archeological topics.
Since 1945, furthermore, some improvements
have been made in research facilities. Biblio-
graphical centers have been created, books cir-
culate
more
freely on interlibrary loans, the use
of
microfilming has become widespread, and
new agencies have been organized for collecting
the papers of private persons and the records
of
business firms.
Also, the National Center
of
Sci-
entific Research has helped to finance and pub-
lish
historical monographs.
CURRENT TRENDS
By
the
late nineteenth
century, French
his-
torical scholarship, under the leadership of
Gabriel
Monod,
Charles
Langlois, and Charles
Seignobos, had abandoned Michelet's romantic
conceptual framework
and
Taine's
search
for
universal laws and come under the influence
of
German
"scientific"
methods. The
classic
state-
ment of this approach was the Langlois-Seigno-
bos
manual entitled Introductionaux egtudes is-
toriques
(Paris, 1898). Like some of their col-
leagues
in
England
and
the United States, these
two
scholars wanted to make their discipline a
science by restricting it to the collection of facts.
They emphasized "straight history," or what
later
French opponents
of this
school were
to
call
l'histoire historisante.
The pioneer of the now dominant trend in
France
was Henri Berr.
As
editor
of the
series
"L'evolution
de
l'humanite" and
the Revue
de
synthese (founded in 1900), Berr championed the
approach that
was
known
in
the United States
as
the "new history" and in Germany as
Kulturgeschichte.Actually, however, Berr was
more
of
a philosopher than a trainer
of
histori-
ans. He stated goals and formulated hypotheses
which his spiritual successors, Lucien
Febvre
and Marc
Bloch,
modified and
spread
in
the
late
246
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FRENCH SCHOLARSHIP
IN MODERN EUROPEAN HISTORY 249
It will be interesting to see how well further
studies of this type bear out the hypothesis
that
the attitudes and values of French businessmen
and workers had a retarding
effect
on
France's
economic growth.
In addition to the tremendous emphasis
placed
on
economic and social history by
French
historians, there has been a parallel
tendency
for economists, political scientists, sociologists,
and demographers to study historical develop-
ments in their fields of specialization.10This in-
terest in a common subject matter has made
French historians and social scientists more and
more aware of each other's techniques and con-
cepts.
This
is especially true with respect to
his-
torians who use statistical methods (which, of
course,
the social scientists themselves have bor-
rowed from the mathematicians and "adapted"
to
their
own
needs, with varying degrees
of
suc-
cess).
Since
the
social scientist is concerned pri-
marily with
systems, structures,
and processes
rather than particular events and persons, his
historical studies tend to serve as demonstra-
tions of hypotheses rather than as expository
narratives. This heuristic use of history on a
grand scale was developed by earlier writers like
'0
A few outstanding works of this type are:
Georges
Friedmann,
Machine
et hunanisne: prob-
Uimes humains
du
machinis ne
iniustrid
(Paris,
1946); Jean
Fourasti6,
Machinisme
et
bien-etre
(Paris,
1951), in which the author uses the concept
of economic growth to explain the rise in the stand-
ard of living of the working classes since the eight-
eenth century;
Michel
Auge-Larib6,
La
politique
gricole
de
la
France de 1880 a'
1940 (Paris,
1950);
studies in
the
sociology of
elections by
Frangois
Goguel
and others-with
Maurice
Duverger,
L'in-
fluence
des
systekmes lectoraux sur I vie
pol'tique
(Paris, 1950);
with Georges
Dupueux,
Sociologie
electorale: esquisse d'un bilan; guide de recherches
(Paris, 1951); and, alone, Geographie des elections
fransaises
de 1870
a'
1951
(Paris,
1951);
works
in
demographic history by
Louis Chevalier: Les
paysans (Paris, 1946)
and
La
formation
de
la
popu-
lation parisienne
au
XIXe
siocle (Paris, 1950);
at-
tempts
to discover
extra-political
influences on the
formation
of
foreign policy, like Jean Gottmann's
La
politique
des
gtats et leur geographie (Paris, 1952)
and Raoul
Girardet's
L'inftuence
de
Ia
tradition sur
la
politique etrangerede la France (Paris,
1954);
and
studies
of
political history
in terms of group psy-
chology, like Ren6 Remond's La droite en France
de
1915
d
nos
jours:
continuite
et
diversite d'une
tradition politique (Paris, 1954) and Raoul Girardet's
La
societe militaire dans la France
contemporaine,
1815-1939
(Paris,
1953).
Marx, Veblen, Max
Weber,
and
Sorokin and
even historians like
Buckle,
Taine,
Spengler,
and Toynbee. Contemporary French
social sci-
entists, however,
like many of their American
colleagues, usually limit their
historical research
geographicallyand chronologicallyto the point
where they can examine a
representative sample
of all the significant
data,
such as
election re-
turns, price variations for a specific
commodity,
the private papers of businessmen,
and popula-
tion figures. This
tendency,
in turn, is
reflected
in works by historians on similar
subjects.
Thus,
after Braudel and Labrousse
wrote
their monu-
mental introductory
masterpieces,
they
and
their students began to concentrate
on detailed
studies
of
smaller topics.1"
Presumably,
these
individual monographs will
ultimately provide
the basis for a general synthesis by some "mas-
ter."
History of culture ond
civilization.-The
so-
cial science approach
has made some
French his-
torians
enlarge their concept of
culture. It now
includes
norms
for and patterns of
behavior,
ideologies justifying
or
rationalizing certain
ways
of
behaving, and broad general
principles
of selectivity and ordering which constitute a
common view of
the world.
Although scholars
continue
to
study
the
history
of
religious, philo-
sophical, scientific, and social thought in terms
of ideas and individual men,12 there
is also a
trend toward the analysis of
intellectual cur-
rents,
both rational and
irrational,
in
various
historical
settings.
Instead
of
concentrating
on
intellectuals and artists, some
historians
are
now
analyzing
the
interplay
of the
parts
of a
11
Such as
F.
Braudel and R.
Romano, Navires et
marchandises
a
1'entree du port de
Livourne,
1547-
1611 (Paris, 1951); M. Baulant,
Lettresdes
negociants
marseillais:
les freres Hermite,
1570-1612 (Paris,
1953); Pierre and Huguette Chaunu, Seville et
l'Atlantique,
1504-1650
(Paris,
1955); C. M.
Cipolla,
Mouvements
monetaires
de 1'etat
de
Milan, 1580-1700
(Paris,
1952);
and Michel
Mollat, Les
affaires
de
Jacques Caeur; ournal du
procureur Dauvet (2
vols.;
Paris,
1953).
12
Some recent works
of
this type
are
ttienne
Gilson,
Atudes sur le
rdle de
la
pensee mediivale dans
la formation
du
systeme
cartesien
(Paris, 1951);
Alexandre
Koyr6,
Etudes sur
t'Izistoirede la pensee
philosophique
en Russie
(Paris, 1950);
Augustin
Renaudet, Dante humaniste (Paris, 1952) and
Arasme etl'Italie (Paris, 1955); Paul Hazard, La pen-
see
europeenne
au
XVIIIe siecle
(Paris, 1946);
Ren6
Taton,
L'wuvre
scientifique
de
Monge (Paris, 1951);
and
Maxime
Leroy,
Ilistoire
des
id&essociales en
France
(3 vols.; Paris, 1946-54).
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250
EDWARD
R.
TANNENBAUM
culture by studying
the
social groups-military,
priestlv,
commercial-that
were
its main car-
riers in specific periods.
An excellent example
of
the use
of this approach
is Les hommes
d'affaires
italiens du
moyen
age
(Paris, 1949) by
Yves
Renouard, the dean of the Faculty of Letters at
the University
of Bordeaux.
Renouard
shows
how the behavior,
sentiments, and general
out-
look
of
these
merchantsand bankers
influenced
the development of the
modern
bourgeoisie,
urbanization, and the
secularization
of
Western
civilization.
In Le probhleme
e l'incroyance
au XVIe
siecle:
la
religion de
Rabelais
("L'evolution
de
l'hu-
manite,"
Vol. LVI [Paris,
1942]),
Origeneet des
Periers
(Paris,
1942),
and Autour
de l'Heta-
meron:amour
sacre,
amour profane (Paris,
1944),
Lucien Febvre
describes the persistence
of the
medieval
religious outlook
into
the sixteenth
century. Thus
he carries Huizinga's
thesis
of
the
"waning of the middle
ages" into the early
mod-
ern
period. Another
example
of
what
Dilthey
called TWeltanrschauungslehre-the
omparative
study of world
views-is L'Espagne &clairee
e la
second
moitie
du
XVIIie
siecle (Paris,
1954) by
Jean Sarrailh,
the dean
of the Faculty
of
Letters
at the University
of
Paris.
The concept
of
gener-
ations
with
conflicting
Weltanschauungen
has
also appeared in works on literary history like
Rene
Jasinski's
Histoire
de
la
litttraturefranyaise
(Paris,
1947) and
Henri Peyre's
Les
generations
littMraires
Paris,
1948).
Another effect
of the social science
approach
on
the writing
of cultural
history
in France has
been to make
some scholars add technological
and
instit.utional
factors
to
the
traditional
hu-
manistic concept
of culture. Still,
when French
historians try to explain
the history
of
a
whole
civilization,
they
are more
successful
in
produc-
ing provocative insights
than
in
building up
a
scientific
synthesis.
Charles
Moraze,
for
ex-
ample,
undertakes
an ambitious
task
in
his
Essai
sur
la
civilisation
de l'Occident
(Paris,
1950).
In it
he tries to deal with
all phases
of
human
culture, economic
activity,
and technol-
ogy.
His
thesis
is
that western
European
civili-
zation
is
declining
in
relation
to that
of the
United States
and the
Soviet
Union
because
its
population
is
getting
older and
smaller,
espe-
cially
with the recent
losses
of overseas
terri-
tories.
Yet Moraze's book lacks
the
precise
statement and systematic conceptual structure
of
an ideal
work
in
the social sciences.
Some-
times
he
says
that
civilization
is
the fruit
of
the
human spirit,
and sometimes he judges it
in
terms
of material and technical
progress
alone.
Until
Moraz6 and the rest of us decide what we
mean by
"civilization,"
we
cannot hope to eval-
uate
it or
measure
it
like
scientists.
No historian-in France or anywhere else-
has discovered the final explanation
for
the
rise
and
fall
of
civilizations. Nevertheless,
French
historians continue to
surpass
their foreign col-
leagues
in
describing great blocks
of
the
human
past imaginatively and comprehensively.
In the
early twentieth century they began writing
multivolume manuals
of
European
history.
While
the
series of
Lavisse
and
Rambaud and
of
Gustave
Glotz dealt
predominantly
with the
political
and
institutional history of
the Western
world, the "Peuples et civilisations,"
"Clio
"
and "L'evolution de l'humanite" collections in-
cluded
more
economic, social,
and cultural
his-
tory, as well as referencesto the Far East and
the
Americas.
Since
1945 the
new
"Histoire des
civilisations"
under the direction of
Maurice
Crouzet,
has
abandoned
the
practice
of
concen-
trating
on
western Europe and tries
to
present a
history
of
the world.
In
this
series,
economic,
scientific, and technological developments
are
given primary importance, especially
for
the
modern period. Other new multivolume
co-oper-
ative enterprises with a world view are "His-
toire du
commerce" (ed. Jacques
Lacour-
Gayet), "Pays
d'Outre-Mer:
colonies-empires
-pays
autonomes"
(ed. Charles-Andre
Julien),
"Histoire des
relations internationales" (ed.
Pierre
Renouvin), and the "Mana"
series on the
history
of
religion.
The French
excel
in
giving
these so-called handbooks a clear organization,
guiding theses,
and artistic
style.
Methodology: co-operative
historical research
and the social
sciences.-Contemporary
French
historians are
generally pragmatic
rather than
theoretical
in
their
approach
to
the
past.
In the
twentieth century,
France has
not had a Croce,
a
Meinecke,
or
a
Collingwood
to
formulate
a
philosophy
of
history. Raymond
Aron,
who was
strongly
influenced
by Dilthey
and Max Weber,
wrote an
introduction
to this
subject
in
1938.
Since
the war,
Henri-Irenee
Marrou has
devel-
oped
the verstehende
method, especially
in
his
De la connaissancehistorique
(Paris,
1952). Ac-
cording
to
him,
historical
study
is a
conceptual
reconstruction
based
on
a
sympathetic
under-
standing of the documents and an imaginative
ability
to
project
one's self into the
thoughts
and
motives of others.
Marrou maintains that
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FRENCH
SCHOLARSHIP
N
MODERN
EUROPEAN
HISTORY
251
the historian
should admit that
this is what
he
does
and not
try to copy the
methods of the
experimental sciences.
The
Febvre-Braudel
school, however,
wants
to
make history a social
science.13Yet the
major
works it produces are full of brilliantly imagina-
tive
speculations and imprecise
generalizations.
Braudel's book on
the
Mediterranean world,
for
example, is
documented with
abundant figures
on
population, price
fluctuations,
commodities
exchanged in
commerce, and even
variations in
the
weather.
Still the total effect
is an artistic
one.
Braudel has created
a mosaic of
Mediter-
ranean life in
the
sixteenth century.
His concept
of the
Mediterranean is that of an
artist,
not a
scientist.
Marc
Bloch, though
primarily
interested
in
medieval economic
history, has had a great
in-
fluence
on
historical
methodology
in
all fields.
His
method
was
to
learn
about a late stage
of
historical
development first and then
proceed
backward
to
its
origins-to go from
the better
known to the lesser
known.
According
to
Bloch,
however,
we
must not view
survivals
as un-
changed
versions
of
earlier
forms. Also we must
avoid
the temptation to
look
for
non-existent
evidence
in
early
documents.'4
Finally,
he
says,
we should
remember that
the
historian
is
trying
to understand human behavior; hence all the
evidence must be viewed in terms of
this ulti-
mate
goal.'5Bloch,
Febvre, Braudel,
and
their
students
believe
that the historian must
know
the
languages,
human
geography,
and
physical
characteristics
of
the
regions
he
studies. With
respect to this last, they
have made
on-the-spot
investigations and taken
aerial photographs
of
existinglandscapes,road
systems,
and
land
par-
celing,
in order to
see
the
basic
pattern
that
has
evolved
from
earlier
times.
Since 1945 Labrousse has been directing a
13
See especially Lucien Febvre,
Combats pour
l'histoire (Paris, 1953); Hommage
d Lucien Febvre
(2 vols.; Paris, 1953); Fernand
Braudel,
"Les
r6sponsabilit6s
de l'histoire,"
Cahiers internationaux
de la
sociologie, LI (1951), 3-18; and
Abel Chatelain,
"Les instituts et les
m6thodes
d'enquetes
en
France," Atudes rhodaniennes,
XXVI (1951),
423-26.
14
Bloch, p. x.
15
Apologie pour l'histoire:
metier d'historien
(Paris, 1949), p. 4; a translation of
this
work
was
published
in
this
country
under
the title The
his-
torian's craft (New York, 1953).
team of
economic historians in a study of
nine-
teenth-century
business cycles in France. This
is to be a continuation and an expansion of
his
earlier work on
the eighteenth century. A vol-
ume
of
this series,
A
5pects
de
la
crise de
la
depres-
sion de l'&onomie ranqaiseau milieu du XIXe
siecle, 1846-1851, which appeared in 1956, con-
tains an
introductory unifying essay by La-
brousse
and
twelve
monographs
on
various
geo-
graphical regions
by other scholars. It illus-
trates the present stage of the trend toward
co-
operative research,
which is the marshaling of a
huge mass of
quantitative data. As a result, this
book gives us the materials of history; despite
its
many suggestive insights, the
explanation
and
synthesis are
yet
to
come.
In addition to his project on business
cycles,
Labrousse has
recently proposed a
co-operative
investigation of the Western bourgeoisie from
1700 to 1850.16
Here again he wants teams of re-
searchers to study and tabulate material from
lists of
taxpayers
and voters, tax reports, and
the
registrations
of
mortgages. For
his
history
of
the
bourgeoisie to
be complete, he also wants all
pertinent records
of
local and national govern-
ment to be
examined. Yet Labrousse'sconcept
of
this social group as a purely economic class
will
not account
for those people who viewed
themselvesas bourgeois but who did not possess
(or declare )
enough income or property to ap-
pear
on the
lists he
proposes to examine.
As
for the
movement to create interdiscipli-
nary research projects, it has been restricted
so
far
to
the
activities
of
the
VIe (history)
Section
of
the
Rcole pratique des Hautes ttudes. There
Braudel has
directed
studies
of
early
modern
commerce
in
Mediterranean and
Atlantic
coast-
al
cities.'7
Although
the
historians
of
this school
have close contacts
with France's leading
so-
ciologists, demographers, political scientists,
economists,
and
geographers,
no
grandiose
col-
laborative
work
has
yet appeared.
In
1955,
how-
ever,
Braudel announced a
plan
for
expanding
the activities
of
the
VIe
Section
to
include
the
training
of
students
as
well
as
the
co-ordinating
of
research.
This
new
graduate program,
if
it
is
successful,
will
complete
the
attack
on
l'histoire
16 In a
paper
he read at the 1955 International
Congress
of
Historical Science
at
Rome,
"Voies
nouvelles vers une histoire de la
bourgeoisie occi-
dentale aux XVIIIe et XIXe si,cles (1700-1850),"
Relazioni (7 vols.; Florence,
1955), VI, 367-96.
17
See n. 11.
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252
EDWARD R. TANNENBAUM
historisante.
For in elementary
and secondary
education,
as well
as in
professional
scholarship,
the new trends described
in this article
are well
established.
Febvre's and Braudel's dream of uniting all
the social sciences
in the
service of history
re-
minds us
of Comte's plan,
over
one hundred
years
ago, to
do the same
thing for sociology.
They declare
the conventional
scholar obsolete,
with
his files (which
only
he can understand),
his
vanity,
and
his professional
jealousy. This
vieux
monsieur-aI
la
Anatole
France-must
give
way
to organized
teams and the
division
of
la-
bor. Still
the most
serious difficulty
in such an
enterprise
is not the
organization
of
research but
the creation of the final synthesis of all the find-
ings.
If such
a synthesis
is
to give
us "a
knowl-
edge,
explanation,
and
interpretation
of
human
societies
in
their
totality,"'8
then
the team
cap-
tain,
the chef
d'equipe
(not to
be
confused
with
Labrousse'
chef
d'orchestre),
must be steeped
in
the arts, philosophy, and religion, as well as
know
the
concepts
and techniques
of
all
the
so-
cial
sciences.
A synthesis
of this
kind
would
in-
deed
be
a "new
history."
Whether
this
is ever
achieved
or not,
the goal
is
stimulating
the
younger
generation
of French
historians
to
learn
as
much
as possible
about
all
the
approaches
to
an
understanding
of human
behavior.
RUTGERS
UNIVERSITY
18L.
Febvre,
"Pro
parva
nostro
domo,"
Annales,
VIII (1953), 514.
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