Quote of the Day (Geoffrey Parker, on the Importance of French Historian Fernand Braudel)

“The Mediterranean refashioned the entire framework of history. It showed that geography, climate, and distance—what Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie would later call ‘l’histoire immobile’—formed the essential context without which history makes no sense. The book also emphasised that the true task of the historian is to distinguish the dynamic from the static, the aberration from the trend. It is impossible to convey the excitement of that approach back in 1964. I had never considered those self-evident truths.”— Geoffrey Parker, Professor of European History at the Ohio State University, “The Transformations of Fernand Braudel,” History Today, November 2025

Forty years ago this week, French historian Fernand Braudel died at age 83. He is associated with the Annales School, an influential movement in historical writing that moved beyond the “great man” school of narrative writing to consider how material factors like water, famine, wildlife, diets, disease, trade, and violence affected ordinary people—including those he grew up with.

Braudel began working on the history that made his reputation, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, under the most extraordinary circumstances: as a prisoner of war during World War II, without access to libraries or any written records, relying initially on his great memory. In old age he produced a three-volume survey of the 15^th through 18^th centuries, Civilization and Capitalism, the capstone of his effort to create a sweeping “history from below.”

(For an excellent overview of Braudel and the Annales School, please see Daniel Halverson’s February 2016 post on the blog “The Partially Examined Life.”)