paper no 2 (french scholarship)

8/11/2019 Paper No 2 (French Scholarship)

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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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2/8

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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5/8

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).



6/8

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



7/8

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.



8/8

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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