Book Review

The Historian’s Craft, Reflections on the Nature and Uses of History and the Techniques and
Methods of Those Who Write It, Vintage Books, New York, 1953, by Marc Bloch

Deepak Naorem, University of Delhi

Copyright December 2011 Deepak Naorem (All rights reserved)

Marc Bloch along with Lucien Febvre is revered to as the founders of a new revolution in
history writing. The Annales School or movement was a culmination of long tussle and debates
in the discipline since the 19th century1. It emerged as a challenge to various established
historiographical school as well as a response to various assaults on the existence of history as a
discipline.2 So many scholars are associated with this movement and they wrote on a broad
spectrum of themes. Perhaps Bloch’s Historian’s Craft is most crucial in grasping the essence of
the situation when he, Febvre and others were writing and the context of this historiographical
revolution. Historian’s Craft can be read as a manifesto for the new historigraphical tradition or
‘the new spirit of history’ as Bloch often wrote. He laid out the various issues historians faced in
the first half of 20th century, attempted to engage with them and gave suggestions according to
the ideas he, Febvre and others were developing since WW1.

“Tell me, Daddy. What is the use of history?”3 Bloch started his book with this line. It is indeed
a very pertinent question, for everyone who study the discipline or who practice the discipline.
For Bloch, all the remaining questions revolve around this central question. Is it possible to write

1
Burke, Peter, The French Historical Revolution, The Annales School, 1929-89, Polity Press, 1990. In the book Burke
is not comfortable with the usage of Annales as a school. He argued that it is better to speak of Annales as a
movement (pp2). He also saw the movement as a culmination of a process of a long revolt against the established
German historiographical positivist school of Ranke. Ranke’s method of writing history was dominant in 19th
century. But it was slowly challenged by various scholars like Michelet, Burckhardt, Fustel de Coulanges, Max
Webber, Francois Simiand and Emile Durkheim etc (pp 6-11). These scholars had a great influence on the both
Bloch and Febvre. Hence Burke justifying the title of his book described the movement as “French Historical
Revolution” (pp111)
2
In 19th century as modern science was claiming as the repository of true knowledge, various disciplines including
history were claiming to be scientific in order to justify their very existence as a discipline in the various
universities. This very claim has been challenged by many and it created a major crisis within the discipline. Many
historians defended history as science while many came out openly to accept the fact that it is not a science.
3
Bloch, Marc, The Historian’s Craft, Vintage Books, New York, 1953, pp3

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history, scientific or whatever? What is the utility of such exercise? What is the relation between
past and the present? How are we going to write this new history which is devoid of the
shortcomings in the earlier traditions? The suggestions he made in historian’s craft is very
significant for the Annales movement.4

Throughout the book, Bloch is concerned with the scientific status of the discipline. He is
ambivalent in his deposition and argued that it is different from science per se but this fact does
not delegitimize the discipline. In the last chapter, he is more lucid in claiming that unlike
science which is based on a single causation in explaining a phenomenon, it is not the case in
history. He rejected the notion of a prime mover and argued that an array of factors is responsible
for a historical development. This lay out the possibilities of writing a total history or histoire
totale, a history which is inclusive in nature. History is about understanding, he argued. He saw a
dialectical relationship between the past and the present. Historians should be interested in both,
as it would be recklessness on our part to understand either in isolation5. He espoused for a
longue duree understanding of a historical phenomena as he did in Feudal Society or the Royal
Touch6. For him the main concern of history is man and his activity. The main concern is not to
describe what happened, but to explain human activity and human consciousness in that
particular time.7

For writing histoire totale, he called for a universal history instead for an autarchic one and he
also suggested for an interdisciplinary approach in writing history. It greatly widened the scope
of writing history which earlier relied only on documents.8 Moreover he was quite aware of the

4
Peter Burke argued that the Annales movement can be broadly divided into three waves and that the recent
generations of Annales have either moved away from the earlier ones or they developed more perspectives in
their recent works. In spite of this, the ideas of founding fathers like Bloch and Febvre continue to enjoy great
influences and reverence.
5
Bloch, Marc, The Historian’s Craft, “if I were an antiquarian, I would have eyes only for the old stuff, but I am a
historian. Therefore, I love life. This faculty of understanding the living is, in very truth, the master quality of a
historian’’ pp 43
6
Bloch other significant work Feudal society and the Royal Touch predated the Historian’s Craft.
7
For example he wrote that the events and dates of battle of Waterloo or both the world wars where he himself
fought are mere trivia, what according to him is important is their impact on humanity and the larger
consciousness.
8
Earlier history was written merely based on official documents preserved in the various archives. Bloch argued
that it was not enough and that historians have to widen the scope of sources by including material evidences, art
remains, language and cultural practices etc. In order to do so, we have to rely on various other disciplines like
archaeology, sociology, geography and linguistic etc. Inter-disciplinary approach in the ensuing period became one
of the significant feature traits of the Annales school.

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problematic of using various sources as it is given as he warned his reader about the possibility
of various deceits like forgery in the sources or misrepresentation of facts. He encouraged future
historians to use critical methods to overcome such. He is very keen in understanding human
consciousness and language as tools to write history. He asked if language and consciousness
transcends generations, cultures, religions, geographies or classes. Hence it became very
important for him to consider the differences in language and consciousness for understanding
historical phenomena.9

Bloch was not alone in attempting to tackle these anxieties that historians faced in his time and
continue to face today especially with the assaults from the post-modernist. Bloch’s Historian’s
Craft may sound too naïve for us today but like he said it should be judged in its historical
context. The dominance of the positivist historiography and its criticism from all corners in the
early 20th century made it very critical for historians to break away from the shackles of
positivism and invent new ways to think and write history. Bloch’s unfinished work is indeed a
quintessential effort in this approach. It not only questioned the dominance of positivist but also
defended the legitimate existence of history as an important discipline. His championing of inter-
disciplinary, comparative, universal, using a wide variety of sources, critical approach to source
and of the longue duree etc gave a strong platform not only to the future historians of the
Annales movement, but to all historians of the ensuing period.10 Considering the contribution to
the practice of history writing, Historian’s Craft is a very significant work and should be read as
a major milestone in the history of history writing.

9
Interestingly Bloch anticipated this understanding in his earlier works, both Feudal Society and The Royal touch.
In Feudal Society, the notion of ties of dependence can be understood only in that particular historical context.
Similarly, the believe that royal touch can cure a particular skin disease can be understood in that context. Bloch
explored these themes by dwelling in the historical context.
10
I am not arguing that Bloch’s methodological interventions have not been challenged in the ensuing period.
Some of his ideas were even dropped or either modified even among the later generations of the Annales school.
While notions like universal history has been often criticized by many historians because they tend to be an
imperialistic meta narratives. For example Vinay Lal (World History and Its Politics, EPW, vol XLVI no 46) argued
that world history has a deep relation with the form of colonizing knowledge in the 21 st century, and we have to
accept that there can be many world histories and not just that of western worldview. But the debate goes on as
many attempts are also made to write an integrated or a connected histories of the early modern period. see
Fletcher, Joseph, ‘Integrative History: Parallels and Interconnections in the Early Modern Period, 1500-1800’,
Journal of Turkish Studies, 9, 1985, pp.35-57 or Sanjay Subrahmanyan’s new work on Connected Histories.

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