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Terrell, DG Unfounded Criticisms

Unfounded Criticisms: Braudel's History Without Individuals

David G. Terrell
January 29, 2011

Human life consists of a myriad of activities. Over a life, they accumulate--when they are not

edited from memory by consciousness. However, when someone records those activities, and

others accumulate, weigh, analyze, interpret, distill and disseminate them, we have history.

As historians expand their social purview, considering ever larger groups of individuals; and, as

they broaden their temporal and geospatial scope, historians are forced to approximate. The

historian cannot encompass the experiences and actions of millions of humans. So, the historian

seeks patterns, as parents point out to children clouds, whose shapes suggest real or imagined

objects--"See, that one looks like an elephant?"--and selects the events that tell their tale.

Historians, if they be true to their craft, also take the time to explain the pattern--"See, there's the

trunk! And, look there, at the ears!"--and their choices; that we might learn to "see the elephant,

too." In so doing, the reader learns to trust a historian's judgment and accept that the examples

they choose are sound, representative, and faithful exemplifications of the past.

When historians choose to examine very expansive geography and long stretches of time, they

can find themselves unable to identify simple, discrete, representative events which would truly

and fully exemplify the past they wish to convey. This was the situation facing Fernand Braudel,

when he decided to examine humanity living in the entire Mediterranean Basin over several
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centuries.1 As his knowledge grew, and as he tried to describe "the elephant," he found that

individual actions, examined on a day-by-day basis, rarely affected events, when they were

viewed across long stretches of years and hemispheric distances.

One is reminded of the chronicles that listed, for each year, the events, portents, disasters and

wars. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, one might find a year remembered simply for the

occurrence of an eclipse or the death of a king.2 Nowhere, will you find the details of the

marriages, the births, and the deaths of the people who lived their lives; fearfully and prayerfully

looking up at that dimming sun, or wondering whether the next king they would never see would

be better or worse than the one just dead.

Peter Burke comments on this--or rather he comments upon Braudel's recognition of this

characteristic of history.3 It is a characteristic of humanity, this approximation--this dropping of

"insignificant digits". Other historians have done this. In histories of the Roman Empire the

battle of Adrianople, or rather any one of the five battles fought around that city in ancient times,

1
Fernand Braudel, The Perspective of the World, (Translated by Sian Reynolds. New York: Harper & Row, 1984).

Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible, (Translated by Sian Reynolds. New
York: Harper & Row, 1981).

Fernand Braudel, The Wheels Of Commerce, (Translated by Sian Reynolds. New York: Harper & Row, 1982).

2
Michael Swanton, (ed, trans), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, (New York: Routledge, 1998).

3
Peter Burke, The French Historical Revolution: The Annales School 1929-89, (Stanford, California: Stanford
University Press, 1990), 32-37.
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are often mentioned with less than a paragraph--excepting Ostrogorsky, of course.4 How many

lives, how many human stories, were behind these sparse mentions of the names of invading

tribes and the name of an emperor who was killed?

Braudel, and the other Annales historians, simply carried this trend to an extreme. Braudel

examined very long periods of time and very large geographic areas--there was no room for

individuals. When Braudel wrote his history of the Mediterranean, he spoke of man in relation to

his environment. Burke referred to his work as a sort of geographical history. However, it

appears to me that all history speaks of man in relation to some environment--appropriate to the

scope of the story being told. In a biography, one would expect to learn where and to whom the

subject was born, the basis of major decisions of his life, and perhaps the circumstances and even

weather associated with that day--like the lightning stroke that set Martin Luther on a path to

religious orders.5 As such a story progresses, one would expect to learn about childhood friends,

activities, the subject's general health, and the names of spouses, and on and on. Is this not "the

environment" in which the subject of the biography lived? In like manner, when one considers

4
Christopher S. Mackay, Ancient Rome: A Military and Political History, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2004), 324.

George Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State, (Revised Edition (1969). Translated by Joan Hussey. New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1969), 52, 196, 201,263, 309,407, 427, 536,565.

Charles Freeman, Egypt, Greece and Rome: Civilizations of the Ancient Mediterranean, (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1996), 591, 675.

M. Cary, and H H Scullard, A History of Rome Down to the Reign of Constantine, (3rd Edition. New York:
Palgrave, 1975), 524, 550.

5
Roland H Bainton,. Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther, (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 1950), 15.
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Terrell, DG Unfounded Criticisms

the history of a nation, do you not expect to learn about its climate, geography, relations with

other nations, the attitudes of its people, perhaps the names and temperaments of its leaders?

In history, the historian considers the subject in the context of its neighbors and its relationships

with its peers--the social network surrounding it. When the subject is a single person, one might

consider his internal organs, but in general the individual human environment consists of other

people. When the subject is a nation, one might consider its constituent parts, but again, would

not relationships and comparisons with its peers be more illuminating?

Because of the understanding possible though considering a subject's history though its

relationships with its peers, I was surprised to find the criticism levied against the Annales

histories for applying this paradigm. If one considers the logic of this criticism, in a biography of

a single person, one would expect to find a description of individual cells and their actions.

When one examines the life of any subject over time, one examines the subject in relation to its

peers. The historian who only focuses on describing the evolution of his subject's constituent

parts will fall short of providing his readers with a faithful and complete understanding. The

criticism of Annales history, that somehow it is not history because it does not focus upon the

actions of individuals, is unjustified. All historians exclude detail.

David G Terrell
Reston, Virginia USA

Bibliography
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Terrell, DG Unfounded Criticisms

Bainton, Roland H. Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther. Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon
Press, 1950.

Braudel, Fernand. The Perspective of the World. Translated by Sian Reynolds. New York:
Harper & Row, 1984.

—. The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible. Translated by Sian Reynolds.
New York: Harper & Row, 1981.

—. The Wheels Of Commerce. Translated by Sian Reynolds. New York: Harper & Row, 1982.

Burke, Peter. The French Historical Revolution: The Annales School 1929-89. Stanford,
California: Stanford University Press, 1990.

Cary, M, and H H Scullard. A History of Rome Down to the Reign of Constantine. 3rd Edition.
New York: Palgrave, 1975.

Freeman, Charles. Egypt, Greece and Rome: Civilizations of the Ancient Mediterranean. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1996.

Mackay, Christopher S. Ancient Rome: A Military and Political History. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004.

Ostrogorsky, George. History of the Byzantine State. Revised Edition (1969). Translated by Joan
Hussey. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1969.

Swanton, Michael (ed, trans). The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. New York: Routledge, 1998.

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