Braudel, On history

Braudel, On History

Braudel, F. (1982). The mediterranean and the mediterranean world in the age of Philip II: Extract from preface. In On history (S. Matthews, Trans.). (pp. 3-5). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Braudel, F. (1982). History and the social sciences: The longue durée. In On history (S. Matthews, Trans.). (pp. 25-54). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

In the first excerpt, from Braudel’s longer work on the Mediterranean, he divides history into three parts. At one level is a history that is “almost changeless” (3). This is a geographical history that tells “the story of man’s contact with the inanimate” (3). On top of this is “a history of gentle rhythms” a “social history,” “deep-running currents.” The last part is the history “not so much of man in general as of men in particular.” “Surface disturbances, the waves stirred up by … tides.” This history is dangerous because it still carries the influence of those who lived it. These three times are the geographical time, the social time and the individual time. Or is this “the breaking-down of man into a succession of characters”?

The second article comes from Annales E.S.C., no. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 1958), Débats et combats. As part of the discussion section of this journal, this article is a position paper on the state of social science at the time and the direction it should take. Braudel argues that the human sciences have individually come to crises, and insists that the solution is to cross the borders of the disciplines (something that Levy-Strauss has already attempted (25). Braudel argues that social sciences do not understand the crisis in history, and that history “or rather the dialectic of duration as it arises in the exercise of our profession,” can inform the current debate. Thus, the article is from a history journal and historian’s perspective, but is intended for the other social sciences.

This article also makes the distinction between geographical, social and individual time. He clarifies that typical history is not really a history of ‘events’, which are too instantaneous, but of human lifetimes.  The new history extends beyond the period of a lifetime. It is a history of cycles. Those historians closest to Braudel’s approach were the 18th and early 19th century historians who ‘allowed the documents to carry them’ (28).

Social history as previously been seen in quantitative terms as long-term economic history. Looking at ‘secular tendencies’, or very long term economic trends, economic historians reach towards the longue durée. However, ‘structure’ is a “more useful key,” an “organization, a coherent and fairly fixed series of relationships between realities and social masses.” ‘Structure’ can be a “prison” a “hindrance” a “reality which time uses and abuses over long periods” like geographical constraints (31). Structures may also be more stable, and thus shape history. Thus, the longue durée is like geographical history - the geography shapes  history even as people modify the geography with roads and cities, etc.

“For good or ill, [structure] dominates the problems of the longue durée. By structure, observers of social questions mean an organization, a coherent and fairly fixed series of relationships between realities and social masses” (31).

The longue durée is a history of continuity and regularity. “All the cycles and intercycles and structural crises tend to mask the regularities, the permanence of particular systems that some have gone so far as to call civilizations-that is to say, all the old habits of thinking and acting, the set patterns which do not break down easily and which, however illogical, are a long time dying” (32). The example Braudel gives is of the European maritime capitalism that lasted for hundreds of years through various minor crises until the industrial revolution upended it.

There are two ways of evading historical explanation: by concentrating on the “current event” or by transcending time altogether and conjuring “timeless structures” (35). The longue duréeworks between these two extremes. However, Braudel engages primarily with how the longue durée can inform structuralism.

“the researcher occupied with the present can make out the “fine” lines of structure only by himself engaging in reconstruction, putting forward theories and explanations, not getting embroiled in reality as it appears, but truncating it, transcending it” (36).

“Each one of us can sense, over and above his own life, a mass history, though it is true he is more conscious of its power and impetus than of its laws or direction” (39).

Marx was the first to work in the longue durée.

The models cannot be removed from time; then they become unchanging laws. Rather, models must be considered in context, where there can be “changes in emphasis” or  other structures that might ‘throw into relief’ the models. Marx’s work has been ‘stymied’ by not placing it in the context of the longue durée.

One thing I like about the longue durée approach is that it is inherently interdisciplinary. 

I’m reminded of Burke’s section on the use of metaphor in the history of mentalities. Braudel’s extended ‘river’ metaphor is a great example of this, I think. Although Braudel also deals in binaries (event/structure), the ‘river’ of history is a great way of demonstrating the flows of thelongue durée. It is not an immobile structure, but there are strong currents to history that underlie the eddies, even if they do not cause them wholly. The currents can be of different strengths, and interact with each other as well, maintaining their own identities without being exclusive.

Chinese philosophy is fond of metaphor as well. I remember in Ames’ work he talks about how metaphor complicates the black and white of the yin and yang.