It's also not a history of civilizations - it deals with what Braudel considered the great living civilizations - and rather than being history as usually understood, it describes primary characteristics of each with some development over time. Arguably the movement's been quite fruitful, but this book is a very mixed bag - occasionally excellent, sometimes quite bad, and usually mediocre to good.
This was in opposition to the traditional kings and battles approach, and this book was intended as a textbook (not accepted by the authorities). He fought the French educational establishment to broaden the scope of history to include material from sociology, anthropology, geography, etc., and above all economics. In my view they are complementary.īraudel is considered one of the great 20th c. There's only one other book in this space, "From Dawn to Decadence," by Jacques Barzun. Don't look for maps or photographs in this Penguin Paperback the text alone is six hundred pages. The complex syntax is that of a French intellectual of the sixties, and it is retained in Mayne's text, but you become accustomed to it. Braudel's translator, Richard Mayne had his job cut out for him. And don't be tempted to skip the "soft" introductory chapters with titles like "The Study of Civilization Involves All the Social Sciences," and "The Continuity of Civilizations." These tee up the hard topics, like "The Greatness and Decline of Islam." There's method in Braudel's approach, and it takes patience. Even subsequent to "A History of Civilizations," other historians have been unable to write a thematic survey that matches this original. It captures the historical flow that evolves civilizations, sacrificing only the detail outside the themes. Braudel's was a pioneering effort in multidisciplinary historical analysis. Previous histories drilled deep into one facet of history.
In retrospect that disapprobation was the kind of seal of approval that "banned in Boston" came to embody.
When Fernand Braudel originally published this text in the sixties, he became a pariah at the Sorbonne.
0 kommentar(er)
