Ландшафты Средневековья: Фернан Бродель о проблеме кочевничества в средневековом мире Средиземноморья

Abstract

The scientific heritage of Fernand Braudel, the outstanding French scientist and the recognized leader of the second generation of the historical school “Annales”, continues to be of great historiographical interest. However, not all aspects of his research have been adequately evaluated. The authors of this study examine the conceptual approaches of F. Braudel to the history of interaction between man and nature in the Mediterranean and adjacent regions through the problem of nomadism. The method of considering this issue corresponds to the basic principles of historiographic research: Identifying the author’s substantive position by analyzing his works, characterizing the source base and methods of criticizing the sources used. Braudel’s nomadism is not only a phenomenon of the steppes of Central Asia, the pastures of the Iranian Highlands, the sands of the Sahara, but an organic part of the life of the developing societies of the Iberian Peninsula, Provence, Apennines, Balkans, Asia Minor. F. Braudel was faced with the task of covering in its entirety the numerous problems associated with driving livestock to grazing and with the nomadic way of life, that is, with the regular movement of human masses and herds of livestock. Braudel revives the model of the nomadic life of the Balkans, Anatolia and North Africa. Here, in his opinion, different types of society, different types of economic management, different civilizations and ways of life collide. Braudel agrees with the identification of several types of seasonal movement of livestock. According to F. Braudel, seasonal movements of livestock are associated with a variety of factors: physical, social, historical. Nomadism, Braudel believes, has a more ancient origin than distant-pasture animal husbandry. Nomadic herders were gradually and consistently driven out of the inner plains and lowlands and were driven back to the mountainous outskirts and peripheral plains. An overabundance of empty spaces dooms, from the perspective of F. Braudel, society and economy to perpetual motion. He considered the pendulum movement of the steppe nomads to the sea, and then back from the sea to the desert to be one of the essential factors in the history of the Mediterranean. Nomadism, with its harsh closed “culture” speaks, according to F. Braudel, of obvious determinism.