Fernan Braudel's Times of the Worlds. Civilizational Sovereignty in Conservative Historiography

Abstract

The article is devoted to the life and creative development of the great French historian and leader of the “Annales School” Fernan Braudel. The autjpr pays special attention to the conservative motives in his ideas, namely the theory of civilizational denial and non-progressist realism related to the concept of longe duree. The author comes to the conclusion that Bruadel was erroneously considered to be “globalist” or “mondialist” thinker. On the contrary, his concept of the “worlds-economies” describes closed economic and civilizational communities directed at autarchy and sovereignty. Braudel’s idea has very much in common with Oswald Spengler’s idea of interpreting borders of cultures, civilizations and worlds-economies as barely permeable. In his research Braudel always paid considerable attention to Russia viewing it as specific civilization having the tendency to “self-organize apart from Europe as an independent world-economy with its own network of connections”. Braudel considered that self-dependence of Russia was obvious, even after the Europeanization turn in the 18th century. Braudel’s “Russian Text” is considered to be one of the most profound and accurate in Western historiography. The present article is written in the free form, where historiographic analysis, biographic narrative and the author’s personal experience of Braudel’s works alternate with each other.