For Braudel: A Note on the ‘Ecole des Annales’ and the Historiography of Africa

Abstract

The historiography of continental Europe has been revolutionized since the Second World War by a group of historians generally known as Annales School, from the name of the periodical which has served as their principal forum. Originally a somewhat eccentric group, they have come in the eyes of many to incarnate historical orthodoxy. And yet Africa has scarcely been touched by these profound currents which have so powerfully affected Europe. It therefore seems necessary to attempt a brief sketch of the nature of the Annales movement and to consider how African historiography might benefit from this approach.Annales historiography derives from a very broad and relatively recent tradition in Europe, which may be characterized as involving the rejection of the centrality of events in history in favor of more unobtrusive but more basic structures. This approach is perhaps most clearly apparent in the work of Marxist historians, but it can be seen more generally in the growing body of social and economic history written from a wide variety of ideological perspectives. Annales thus owes much both to Marxism and to such inter-war historians as Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre. In addition, Annales is rooted in the peculiar French academic tradition of treating history and geography as a single indivisible subject.