Reflexiones acerca del oficio del historiador o el arte de hacer historia

Abstract

This short opinion piece was inspired by reading a little-known book by Fernand Braudel, The Ambitions of History, published by his family several years after his death, which contains the texts of the talks that the famous author shared with his fellow prisoners in the Mainz concentration camp (1941-1942). The notes of those talks, written down in notebooks handwritten by the prisoners, were reviewed by Braudel in 1944, a few months before the end of the war, but they were never published. These texts show very clearly the difference between history understood as the simple account of the facts and that which penetrates the much more complex processes. Such differences then became the axis on which these reflections on the profession of historian and the art of making history revolve.