No group of scholars has had greater impact, or more fertilizing effect, on study of history in this century than French historians of the Annales school-that is, to speak in more concrete terms, historians whose base is in sixth section of Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, whose books appear, in parallel series and steady flow, under imprint of SEVPEN, Paris, and whose regular organ is that ample and ever-expanding periodical originally entitled Annales d'histoire e'conomique et sociale and now -that is, since 1947 -A nnales: e'conomies, societe's, civilisations. French in origin, French in inspiration, these historians now form an international elite, held together by distinct philosophy and corporate loyalty and marked by literary style which it is easy and sometimes tempting to parody. i The loyalty of Annales school is to their three consecutive founding fathers, Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre, Fernand Braudel. Behind these three, of course, lie names of older scholars who have influenced them or pointed way Fustel de Coulanges in institutional history, Francois Simiand in economic theory, Emile Durkheim in sociology, Vidal la Blache in geography, and no doubt many others, few of whom were themselves historians. For, almost by definition, scholars of Annales have drawn their inspiration from non-historians as much as from historians: theirs is kind of history which crosses all frontiers and uses all techniques. But whatever non-historical sources have fed it, school itself is essentially historical. The achievement of these founding fathers is to have drawn geography, sociology, law, ideas into broad stream of history, and thereby to have refreshed, nourished, and strengthened that stream, which previously, in some ways at least, had been running dangerously dry. I have in front of me first volume of Annales d'histoire sociale. It begins with brief preface a nos lecteurs signed by les Directeurs-that is, by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre-in which. they announce, with innocent simplicity, their radical design. History, they declare, has become sterilized. Historians, having passed through same experiences and drawn from them same conclusions, have long been afflicted by disease consequent on