Fernand Braudel: The Mediterranean

Fernand Braudel: The Mediterranean

History, the study of an event that happened in the past, or is it? Can one really study history without implanting themselves into the text and change it if they don’t agree with it? The version of history that was used in the past will be quite different from the one that we see today. The study of history has changed throughout the years. It started with the focusing on a linear form, one event lead to another lead to another to this lead to that but why did it lead to that. Is that really anyway to teach history? In 1945, a acclaimed book by Fernand Braudel was published. That book was called, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II VOL. II & I. This book was a clear and best example of what the Annales School taught and believed. The Annales School was a well-known and established school of thought in the 20th century. This school believed in making history multi-disciplinary, using other disciplines such as geography and science, to establish events in history. This will take history and the historians away from the monotony of focusing on facts and events. The historian can now see that the events in history were actually caused by different things and did not happen just to happen. During this time period the leader of the Annales School was the author stated previously, Fernand Braudel.

Fernand Braudel was born in 24 August 1902 in a France working towards a new nation. While he was still a young boy he would live with his grandmother. Braudel throughout his very young life studied many thing such as Latin, Greek and history. His father was a French mathematician, who watched over his son while he conducted his studies. Braudel wanted to be a doctor at a young age, but his father did not want him to become a doctor. He instead would become a agrege in History. He would teach in Paris and would later meet the leader of the influential Annales journal, Lucien Febvre. Febvre would play a important role in Braudel’s life. Febvre would act as a mentor and friend to Braudel and would eventually become co-heads of the Annals school. During World War II, he was taken prisoner by the German Army and while he was imprisoned he drafted his great work, La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéen a l'époque de Philippe II. This was widely considered his best work. He would later become leader of the Annales School. He would continue to publish works until his death in 27 November 1985.

His works were one of the first to come out to establish the Annales School of thought. The idea of being multi-disciplinary was not too farfetched as proven by other historians that follow Braudel. However, even though I enjoyed Braudel’s examination of European history through his book, I somewhat cannot agree with how he carried out what his view on history. Braudel believed in making history more scientific