Strengths and Weaknesses of the Annales School: On the Conflict Between Pope Boniface VIII and Philip IV of France

Authors

Jonathan Luke, Brigham Young University

Keywords

Annales School, rewriting history, scholars, Fernand Braudel

Abstract

In the introduction to his book On History,

Annales School founder Fernand Braudel remarked that "Annales has been received, like any other outstanding thing, with both violent enthusiasm and obstinate antipathy." Indeed, many scholars reacted both positively and negatively to Braudel's call that history be reborn. The Annales School announced that, in the face of the unprecedented atrocities committed during the World Wars, traditional history as written by Leopold van Ranke and his followers, which stresses "political and military events as the story of the great deeds of great men," was grossly insufficient for describing the human condition. In the place of Rankean history, spurned as only touching on short time spans, the individual, and the event, Braudel espoused by 1950 "a history capable of traversing even greater distances, a history to be measured in centuries this time: the history of the long, even of the very long time span, of the longue duree." In addition to looking at history based on centuries-long undercurrents, the Annales School advocated a deep interaction with sources from all social sciences, producing a histoire totale that theoretically would lend greater understanding to the human experience.

Recommended Citation

Luke, Jonathan (2010) "Strengths and Weaknesses of the Annales School: On the Conflict Between Pope Boniface VIII and Philip IV of France," The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing: Vol. 39: Iss. 1, Article 8.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/thetean/vol39/iss1/8