Annales d'histoire économique et sociale

Journal (normally called simply Annales) founded in 1929 by Febvre and Bloch, and which radically reoriented French historiography. The ‘Annales school’ challenged the dominance of political and diplomatic history, with its emphasis on the narrative of events, and promoted an interdisciplinary and comparative approach involving geography, demography, and the social and economic sciences. They focused upon problems rather than periods (‘absolutism’ rather than ‘the reign of Louis XIV’), sought to define the characteristics of collective mentalities, and analysed long-term processes and structures within a total material and cultural context.

[Rhiannon Goldthorpe]