Marc Bloch
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Marc Bloch | |
---|---|
Marc Léopold Benjamin Bloch (
Born in
During the
His historical studies and his death as a member of the Resistance together made Bloch highly regarded by generations of post-war French historians; he came to be called "the greatest historian of all time".[1] By the end of the 20th century, historians were making a more sober assessment of Bloch's abilities, influence, and legacy, arguing that there were flaws to his approach.
Youth and upbringing
Family
Marc Bloch was born in Lyon on 6 July 1886,
Upbringing and education
Bloch's biographer Katherine Stirling ascribed significance to the era in which Bloch was born: the middle of the
Bloch was educated at the prestigious
The Dreyfus affair had soured Bloch's views of the French Army, and he considered it laden with "snobbery, anti-semitism and anti-republicanism".[23] National service had been made compulsory for all French adult males in 1905, with an enlistment term of two years.[24] Bloch joined the 46th Infantry Regiment based at Pithiviers from 1905 to 1906.[23]
Early research
By this time, changes were taking place in French academia. In Bloch's own speciality of history, attempts were being made at instilling a more scientific methodology. In other, newer departments such a sociology, efforts were made at establishing an independent identity.
Bloch's research at the Fondation
First World War
Except for two months in hospital followed by another three recuperating, he spent the war in the infantry;[31] he joined as a sergeant and rose to become the head of his section.[41] Bloch kept a war diary from his enlistment. Very detailed in the first few months, it rapidly became more general in its observations. However, says the historian Daniel Hochedez, Bloch was aware of his role as both a "witness and narrator" to events and wanted as detailed a basis for his historiographical understanding as possible.[41] The historian Rees Davies notes that although Bloch served in the war with "considerable distinction",[4] it had come at the worst possible time both for his intellectual development and his study of medieval society.[4]
For the first time in his life, Bloch later wrote, he worked and lived alongside people he had never had close contact with before, such as shop workers and labourers,
Apart from the Marne, Bloch fought at the battles of
While on front-line service, Bloch contracted severe
Career
Early career
"Must I say historical or indeed sociological? Let us more simply say, in order to avoid any discussion of method, human studies. Durkheim was no longer there, but the team he had grouped around him survived him...and the spirit which animates it remains the same".[57]
Marc Bloch, review of
The war was fundamental in re-arranging Bloch's approach to history, although he never acknowledged it as a turning point.
Bloch began working energetically,[60] and later said that the most productive years of his life were spent at Strasbourg.[56] In his teaching, his delivery was halting. His approach sometimes appeared cold and distant—caustic enough to be upsetting[56]—but conversely, he could be also both charismatic and forceful.[60] Durkheim died in 1917, but the movement he began against the "smugness" that pervaded French intellectual thinking continued.[65] Bloch had been greatly influenced by him, as Durkheim also considered the connections between historians and sociologists to be greater than their differences. Not only did he openly acknowledge Durkheim's influence, but Bloch "repeatedly seized any opportunity to reiterate" it, according to R. C. Rhodes.[66]
At Strasbourg, he again met Febvre, who was now a leading historian[56] of the 16th century.[67] Modern and medieval seminars were adjacent to each other at Strasbourg, and attendance often overlapped.[56] Their meeting has been called a "germinal event for 20th-century historiography",[68] and they were to work closely together for the rest of Bloch's life. Febvre was some years older than Bloch and was probably a great influence on him.[69] They lived in the same area of Strasbourg[56] and became kindred spirits,[70] often going on walking trips across the Vosges and other excursions.[29]
Bloch's fundamental views on the nature and purpose of the study of history were established by 1920.
Comparative history and the Annales
His Oslo lecture, called "Towards a Comparative History of Europe",[20] formed the basis of his next book, Les Caractères Originaux de l'Histoire Rurale Française.[76] In the same year[77] he founded the historical journal Annales with Febvre.[4] One of its aims was to counteract the administrative school of history, which Davies says had "committed the arch error of emptying history of human element". As Bloch saw it, it was his duty to correct that tendency.[78] Both Bloch and Febvre were keen to refocus French historical scholarship on social rather than political history and to promote the use of sociological techniques.[77] The journal avoided narrative history almost completely.[67]
The inaugural issue of the Annales stated the editors' basic aims: to counteract the arbitrary and artificial division of history into periods, to re-unite history and social science as a single body of thought, and to promote the acceptance of all other schools of thought into historiography. As a result, the Annales often contained commentary on contemporary, rather than exclusively historical, events.[77] Editing the journal led to Bloch forming close professional relationships with scholars in different fields across Europe.[79] The Annales was the only academic journal to boast a preconceived methodological perspective. Neither Bloch nor Febvre wanted to present a neutral facade. During the decade it was published it maintained a staunchly left-wing position.[80] Henri Pirenne, a Belgian historian who wrote comparative history, closely supported the new journal.[81] Before the war he had acted in an unofficial capacity as a conduit between French and German schools of historiography.[82] Fernand Braudel—who was himself to become an important member of the Annales School after the Second World War—later described the journal's management as being a chief executive officer—Bloch—with a minister of foreign affairs—Febvre.[83]
Utilizing comparative methodology allowed Bloch to discover instances of uniqueness within aspects of society,
Move to Paris
In 1930, both keen to make a move to Paris, Febvre and Bloch applied to the École pratique des hautes études for a position: both failed.[86] Three years later Febvre was elected to the Collège de France. He moved to Paris, and in doing so, says Fink, became all the more aloof.[87] This placed a strain on Bloch's and his relations,[87] although they communicated regularly by letter and much of their correspondence is preserved.[88] In 1934, Bloch was invited to speak at the London School of Economics. There he met Eileen Power, R. H. Tawney and Michael Postan, among others. While in London, he was asked to write a section of the Cambridge Economic History of Europe; at the same time, he also attempted to foster interest in the Annales among British historians.[76][note 12] He later told Febvre in some ways he felt he had a closer affinity with academic life in England than that of France.[90] For example, in comparing the Bibliothèque Nationale with the British Museum, he said that[91]
A few hours work in the British [Museum] inspire the irresistible desire to build in the Square Louvois a vast pyre of all the B.N.'s regulations and to burn on it, in splendid auto-de-fé, Julian Cain [the director], his librarians and his staff...[and] also a few malodorous readers, if you like, and no doubt also the architect ... after which we could work and invite the foreigners to come and work".[91]
Isolated, each [historian] will understand only by halves, even within his own field of study, for the only true history, which can advance only through mutual aid, is universal history'.[92]
Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft
During this period he supported the
In 1934, Étienne Gilson sponsored Bloch's candidacy for a chair at the Collège de France.[96] The college, says the historian Eugen Weber, was Bloch's "dream" appointment—although one never to be realised—as it was one of the few (possibly the only) institutions in France where personal research was central to lecturing.[97] Camille Jullian had died the previous year, and his position was now available. While he had lived, Julian had wished for his chair to go to one of his students, Albert Grenier, and after his death, his colleagues generally agreed with him.[97] However, Gilson proposed that not only should Bloch be appointed, but that the position be redesignated the study of comparative history. Bloch, says Weber, enjoyed and welcomed new schools of thought and ideas, but mistakenly believed the college should do so also; the college did not. The contest between Bloch and Grenier was not just the struggle for one post between two historians; it was also a struggle to determine which path historiography within the college would take for the next generation.[98] To complicate the situation further, the country was in both political and economic crises, and the college's budget was slashed by 10%. No matter who filled it, this made another new chair financially unviable. By the end of the year, and with further retirements, the college had lost four professors: it could replace only one, and Bloch was not appointed.[99] Bloch personally suspected his failure was due to antisemitism and Jewish quotas. At the time, Febvre blamed it on a distrust of Bloch's approach to scholarship by the academic establishment, although Epstein has argued that this could not have been an over-riding fear as Bloch's next appointment indicated.[76]
Joins the Sorbonne
We sometimes clashed...so close to each other and yet so different. We threw our 'bad character' in each other's faces, after which we found ourselves more united than ever in our common hatred of bad history, of bad historians—and of bad Frenchmen who were also bad Europeans.[88]
Lucien Febvre
The same year, Bloch and his family visited
By now, Annales was being published six times a year to keep on top of current affairs, however, its "outlook was gloomy".[80] In 1938, the publishers withdrew support and, experiencing financial hardship, the journal moved to cheaper offices, raised its prices, and returned to publishing quarterly.[106] Febvre increasingly opposed the direction Bloch wanted to take the journal. Febvre wanted it to be a "journal of ideas",[77] whereas Bloch saw it as a vehicle for the exchange of information to different areas of scholarship.[77]
By early 1939, war was known to be imminent. Bloch, in spite of his age, which automatically exempted him,[95] had a reserve commission for the army[29] holding the rank of captain.[47] He had already been mobilised twice in false alarms.[47] In August 1939, he and his wife Simonne intended to travel to the ICHS in Bucharest.[47] In autumn 1939,[47] just before the outbreak of war, Bloch published the first volume of Feudal Society.[4]
Second World War
Torn from normal behaviour and from normal expectations, suspended from history and from commonsense responses, members of a huge French army became separated for an indefinite period from their work and their loved ones. Sixty-seven divisions, lacking strong leadership, public support, and solid allies, waited almost three-quarters of a year to be attacked by a ruthless, stronger force.[47]
Carole Fink
On 24 August 1939, at the age of 53,[47] Bloch was mobilised for a third time.[47] He was responsible for the mobilisation of the French Army's massive motorised units[107] which involved him undertaking such a detailed assessment of the French fuel supply that he later wrote he was able to "count petrol tins and ration every drop" of fuel he obtained.[107] During the first few months of the war, called the Phoney War,[108][note 14] he was stationed in Alsace,[109] this time lacking the eager patriotism he had shown in the war.[9] He also evacuated civilians to behind the Maginot Line[110] and for a while he worked with British Intelligence.[111][note 15]
Bloch began but did not complete writing a history of France.[112][113] At one point he expected to be invited to neutral Belgium to deliver a series of lectures in Liège, on Belgian neutrality.[113] Some academics had escaped France for The New School in New York City, and the School also invited Bloch. He refused,[114] possibly because of difficulties in obtaining visas:[115] the US government would not grant visas to every member of his family.[116]
Fall of France
In May 1940, the German army forced the French to withdraw.[67][117][118] Bloch fought at the Battle of Dunkirk in May–June 1940, being evacuated to England.[100] Although he could have remained in Britain,[119] he chose to return to France[67] because his family was still there.[119]
[120] To Bloch, France collapsed because her generals failed to capitalise on the best qualities humanity possessed—character and intelligence[121]—because of their own "sluggish and intractable" progress since the First World War.[108]
Two-thirds of France was occupied by Germany.[122] Bloch was demobilised soon after Philippe Pétain's government signed the Armistice of 22 June 1940 forming Vichy France.[123] Bloch received[124] a permit to work despite being Jewish.[87] This was probably due to Bloch's pre-eminence in the field of history.[115] He worked at several institutions[87] including Montpellier.[125] This, further south, was beneficial to his wife's health, which was in decline.[29] The dean of faculty at Montpellier was an antisemite[126] but who also disliked Bloch for having once given him a poor review.[126] The Vichy government was attempting to promote itself as a return to traditional French values.[127] Bloch condemned this as propaganda; the rural idyll that Vichy said it would return France to was impossible, he said, "because the idyllic, docile peasant life of the French right had never existed".[128]
Declining relationship with Febvre
It was during these bitter years of defeat, of personal recrimination, of insecurity that he wrote both the uncompromisingly condemnatory pages of Strange Defeat and the beautifully serene passages of The Historian's Craft.
Bloch's professional relationship with Febvre was also under strain. The Nazis wanted French editorial boards to be stripped of Jews in accordance with German racial policies; Bloch advocated disobedience, while Febvre was passionate about the survival of Annales at any cost.[93] He believed that it was worth making concessions to keep the journal afloat and to keep France's intellectual life alive.[129] Bloch, forced to accede, turned the Annales over to the sole editorship of Febvre, who then changed the journal's name to Mélanges d'Histoire Sociale. Bloch was forced to write for it under the pseudonym Marc Fougères.[93]
The Annalist historian André Burguière suggests Febvre did not really understand the position Bloch, or any French Jew, was in.[130] Already damaged by this disagreement, Bloch's and Febvre's relationship declined further when the former had been forced to leave his library and papers[115] in his Paris apartment following his move to Vichy. He had attempted to have them transported to his Creuse residence,[130] but the Nazis looted his rooms[105] and confiscated his library in 1942.[87] Bloch held Febvre responsible, believing he could have done more to prevent it.[87]
Bloch's mother had recently died, and his wife was ill; he faced daily harassment.[115] On 18 March 1941, Bloch made his will in Clermont-Ferrand.[131] The Polish social historian Bronisław Geremek suggests that this document hints at Bloch in some way foreseeing his death,[132] as he emphasised that nobody had the right to avoid fighting for their country.[133]
French resistance
In November 1942 Germany occupied the territory previously under direct Vichy rule.[115] This was the catalyst for Bloch's decision to join the French Resistance[125] by March 1943.[125][101] Bloch had previously expressed the view that "there can be no salvation where there is not some sacrifice".[125] He sent his family away and returned to Lyon to join the underground,[115] although he found this difficult because of his age.[95] Bloch used his professional and military skills on their behalf, writing propaganda and organising supplies and materiel in the region.[115] Often on the move, Bloch used archival research as his excuse for travelling.[100] The journalist-turned-resistance fighter Georges Altman later told how he knew Bloch as, although originally "a man, made for the creative silence of gentle study, with a cabinet full of books" was now "running from street to street, deciphering secret letters in some Lyonaisse Resistance garret".[134] For the first time, suggests Lyon, Bloch was forced to consider the role of the individual in history, rather than the collective; perhaps by then even realising he should have done so earlier.[135][note 16]
Death
Bloch was arrested at the Place de Pont, Lyon,[1] on 8 March 1944, and handed over to the Gestapo.[137] A radio transmitter and many papers were found in his apartment[1] and he was imprisoned in Montluc prison.[114] For being a strong Resistance associate, he was tortured, suffering beatings and ice-baths and his ribs and wrists were broken.[1] It was later claimed that he gave away no information to his interrogators, and while incarcerated taught French history to other inmates.[72]
In the meantime, the allies had
At Bloch's burial he acknowledged his Jewish ancestry while identifying foremost as a Frenchman.[138][note 17] According to his instructions, on his grave was to be carved his epitaph dilexi veritatem ("I have loved the truth").[139]
Bibliography
- 'A Contribution towards a Comparative History of European Societies', in Land and Work in Medieval Europe. London, 1967.
- 'Memoire collective', Revue de synthese historique 40 (1925): 73-83.
- 'Technical Change as a Problem of Collective Psychology', Journal of Normal and Pathological Psychology (1948): 104-15. Reprinted in Bloch, 1967, 124-35.
- Apologie pour l'histoire. Paris, 1949. English trans., The Historian's Craft. Manchester, 1954.
- L'Etrange defaite, Paris, 1946. English trans., Strange Defeat. London, 1949.
- L'Ile de France Paris, 1913. English trans., The Ile de France. London, 1971.
- La Societe feodale, 2 vols. Paris, 1939-40. English trans., Feudal Society, 2 vols. London, 1961.
- Land and Work in Medieval Europe. London, 1967
Historical method and approach
The microscope is a marvellous instrument for research; but a heap of microscopic slides does not constitute a work of art.[140]
Marc Bloch
Davies says Bloch was "no mean disputant"
Bloch was very much influenced by
Bloch did not see social history as being a separate field within historical research. Rather, he saw all aspects of history to be inherently a part of social history. By definition, all history was social history,[146] an approach he and Febvre termed "histoire totale",[43] not a focus on points of fact such as dates of battles, reigns, and changes of leaders and ministries, and a general confinement by the historian to what he can identify and verify.[147] Bloch explained in a letter to Pirenne that, in Bloch's eyes, the historian's most important quality was the ability to be surprised by what he found—"I am more and more convinced of this", he said; "damn those of us who believe everything is normal!"[148]
For Bloch history was a series of answers, albeit incomplete and open to revision, to a series of intelligently posed questions.[149]
Bloch identified two types of historical eras: the generational era and the era of civilisation: these were defined by the speed with which they underwent change and development. In the latter type of period, which changed gradually, Bloch included physical, structural, and psychological aspects of society, while the generational era could experience fundamental change over a relatively few generations.[150] Bloch founded what modern French historians call the "regressive method" of historical scholarship. This method avoids the necessity of relying solely on historical documents as a source, by looking at the issues visible in later historical periods and drawing from them what they may have looked like centuries earlier. Davies says this was particularly useful in Bloch's study of village communities as "the strength of communal traditions often preserves earlier customs in a more or less fossilized state".[151] Bloch studied peasant tools in museums, observed their use in work, and discussed the objects with the people who used them.[152] He believed that in observing a plough or an annual harvest one was observing history, as more often than not both the technology and the technique were much the same as they had been hundreds of years earlier.[29] However, the individuals themselves were not his focus; instead, he focused on "the collectivity, the community, the society".[153] He wrote about the peasantry, rather than the individual peasant; says Lyon, "he roamed the provinces to become familiar with French agriculture over the long term, with the contours of peasant villages, with agrarian routine, its sounds and smells.[42] Bloch claimed that both fighting alongside the peasantry in the war and his historical research into their history had shown him "the vigorous and unwearied quickness"[10] of their minds.[10]
Bloch described his area of study as the comparative history of European society and explained why he did not identify himself as a medievalist: "I refuse to do so. I have no interest in changing labels, nor in clever labels themselves, or those that are thought to be so."[96] He did not leave a full study of his methodology, although it can be effectively reconstructed piecemeal.[154] He believed that history was the "science of movement",[155] but did not accept, for example, the aphorism that one could protect against the future by studying the past.[128] His work did not use a revolutionary approach to historiography; rather, he wished to combine the schools of thinking that preceded him into a new broad approach to history[156] and, as he wrote in 1926, to bring to history "ce murmure qui n'était pas de la mort", ("the whisper that was not death').[121] He criticised what he called the "idol of the origins",[157] where historians concentrate overly hard on the formation of something to the detriment of studying the thing itself.[157]
Bloch's comparative history led him to tie his researches in with those of many other schools: social sciences, linguistics,
Areas of interest
If we embark upon our reexamination of Bloch by viewing him as a novel and restless synthesizer of traditions that had previously seemed incommensurable, a more nuanced image than the traditionally held one emerges. Examined through this lens as a quixotic idealist, Bloch is revealed as the undogmatic creator of a powerful – and perhaps ultimately unstable – method of historical innovation that can most accurately be described as quintessentially modern.[6]
Katherine Stirling
Bloch was not only interested in periods or aspects of history but in the importance of history as a subject, regardless of the period, of intellectual exercise. Davies writes, "he was certainly not afraid of repeating himself; and, unlike most English historians, he felt it his duty to reflect on the aims and purposes of history".
Bloch also emphasised the importance of geography in the study of history, and particularly in the study of rural history.
Block was multilingual, and impressed contemporaries with the breadth of his knowledge and erudition and his facility in both ancient and modern languages. His clear prose and his methodology of formulating historical issues in social terms left a strong impact on the discipline of history. Bloch dreamed of a borderless world, where the constraints of geography, time, and academic discipline could be dismantled and history could be addressed from a global perspective.[166]
Personal life
Bloch was not a tall man, being 5 feet 5 inches (1.65 m) in height[100] and an elegant dresser. Eugen Weber has described Bloch's handwriting as "impossible".[100] He had expressive blue eyes, which could be "mischievous, inquisitive, ironic and sharp".[56] Febvre later said that when he first met Bloch in 1902, he found a slender young man with "a timid face".[29] Bloch was proud of his family's history of defending France: he later wrote, "My great-grandfather was a serving soldier in 1793; ... my father was one of the defenders of Strasbourg in 1870 ... I was brought up in the traditions of patriotism which found no more fervent champions than the Jews of the Alsatian exodus".[167]
Bloch was a committed supporter of the Third Republic and politically left-wing.[20] He was not a Marxist, although he was impressed by Karl Marx himself, whom he thought was a great historian if possibly "an unbearable man" personally.[64] He viewed contemporary politics as purely moral decisions to be made.[138] He did not, however, let it enter into his work; indeed, he questioned the very idea of a historian studying politics.[114] He believed that society should be governed by the young, and, although politically he was a moderate, he noted that revolutions generally promote the young over the old: "even the Nazis had done this, while the French had done the reverse, bringing to power a generation of the past".[128] According to Epstein, following the First World War, Bloch presented a "curious lack of empathy and comprehension for the horrors of modern warfare",[87] while John Lewis Gaddis has found Bloch's failure to condemn Stalinism in the 1930s "disturbing".[168] Gaddis suggests that Bloch had ample evidence of Stalin's crimes and yet sought to shroud them in utilitarian calculations about the price of what he called 'progress'".[168]
Although Bloch was very reserved
Bloch was agnostic, if not
Bloch's brother Louis became a doctor, and eventually the head of the
Legacy
It is possible, argues Weber, that had Bloch survived the war, he would have been a candidate for Minister of Education in a post-war government and would have reformed the education system he had condemned for losing France the war in 1940.[170] Instead, in 1948, his son Étienne offered the Archives Nationales his father's papers for their repository, but they rejected the offer. As a result, the material was placed in the vaults of the École Normale Supérieure, "where it lay untouched for decades".[79]
Intellectual historian Peter Burke named Bloch the leader of what he called the "French Historical Revolution",[171] and Bloch became an icon for the post-war generation of new historians.[49] Although he has been described as being, to some extent, the object of a cult in both England and France[74]—"one of the most influential historians of the twentieth century"[172] by Stirling, and "the greatest historian of modern times" by John H. Plumb[1]—this is a reputation mostly acquired postmortem.[173] Henry Loyn suggests it is also one which would have amused and amazed Bloch.[158] According to Stirling, this posed a particular problem within French historiography when Bloch effectively had martyrdom bestowed upon him after the war, leading to much of his work being overshadowed by the last months of his life.[156] This led to "indiscriminate heaps of praise under which he is now almost hopelessly buried".[101] This is partly at least the fault of historians themselves, who have not critically re-examined Bloch's work but rather treat him as a fixed and immutable aspect of the historiographical background.[156]
At the turn of the millennium "there is a woeful lack of critical engagement with Marc Bloch's writing in contemporary academic circles" according to Stirling.
The first critical biography of Bloch did not appear until Carole Fink's Marc Bloch: A Life in History was published in 1989.[173] This, wrote S. R. Epstein, was the "professional, extensively researched and documented" story of Bloch's life, and, he commented, probably had to "overcome a strong sense of protectiveness among the guardians of Bloch's and the Annales' memory".[173] Since then, continuing scholarship—such as that by Stirling, who calls Bloch a visionary, although a "flawed" one[172]—has been more critically objective of Bloch's recognisable weaknesses. For example, although he was a keen advocate for chronological precision and textual accuracy, his only major work in this area, a discussion of Osbert of Clare's Life of Edward the Confessor, was subsequently "seriously criticised"[125] by later experts in the field such as R. W. Southern and Frank Barlow;[4] Epstein later suggested Bloch was "a mediocre theoretician but an adept artisan of method".[177] Colleagues who worked with him occasionally complained that Bloch's manner could be "cold, distant, and both timid and hypocritical"[170] due to the strong views he had held on the failure of the French education system.[170] Bloch's reduction of the role of individuals, and their personal beliefs, in changing society or making history has been challenged.[178] Even Febvre, reviewing Feudal Society on its post-war publication, suggested that Bloch had unnecessarily ignored the individual's role in societal development.[122]
Bloch has also been accused of ignoring unanswered questions and presenting complete answers when they are perhaps not deserved,
Comparative history, too, still proved controversial many years after Bloch's death,
The English-language journal
Awards
- Knight of the Legion of Honour
- Croix de Guerre 1914-1918, 4 mentions in despatches (2 bronze and 2 silver)
- Croix de Guerre 1939-1945, 1 mention in despatches (1 silver-gilt)
Notes
- ^ Gustave Bloch, author of La Gaule Romaine, was a noted historian in his own right, and R. R. Davies suggests his son's "intellectual mentor; [it] was doubtless from him that Marc Bloch derived his interest in rural history and in the problem of the emergence of medieval society from the Roman world."[4]
- ^ Gustave Bloch personally took part in the defence of Strasbourg in September 1870.[9]
- Boulangists and crises such as the Panama scandals in the last decade of the nineteenth century.[14]
- ^ In The Historian's Craft, Bloch describes himself as one of "the last of the generation of the Dreyfus Affair".[16]
- ^ His father's nickname was a reference to the skeleton of a megatherium which was housed in the ÉNS.[3]
- ^ This road is now the Avenue de Maréchal Leclerc.[31]
- Emile Boutroux.[32]
- ^ Bloch did, however, continually refer back to this research throughout the rest of his career, and Guy Fourquin's 1963 monograph Les campagnes de la rdgion parisienne li la fin du moyen age effectively completed the study.[36]
- ^ Bloch later recalled that he had seen only one exception to this collective spirit, and that that was a by "'scab', by which I mean a non-unionist employed as a strike-breaker".[10]
- ^ The transfer of Strasbourg University from German to French ownership provided the opportunity to recruit, as H. Stuart Hughes put it, "de novo a faculty of distinction".[63] Colleagues of Bloch at Strasbourg included archaeologists, psychologists, and sociologists such as Maurice Halbwachs, Charles Blondel, Gabriel le Bras and Albert Grenier; together they took part in a "remarkable interdisciplinary seminar".[62] Bloch himself was a believer in the assimilation of Alsace and the encouragement of "anti-German cultural revanchism".[8]
- ^ Bloch's ideas on comparative history were particularly popular in Scandinavia, and he regularly returned to them in his subsequent lectures there.[75]
- ^ This appeared in 1941. Bloch's chapter was "The Rise of Dependent Cultivation and Seignorial Institutions" in the first volume.[89]
- ^ There was strong mutual respect between Luzzatto and Bloch and Febvre, who regularly reviewed his work in the Annales, and for which he had most recently written an article in 1937.[104]
- ^ Known as the drôle de guerre in French.[47]
- anglophobic; he described the British soldier as naturally "a looter and a lecher: that is to say, the two vices which the French peasant finds it hard to forgive when both are satisfied to the detriment of his farmyard and his daughters",[109] and English officers as being imbued with an "old crusted Tory tradition".[109]
- ^ Bloch questioned the lack of a collective French spirit between the wars in Strange Defeat: "we were all of us either specialists in the social sciences or workers in scientific laboratories, and maybe the very disciplines of those employments kept us, by a sort of fatalism, from embarking on individual action".[136][135]
- ^ Davies suggests that the speech he self-described with at his funeral may be unpleasant hearing to some historians in the words' stridency and emotion. However, he also notes the necessity of remembering the context, that "they are the words of a Jew by birth writing in the darkest hour of France's history and that Bloch never confused patriotism with a narrow, exclusive nationalism".[138] In Strange Defeat, Bloch had written that the only time he had ever emphasised his ethnicity was "in the face of an antisemite".[118]
- ^ Von Ranke summed up his philosophy of history in the dictum: "the strict presentation of the facts, contingent and unattractive though they may be, is undoubtedly the supreme law".[141]
- ^ *More on watermill*
- ^ They did not do this with the intention of suppressing discussion of Bloch's ideas, wrote Karen Stirling, but "it is easy for contemporary scholars to confuse Bloch's own individualistic work as a historian with that of his structuralist successors". In other words, to apply to Bloch's views those who followed him with, in some cases, rather different interpretations of those views.[174]
- ^ The context in which Bloch wrote this passage was slightly different to that given it by the two candidates, who were both on the right of the political centre. But, says Peter Schöttler, Bloch "had already coined this aphorism during the First World War and given it a significant heading: 'On the history of France and why I am not a conservative'".[184]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h Weber 1991, p. 244.
- ^ a b c d e f Lyon 1985, p. 183.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Friedman 1996, p. 7.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Davies 1967, p. 267.
- ^ a b Fink 1991, p. 8.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Stirling 2007, p. 527.
- ^ Fink 1991, p. 16.
- ^ a b Epstein 1993, p. 280.
- ^ a b Fink 1998, p. 41.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Lyon 1985, p. 184.
- ^ Fink 1995, p. 205.
- ^ Fink 1991, p. 17.
- ^ Febvre 1947, p. 172.
- ^ a b c Friedman 1996, p. 6.
- ^ Fink 1991, p. 19.
- ^ Bloch 1963, p. 154.
- ^ Hughes-Warrington 2015, p. 10.
- ^ a b Fink 1991, p. 24.
- ^ a b Friedman 1996, p. 4.
- ^ a b c d e Schöttler 2010, p. 415.
- ^ a b c d e f Lyon 1987, p. 198.
- ^ Fink 1991, pp. 24–25.
- ^ a b Fink 1991, p. 22.
- ^ Gat 1992, p. 93.
- ^ Friedman 1996, p. 3.
- ^ a b c Davies 1967, p. 275.
- ^ Baulig 1945, p. 5.
- ^ a b c Fink 1991, p. 40.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Hughes 2002, p. 127.
- ^ a b c Fink 1991, p. 43.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Weber 1991, p. 245.
- ^ Friedman 1996, pp. 74–75.
- ^ a b Fink 1991, p. 44.
- ^ a b Fink 1991, p. 46.
- ^ a b c Hughes-Warrington 2015, p. 12.
- ^ a b c d e f Davies 1967, p. 269.
- ^ a b Fink 1991, p. 11.
- ^ Bloch 1980, p. 52.
- ^ a b Fink 1991, p. 26.
- ^ a b Hochedez 2012, p. 62.
- ^ a b c d Hochedez 2012, p. 61.
- ^ a b c Lyon 1987, p. 199.
- ^ a b c d e Lyon 1987, p. 200.
- ^ Burguière 2009, p. 38.
- ^ a b c Stirling 2007, p. 528.
- ^ Lyon 1985, p. 185.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Fink 1998, p. 40.
- ^ Epstein 1993, p. 277.
- ^ a b Sreedharan 2004, p. 259.
- ^ a b Loyn 1999, p. 162.
- ^ Hochedez 2012, p. 64.
- ^ Loyn 1999, p. 164.
- ^ Hochedez 2012, p. 63.
- ^ a b Bloch 1980, p. 14.
- ^ Epstein 1993, pp. 276–277.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Friedman 1996, p. 10.
- ^ Bloch 1927, p. 176.
- ^ a b c Lyon 1985, p. 181.
- ^ Huppert 1982, p. 510.
- ^ a b c d e f Stirling 2007, p. 529.
- ^ Fink 1991, p. 84.
- ^ a b Epstein 1993, p. 279.
- ^ Hughes 2002, p. 121.
- ^ a b c d e f Friedman 1996, p. 11.
- ^ a b Epstein 1993, p. 278.
- ^ Rhodes 1999, p. 111.
- ^ a b c d e Fink 1995, p. 207.
- ^ a b Sreedharan 2004, p. 258.
- ^ Lyon 1987, p. 201.
- ^ a b c d Lyon 1985, p. 182.
- ^ a b Davies 1967, p. 270.
- ^ a b c d e f g Fink 1995, p. 209.
- ^ Lyon 1985, pp. 181–182.
- ^ a b Davies 1967, p. 265.
- ^ Raftis 1999, p. 73 n.4.
- ^ a b c Epstein 1993, p. 275.
- ^ a b c d e Stirling 2007, p. 530.
- ^ a b c d Davies 1967, p. 280.
- ^ a b c d e Epstein 1993, p. 274.
- ^ a b Huppert 1982, p. 512.
- ^ a b Lyon 1987, p. 202.
- ^ Fink 1991, p. 31.
- ^ Dosse 1994, p. 107.
- ^ Sewell 1967, p. 210.
- ^ a b Davies 1967, p. 266.
- ^ a b c d Friedman 1996, p. 12.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Epstein 1993, p. 276.
- ^ a b c Burguière 2009, p. 39.
- ^ Lyon 1987, p. 204.
- ^ Fink 1998, pp. 44–45.
- ^ a b Weber 1991, p. 249 n..
- ^ Bloch 1963, p. 39.
- ^ a b c Dosse 1994, p. 43.
- ^ Bianco 2013, p. 248.
- ^ a b c Burguière 2009, p. 47.
- ^ a b Raftis 1999, p. 63.
- ^ a b c Weber 1991, p. 254.
- ^ Weber 1991, pp. 254–255.
- ^ Weber 1991, p. 255.
- ^ a b c d e f Weber 1991, p. 256.
- ^ a b c d Stirling 2007, p. 531.
- ^ a b Weber 1991, p. 250.
- ^ Epstein 1993, pp. 274–275.
- ^ Lanaro 2006.
- ^ a b c Weber 1991, p. 249.
- ^ Huppert 1982, p. 514.
- ^ a b Fink 1998, p. 45.
- ^ a b Stirling 2007, p. 533.
- ^ a b c Lyon 1985, p. 188.
- ^ a b c Fink 1998, p. 43.
- ^ Fink 1998, p. 44.
- ^ Fink 1998, p. 48.
- ^ a b Fink 1998, p. 49.
- ^ a b c d Dosse 1994, p. 44.
- ^ a b c d e f g Fink 1995, p. 208.
- ^ Burguière 2009, p. 48.
- ^ a b c d e f Fink 1998, p. 42.
- ^ a b Bloch 1949, p. 23.
- ^ a b Kaye 2001, p. 97.
- ^ Lyon 1985, p. 189.
- ^ a b Davies 1967, p. 281.
- ^ a b Hughes-Warrington 2015, p. 15.
- ^ Fink 1998, p. 39.
- ^ Birnbaum 2007, p. 251 n.92.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Davies 1967, p. 268.
- ^ a b Weber 1991, pp. 253–254.
- ^ Levine 2010, p. 15.
- ^ a b c Chirot 1984, p. 43.
- ^ Burguière 2009, p. 43.
- ^ a b Burguière 2009, p. 45.
- ^ a b c Loyn 1999, p. 163.
- ^ Geremek 1986, p. 1103.
- ^ Geremek 1986, p. 1105.
- ^ Geremek 1986, p. 1104.
- ^ a b Lyon 1985, p. 186.
- ^ Bloch 1980, pp. 172–173.
- ^ Freire 2015, p. 170 n.60.
- ^ a b c Davies 1967, p. 282.
- ^ Loyn 1999, p. 174.
- ^ Bloch 1932, p. 505.
- ^ Blumenau 2002, p. 578.
- ^ a b Davies 1967, p. 270 271.
- ^ Bloch 1963, p. 87.
- ^ Fink 1991, p. 37.
- ^ Rhodes 1999, p. 133.
- ^ a b Geremek 1986, p. 1102.
- ^ Rhodes 1999, p. 110.
- ^ Watelet 2004, p. 227.
- ^ Davies 1967, p. 273.
- ^ Chirot 1984, p. 24.
- ^ a b Davies 1967, p. 271.
- ^ Baulig 1945, p. 7.
- ^ Davies 1967, pp. 277–278.
- ^ a b Raftis 1999, p. 64.
- ^ Loyn 1999, p. 171.
- ^ a b c d e f Stirling 2007, p. 526.
- ^ a b Vaught 2011, p. 2.
- ^ a b Loyn 1999, p. 165.
- ^ a b Davies 1967, p. 274.
- ^ a b Davies 1967, p. 272.
- ^ Loyn 1999, pp. 165–166.
- ^ Baulig 1945, p. 8.
- ^ Baulig 1945, p. 9.
- ^ Sewell 1967, p. 211.
- ^ a b Davies 1967, p. 279.
- ^ Michaud 2010, p. 38.
- ^ Fink 1991, p. 1.
- ^ a b Gaddis 2002, p. 128.
- ^ Birnbaum 2007, p. 248.
- ^ a b c Weber 1991, p. 253.
- ^ Burke 1990, p. 7.
- ^ a b Stirling 2007, p. 525.
- ^ a b c d Epstein 1993, p. 273.
- ^ Stirling 2007, p. 536 n.3.
- ^ Epstein 1993, p. 282.
- ^ Loyn 1999, pp. 162–163.
- ^ Epstein 1993, p. 281.
- ^ Rhodes 1999, p. 132.
- ^ Chirot 1984, p. 31.
- ^ Chirot 1984, p. 22.
- ^ Loyn 1999, p. 166.
- ^ Dosse 1997, p. 237.
- ^ Schöttler 2010, p. 417 n.60.
- ^ Bloch 1980, p. 165.
- ^ Hughes-Warrington 2015, p. 16.
Bibliography
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- Bianco, G. (2013). "The Origins of Georges Canguilhem's 'Vitalism': Against the Anthropology of Irritation". In Normandin, S.; Wolfe, C. T. (eds.). Vitalism and the Scientific Image in Post-Enlightenment Life Science, 1800–2010. Heidelberg: Springe. pp. 243–267. ISBN 978-9-40072-445-7.
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- Bloch, M. (1927). "Review of l'Annee Sociologique (1923–24)". Revue Historique. 155. Translated by Rhodes, R. C.: 176. OCLC 873875081.
- Bloch, M. (1932). "Regions naturelles et groupes sociaux". Annales d'Histoire Économique et Sociale. 4: 489–510. OCLC 819292560.
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- Burke, P. (1990). The French Historical Revolution: The Annales School, 1929–89. Oxford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-80471-837-0.
- Chirot, D. (1984). "Social and Historical Landscapes of Marc Bloch". In Skocpol T. (ed.). Vision and Method in Historical Sociology. Conference on Methods of Historical Social Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 22–46. ISBN 978-0-52129-724-0.
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- Dosse, F. (1997). The Sign Sets, 1967–present. History of Structuralism. Vol. II. Translated by Glassman, D. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0-81662-371-6.
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- Fink, C. (1995). "Marc Bloch (1886–1944)". In Damico H. Zavadil J. B. (ed.). Medieval Scholarship: Biographical Studies on the Formation of a Discipline: History. London: Routledge. pp. 205–218. ISBN 978-1-31794-335-8.
- Fink, C. (1998). "Marc Bloc and the Drôle de Guerre: Prelude to the "Strange Defeat"". In Blatt, J. (ed.). The French Defeat of 1940: Reassessments. New York: Berghahn Books. pp. 39–53. ISBN 978-0-85745-717-2.
- Freire, O. (2015). The Quantum Dissidents: Rebuilding the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (1950–1990). London: Springer. ISBN 978-3-66244-662-1.
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- Gaddis, J. L. (2002). The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19517-157-0.
- Gat, A. (1992). The Development of Military Thought: The Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19820-246-2.
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- Schöttler, P. (2010). "After the Deluge: The Impact of the Two World Wars on the Historical Works of Henri Pirenne and Marc Bloch". In Berger, S.; Lorenz, C. (eds.). Nationalizing the Past: Historians as Nation Builders in Modern Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 404–425. ISBN 978-0-23029-250-5.
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External links
- "Notice no. 19800035/163/20935". Base Léonore (in French)., Images of documents held by the Archives Nationales relating to Bloch's war service.
- Centre Marc Bloch (in French)
- Université Marc Bloch (in English)
- www.marcbloch.fr Association Marc Bloch - website no longer active (in French)
- History Heroes : Marc Bloch (Smithsonian Magazine) (in English)
- Episode on Marc Bloch from the Wittenberg to Westphalia podcast (in English).
- Description of Bloch's archives (in French)
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