Annales school, intellectual integrity of the historian or environmental determinism

• Published in: تاریخ نگری و تاریخ نگاری Vol. 22; no. 10; pp. 29 - 53
• Main Authors: Saleh Pargari, Nader Parvin, Moslem Soleimanian, Zoleikha Amini
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Persian
• Published: Alzahra University 01.11.2012
• Subjects: annales; environmental and geographical determinism; historiography and history review; structuralism
• ISSN: 2008-8841; 2538-3507
• DOI: 10.22051/hph.2014.861

It is a real consideration that the researchers have committed a prejudice in referring to Annales School of history as "intellectual integrity" or "revolutionary historiography". This is because the excessive attention of Annales school of historians to environmental and geographical and possibly social structures in their prominent works, including "The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II", "Memory and the Mediterranean", "Routine life" and "Rural Russia from 1600 to 1930" by Fernand Braudel , " History of the French countryside" and "Feudal society" by Marc Bloch, "Langoduk farmers", "Rural history in the early modern era" and "A thousand years of climate history" by Lorena Ladury, "Feudal society" by Dela Blush, "Emerging Europe" by Lopez, whose titles are self-explanatory of the environmental determinism, have hidden the nature of the historical developments behind the long-term environmental, geographical and social structures. Affectedness, imitation and adaptation of Annales from concepts and theories of various scholars, e.g. in sociology from Emile Durkheim, in Geography from Michelle, Dela Blush, Henryer and Karl Lampersht, explanation and interpretation of history based on purely environmental and geographical approaches, interpretation of history as a subset of social sciences rather than an independent science, prioritizing the theory over the investigation, affectedness of Annales historians especially Immanuel Les Roy Ladury in 1950s and 1960s in methodology from neo-marxism and German dialectical materialism are the main components that captured Annales historians in environmental and structural determinism, such that among a handful of constructs, the history has lost authority as a knowledge including independent and empowered agents.