Bloch & Prescott - similarities and differences

  The Annales School of history writing sought to take all walks of life into account when writing history.  Taking that into account, what different groups does Bloch include in his book?  How does this differ from Prescott's "Great Man View of History"?

  Volume I of Marc Bloch’s Feudal Society examines the (swift?) birth of feudalism and the development of its foundation.  The volume is written in an erudite and literary style which seemed to me to be similar to Prescott in some ways, and seemed be equally biased in a Eurocentric way.  In the Forward of the book, T.S. Brown points to criticism over the weakness in the way Bloch handles chronology (xvi), but I didn’t see it.  I thought both Prescott and Bloch wrote chronologically understandable narratives.

  

  I do see stylistic similarities in Bloch and Prescott, but the differences between the two authors are more distinct.  Prescott conveyed his history by employing the great man, Cortes, to help deliver the narrative.   Bloch seems to stand in contrast to the great man theory or method – more prone to examining a long term social history, the emphasis being the social and economic themes of feudalism, rather than political or diplomatic themes.   Bloch looks at the roles of “Northmen,” kindred groups and the ties between Man and Man – vassalage and fief, and lord, to name a few, in a broad way (although the book was particularly Franco-centric).  Granted, as other posts from the class have pointed out, Bloch didn’t spend much time with the serf, but I still believe he effectively employs major elements of society as the deliverer of his thesis, instead of, as Prescott may have been inclined to do, using Charlemagne (or the hero Roland) to tell the story.

  Trouillot may have been concerned, as T.S. Brown was in the Forward to this volume, about the potential silences produced by Bloch’s scant treatment of the role of Christianity, paying little attention to the religion that Brown called the factor that “contributed most to the cohesion of Western society.” (xviii)