Hexter Broods over Braudel, and Thompson leaves his Marx on History

I very much enjoyed this week’s readings.  We were thrust yet again into a few silences of history with Thompson’s view from the bottom up, and we were encouraged by Braudel to consider history by looking OUTSIDE of history (much to Hexter’s frustration).  

Braudel, according to Hexter and Eley, considered history through “three temporalities or levels of analysis” (Eley, p. 37).  Although we could consider the third stage of history - the more immediate impacts of people on events, Braudel also wanted us to recognize the grander variables that had an impact on what we call history, like “landscape, climate, demography, deep patterns of economic life, long-run norms and habits, the reproduction of social structures, the stabilities of popular understanding, and the repetitions of everyday life” (37).  Furthermore, Braudel went beyond history by turning to the social sciences and quantitative methodologies.  Personally, I have always enjoyed interdisciplinary approaches to social science, and have often taught and talked about political science with a healthy regard for history, so Braudel’s efforts to change the study of history are appreciated.  And even though Hexter offered a critical overview of Braudel’s powerful grip over all things Annales, it seems that Braudel was intense and dedicated to, rightly or wrongly, the improvement of his discipline.  

As for Thompson, I think I’m in love with the guy.  I’m not a socialist or Communist and I think that Thompson came creepy close to being a conspiracy theorist (particularly with his excellent “Time” article), but he wrote with flare and was a dedicated believer in what he worked on.  According to Eley, Thompson was “a brilliant, handsome, passionate, and oratorically gifted activist” (48).  I don’t recall Trouillot mentioning Thompson, but I suspect that the former must have appreciated the latter's work, for Thompson wanted to tell the story of the people who didn’t write - or maybe even couldn’t read - history.  Furthermore, Thompson wanted to discuss “the mob’s” actions with a different starting perspective.  Rather than assume that the people were operating from hunger-induced irrationality, he wanted us to consider that the people sought to achieve certain reasonable objectives and used the only tactics that they had at their disposal.  Furthermore, Thompson noted that by many societal standards of the time, they weren’t fighting custom - they were trying to enforce it.   

I like charts and graphs, so I put together this very complicated depiction of some of our readings.  After you look at this, you are likely to wonder if I also work for Pixar, or helped on the movie Avatar, or develop maps as a side gig.  The truth is, no, I do not do any of those things.  I’m just a regular guy trying to visually understand what I’m learning.  

Beyond the assigned articles, I chose a few articles on Eric Hobsbawm, written as reflections on his life in history and published after his death in 2012.  Considering how often he came up in the readings, I wanted to understand better his impact on history.