History of the Annales School

As a student of history, I personally like to focus on social, literary and anthropological aspects of the past in order to make connections between cultures over time. I am really excited to begin reading more social histories and was interested to see how this history came about. Overall, I have to say I enjoyed Eley’s article and Thompson’s article, “Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism” the most. Eley made his points well and had a very structured layout which was great for providing a basic overview about the history of the Annales School and social history. He was very clear and I am glad that I choose to read that first because, along with last week’s reading, I was able to understand the overall ideas of this new history.

Thompson’s article demonstrated the interdisciplinary topics that Eley talks about in his article (Eley 33). Just in the first few pages, Thompson ties together literature, anthropology and science when describing how the clock has been a part of different societies throughout time. I think I was actually drawn to both Thompson articles because he does incorporate these other disciplines and they were both really fun and interesting to read.

Hexter’s article on Fernand Braudel was a little too much for me. I thought his points were easy to distinguish but I often got distracted by his metaphors and was unable to focus on what he was trying to say. I thought he could have structured his text a little more than the three divisions he makes when explaining the “3 layer” idea of Braudel’s La Méditerranée (Hexter 481). The additional article I read was Michael Harsgor’s, “The Annales School” which was similar to Eley in the way he clearly laid out the general concepts of this school.