Opponents of the Annales School

Based on analysis of archival and published sources, Opponents of the Annales School examines for the first time those who have dared to criticise and ignore one of the most successful currents of thought in modern historiography. It offers an original contribution to the understanding of an unavoidable chapter in modern intellectual history.

For nearly a hundred years, the Annales School has courted controversy: its adherents revolutionised historical research; they augmented the number of topics admissible in academic research on economic, social and civilisation history and they overturned the practices of nineteenth-century historians apparently in favour of an original, interdisciplinary approach.

Opponents of the Annales School insists that this is part of a story that Annales historians circulated. Examining Annales from the point of view of opponents, a picture altogether different emerges, one in which a series of assaults and accommodations by scholars across borders deflected annalistes'' propositions about the study of the past. Because of the interconnection of cultural, educational, ideological and religious commitments as well as aspects of modern political cultures in debates between the Annales and their opponents, the analysis adopts a wide lens in order to suggest new horizons in the study of Man''s past.