Annales School

Annales School

The Annales school (French pronunciation: ​[a'nal]) is a group of historians associated with a style of historiography developed by French historians in the 20th century to stress long-term social history. It is named after its scholarly journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale, which remains the main source of scholarship, along with many books and monographs.[1] The school has been highly influential in setting the agenda for historiography in France and numerous other countries, especially regarding the use of social scientific methods by historians, emphasizing social and economic rather than political or diplomatic themes.

The school deals primarily with late medieval and early modern Europe (before the French Revolution), with little interest in later topics. It has dominated French social history and influenced historiography in Europe and Latin America. Prominent leaders include co-founders Lucien Febvre (1878–1956), Henri Hauser (1866-1946) and Marc Bloch (1886–1944).




historians in France in the twentieth century who stressed long term social history, also called longue duree. Long duree gives priority to long-term historical structures over events that Francois Simian called histoire evenementielle or ‘event history’. In this light the dividing line between the Anglo–Saxon and Medieval eras vanishes and the dominant tendencies can be understood better as early post classical and later postclassical periods.

It has been pointed out that the Ancient European civilization which was born in Greece and flourished under the Roman empire began to decline in the third century of the C E. There were several elements that caused the disruption of the Pax Romana - the peace of the Romans. The Roman empire was plunged into military anarchy, was raided by Germanic tribes and, was burdened by economic dislocation. Besides, eastern religions undermined the Greco-Roman civilization that was based on rational enquiry. The Roman world began to move in a direction in which the quest for the divine was to predominate over all human enterprise.

The political void thus left by the Romans was filled by the Germanic tribes such as the Ostrogoths in Italy, the Visigoths in Hispania, Franks and Burgundians in Gaul and Western Germany and the Angles and Saxons in Britain. We find that the old English epic poem Beowulf narrates, according to Gregory (c 540 –94), Bishop of Tours, the events of the sixth century Merovingian period of French history. The Geatish king Hygelac in Beowulf has been identified with ‘Chociliacus’ (in Latin), a Scandinavian leader, who conducted a raid in 520 against the Frisian territory of the Franks. While the event that Beowulf narrates took place in the sixth century the poem was actually written in the tenth.




The epic narrates two major events in the life of the Geatish hero Beowulf son of Ecgtheow: the first when in his youth, he fights and kills Grendel who has been attacking Heorot, the hall of the Danish king Hrothgar. Next night Grendel’s mother merewif ( sea woman) or brymwylf (sea wolf) or grundwyrgen (ground monster), etc. as she is called, comes to avenge her son but meets the same fate. Beowulf is suitably feasted and rewarded and returns to his own land. Beowulf later himself becomes king of the Geats and has a prosperous reign of forty years when he slays a dragon which has ravaged his land but in the fight receives a mortal wound. The poem ends with the funeral ceremonies in honour of the dead hero. There is a strong thread of Christian commentary that runs through the poem and scholars are of the view that the poem was written in the eighth century when England was being won over by Christianity, seemingly inappropriate to the date of the historical events it describes.

Two other poems that refer to the pre-Christian age are ‘Widsith’ (i.e. ‘the far traveller’) and ‘Deor.’ The former dates substantially from the seventh century and is thus the earliest poem in the English language. It is constructed around three ‘thulas’ (i.e. mnemonic name lists) connected by the events in the life of the eponymous minstrel. The first names the great rulers; the second the tribes among whom the minstrel travelled and the third the people the minstrel claimed to have sought out.

‘The Lament of Deor’ records the effusions of a minstrel who has fallen out of favour and who consoles himself in 42 lines of seven unequal sections with the refrain, ‘His sorrow passed away so will mine.’ Deor recalls the past misfortunes of Wayland the Smith, Theodoric and Hermanric. ‘Deor’ unlike other elegies in Old English does not end with a Christian consolation.

‘Waldere’ or ‘Waldhere’ consists of two fragments in 63 lines which must have been part of a longer poem. Waldere was the son of a king of Aquitaine. He was given up to Atilla the Hun and became one of his generals. He later eloped with Hiltgund, a Burgundian princess, to whom he had been betrothed as a child. In the course of their flight they were attacked by assailants whom Waldere defeated but received injury as well. Waldere and Hiltgund continued their journey and were finally married.

‘[I]t was in their war songs’ wrote Emile Legouis that the Anglo-Saxons best retained the vestiges of their wild, primitive mood, especially in those which celebrated their own battles.’ Most prominent among such ‘songs’ are ‘The Battle of Brunanburh’ and ‘The Battle of Maldon’. The former narrates the battle fought between the English under Athelstan, grandson of Alfred (849–99), and the Danes under Anlaf who came from Dublin supported by the Scots and the Welsh. The poem celebrates the victory of Athelstan and his brother and successor Edmund in their defeat of the invaders.

‘The Battle of Maldon’ deals with the battle fought between the Danes and Byrhtnoth (c. 926–91) who rejects the demand for tribute by the former. The English are defeated partly because some of his men flee but partly also because of Byrhtnoth’s ‘ofermod’, his excessive pride in yielding ground to the Danes as a gesture of magnanimity. The latter half of the 325-line poem concerns itself with the loyalty of the followers of Byrhtnoth to their dead leader who vow to avenge his death.

The poetry of Old English or Early Postclassical period falls into two divisions – the pre-Christian and Christian. The former represents the poetry which the Anglo- Saxons brought with them in the form of oral sagas; the latter represents

the poetry developed under the teaching of the monks. The old pagan religion had vanished but it retained its hold on the life and language of the people. I have briefly described the pre-Christian poetry that is vigorous and varied. Let’s now turn to the poetry on Christian themes, though large in quantity, as preserved by the clerks - clergymen of the five minor orders as distinct from the higher or ‘holy orders’ – which are derivative in nature and thus of relatively inferior quality.

One of the salutary influences of the spread of Christianity in England was that it gave the people some relief from the frightful wars that were fought between the petty kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons. The conversions of the English to Christianity was led by Augustine (d. between 604 –609) from Rome who founded a monastery at Canterbury. He is not the same as St. Augustine (354– 430) bishop of Hippo in North Africa and author of City of God (413–27) and the autobiographical Confessions. The former Augustine was prior of Pope Grerogy’s monastery of St. Andrew in Rome. (A prior is a superior officer at a religious house or order.) Augustine was sent by Gregory with some forty monks, in 596, to preach in England. He was received by King Ethelbert of Kent who was later converted. The Augustinians spread the new religion in the South and center of England, especially in the Kingdom of Essex. They, however, produced no literature of lasting value.

St. Aidan (d. 651) came to Northumbria from Ireland which country had been a center of Christianity and education for all Western Europe . The Northumbrian School was centred mainly at the monasteries and abbeys at Jarrow and Whitby and the three great figures of Anglo -Saxon age produced by them were Bede (673–735), Caedmon (7th c.) and Cynewulf (8thc) .