Second world. war in the army in 1940-45 in it. captivity. Being in a POW camp (since 1943 - in a strict regime camp), deprived of libraries and archives, writes from memory the book “The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world in the era of Philip II” (in 1947 it was defended as a thesis, in 1949 it was published). Met with great enthusiasm, this book opened B. the way to great science. In 1949 B. becomes a prof. and head. department of modern civilization at the College de France, in 1956, after the death of Febvre, - ch. editor of the Annals (B. became a member of the editorial board in 1946 on the recommendation of Febvre) and President of Section VI (social and economic sciences) Practical schools of higher studies. In 1962 he founded the House of Human Sciences and became its head. administrator. In 1958, his fundamental methodology was published. article “History and social sciences: time of great duration” (The works of B. methodological character are presented in the collection “Proceedings in History”, 1969). In 1979, a major three-volume work appeared (the first version of the 1st volume came out in 1967)“Material civilization, economics and capitalism (XV-XV1II centuries)". In 1970, B., due to disagreements with the leading employees of the Annales, resigned from his post as chief. editor and, formally remaining a member of the new collective management of the journal, breaks ties with him, focusing on the management of the House of Human Sciences. At the end of his life, B. is working on a multi-volume study “The identity of France” (not completed; first two volumes published posthumously in 1986).

B. - an adherent of the so-called. "global history". “Global about-in” he divides into systems - economics. , social, political, cultural, each of which, in turn, is divided into many subsystems. For a complete description of the "global about-va" it is necessary to take into account the different rates of change in different systems. B., following the French. sociologist Zh. Gurvich and, based on some ideas of M. Blok, proposes to distinguish three time rhythms: time of great duration (longue duree)- time of geographic, material and mental structures, “quasi-stationary”, in which changes are not felt; time of average duration - the time of conjunctures, cycles, calculated in decades; short time - the time of events.

Recognizing that the "total" description is possible only when taking into account all systems of "global about-va" and all time cycles, B. focuses his attention on economics. and material life, and hence to "time of great duration." Polit., an eventful history, which the representatives of the Annales School did not like much anyway, does not find a place for itself on the pages of B.’s works. The focus of his “Mediterranean...” is not the policy of Philip II, but this region itself, his geogr. features, material life, economics, etc. Main causes of history changes lie, according to B., in “time of great duration”; history changes are made slowly, imperceptibly for people and against their will.

Proceedings B. caused a huge resonance in the scientific. world, his "longe duree" ideas have inspired many followers, interest in everyday life has stimulated many researchers in this field. But, at the same time, both within the framework of the Annales School and outside it, many of B.'s provisions were objected to. B. was reproached for not considering culture (in the “Mediterranean...”, dedicated to the 16th century, almost nothing is said about the Renaissance), history events and, most importantly, people. According to B.'s critics, the elimination of man turns into an anthropomorphization of natural and social conditions: in this book about the Mediterranean, it itself acts as an acting subject; “time of long duration” from research. reception turns into a real independent, anonymous driving force stories. People are not so much authors as actors in the drama of history.

Op.: La Mediterranee et le monde mediterraneen a 1 "epoque de Philippe 11. P., 1949 (4 ed. V. 1-2. 1979); Ecrits sur 1" histoire. P., 1969; L "identite de la France: Espace et histoire. P., 1986; L" identite de la France: Les Hommes et les Choses. Pt. 1-2. P., 1986; History and social sciences. History duration // Philosophy and methodology of history. M., 1977; Historian's Testimony // Franz. yearbook. 1982. M., 1984; Material civilization, economy and capitalism, XV-XVIII centuries. T. 1-3. M., 1986-92; Dynamics of capitalism. Smolensk, 1993; What is France? Book. 1-2. Part 1. M., 1994-95.

Lit.: Sokolova M.N. History theory of Fernand Brode-la // Franz. yearbook. 1972. M., 1974; Febvre L. The Mediterranean Sea and the Mediterranean world in the era of Philip II // Febvre L. Fights for history. M., 1991; Gurevich A.Ya. History synthesis and the Annales school. M., 1993; Lire Braudel. P., 1988.

AND I. Gurevich, D.E. Kharitonov

Culturology. XX century. Encyclopedia. 1998 .

Braudel

Fernand Braudel (Braudel) (1902-1985)

French historian. Graduated from the Sorbonne (Paris University); from the beginning 20s to mid. 30s taught at lyceums in Algiers, from 1938 - at Praktich. School of Higher Studies in Paris. In 1932 he met L. Febvre, who had a great influence on B.. All R. 30s starts work on the dis. “Philip II, Spain and the Mediterranean”, attracting a huge amount of material, incl. archival. From the beginning Second world. war in the army in 1940-45 in it. captivity. Being in a prisoner of war camp (since 1943 - in a strict regime camp), deprived of libraries and archives, he writes the book “The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the era of Philip II” from memory (in 1947 it was defended as a thesis, in 1949 it was published). Met with great enthusiasm, this book opened B. the way to great science. In 1949 B. becomes a prof. and head. department of modern civilization at the College de France, in 1956, after the death of Febvre, - ch. editor of the "Annals" (B. became a member of the editorial board in 1946 on the recommendation of Febvre) and president of the VI section (social and economic sciences) Praktich. schools of higher studies. In 1962 he founded the House of Human Sciences and became its head. administrator. In 1958, his fundamental methodology was published. the article “History and social sciences: a time of great duration” (the works of B. methodological character are presented in the collection “Proceedings in History”, 1969). In 1979, a major three-volume work appeared (the first version of the 1st volume was published in 1967) “Material Civilization, Economy and Capitalism (XV-XV1II centuries)”. In 1970, B., due to disagreements with the leading employees of the Annals, resigned from the post of chief. editor and, formally remaining a member of the new collective management of the journal, breaks ties with him, concentrating on managing the House of Human Sciences. At the end of his life B. working on a multi-volume study "The identity of France" (not completed, the first two volumes were published posthumously in 1986).

B. - an adherent of the so-called. "global history". “Global society” he divides into systems - economic, social, political, cultural, each of which, in turn, is divided into many subsystems. For a complete description of the "global about-va" it is necessary to take into account the different rates of change in different systems. B., following the French. sociologist J. Gurvich and, based on some ideas of M. Blok (see Blok, Mark), proposes to distinguish three time rhythms: time of great duration (longue duree) - the time of geographic, material and mental structures, “quasi-stationary”, in Krom changes are not felt; time of average duration - time of conjunctures. cycles counted in decades; short time - the time of events.

Recognizing that the "total" description is possible only when taking into account all systems of "global about-va" and all time cycles, B. focuses his attention on economics. and material life, and hence to "time of great duration." Polit., eventful history, which the representatives of the Annales School did not like much anyway (see the Annales School), does not find a place for itself on the pages of B.'s works. The focus of his “Mediterranean ...” is not Philip's politics II, and this region itself, its geogr. features, material life, economics, etc. Main causes of history changes lie, according to B., in “time of great duration”; history changes are made slowly, imperceptibly for people and against their will.

Proceedings B. caused a huge resonance in the scientific. world, his "longe duree" ideas have inspired many followers, interest in everyday life has stimulated many researchers in this field. But, at the same time, both within the framework of the Annales School and outside it, many of B.'s provisions were objected to. B. was reproached for not considering culture (in the “Mediterranean ...”, dedicated to the 16th century, almost nothing is said about the Renaissance), history. events and, most importantly, people. According to B.'s critics, the elimination of man turns into an anthropomorphization of natural and social conditions: in this book about the Mediterranean, it itself acts as an acting subject; “time of long duration” from research. reception turns into a real independent. anonymous driving force of history. People are not so much authors as actors in the drama of history.

Op.: La Mediterranee et le monde mediterraneen a 1 "epoque de Philippe 11. P., 1949 (4 ed. V. 1-2. 1979); Ecrits sur 1" histoire. P., 1969; L "identite de la France: Espace et histoire. P., 1986; L" identite de la France: Les Hommes et les Choses. Pt. 1-2. P., 1986; History and social sciences. History duration // Philosophy and methodology of history. M., 1977; Historian's Testimony // Franz. yearbook. 1982. M., 1984; Material civilization, economy and capitalism, XV-XVIII centuries. T. 1-3. M., 1986-92; Dynamics of capitalism. Smolensk, 1993; What is France? Book. 1-2. Part 1. M., 1994-95.

Lit.: Sokolova M.N. History theory of Fernand Braudel // Franz. yearbook. 1972. M., 1974; Febvre L. The Mediterranean Sea and the Mediterranean world in the era of Philip II // Febvre L. Fights for history. M., 1991; Gurevich A.Ya. History synthesis and the Annales School. M., 1993; Lire Braudel. P., 1988.

AND I. Gurevich, D.E. Kharitonov.

Cultural studies of the twentieth century. Encyclopedia. M.1996

Big Dictionary in cultural studies.. Kononenko B.I. . 2003 .

See what "BRODEL" is in other dictionaries:

Braudel, Fernand Fernand Braudel Fernand Braudel Date of birth: August 24, 1902 (1902 08 24) Place of birth: Luméville en Ornois, Meuse ... Wikipedia

Braudel Fernand (August 4, 1902, Luneville, Meuse November 28, 1985, Paris) French historian, social thinker, one of the founders of a new paradigm of modern historical science. Graduated from the Sorbonne (1923). Participated in the 2nd world ... ... Philosophical Encyclopedia

- (Braudel) Fernand (1902-85), French historian. Works mainly on the socio-economic history of Western Europe in the 16th-18th centuries. A follower of M. Blok and L. Fevre, editor of the journal Annal ..., a supporter of use in historical ... ... Modern Encyclopedia

Fernand Braudel (French Fernand Braudel; August 24, 1902 November 27, 1985) is an outstanding French historian. He revolutionized historical science with his proposal to take into account economic and geographical factors in the analysis of the historical process. ... ... Wikipedia

- (Braudel) Fernand (b. 24.8.1902, Lumeville, department of Meuse), French historian. Head of the French Center for Historical Research (since 1948), prof. College de France (since 1949), head (since 1956) of the 6th section (“Economic and ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

- (Braudel), Fernand (p. 24.VIII.1902) French. historian, leader of the French Center ist. research, prof. College de France, Head of Section VI Economic. and social sciences at the Ecole pratique des Hautes Études, editor of the journal. Annales Economies… … Soviet historical encyclopedia

Braudel, Fernand (1902-1985). French historian and organizer of science. Fernand Braudel was born on August 24, 1902 in Lumeville (Department of Meis), near Verdun. The son of a village teacher, he spent his childhood in the countryside, on his grandmother's farm. In 1908 the family moved to Paris. In 1913-1920, Braudel studied at the Voltaire Lyceum, then entered the Sorbonne, from which he graduated in 1923. He hoped to get a position as a teacher of higher education in Bar-le-Duc (Bar-le-Duc), a town not far from his home, but these hopes were not justified. In 1923 he went to Algiers, which was then a French colony, and became a teacher of history, first in Constantine (Constantine), and then in the Lyceum of Algiers (Algiers). There he worked until 1932 and there he met his future wife, Paula. In the same period (1925-1926) Braudel served in the military in a group of occupying French troops in Germany.

However, he aspired to a scientific career. Against the recommendations of the Sorbonne professorship, who advised him to devote his doctoral dissertation to the history of Germany, he began to study the past of Spain. Already in the summer of 1927, Braudel was conducting his research in the archives and libraries of Salamanca (Spain), collecting historical material for his dissertation Philip II, Spain and the Mediterranean. In addition, he visits other places in the Mediterranean, in particular, in 1934 - Dubrovnik (Yugoslavia), where, according to him, he sees the 16th century with his own eyes.

In 1932 Braudel began teaching in Paris. At the same time, his friendship and collaboration with Lucien Febvre (1878-1956), professor of history at the College de France, was born. The further fate of Braudel is closely connected with Lucien Febvre and his journal Annales d "histoire économique et sociale", which Febvre and Mark Blok organized in 1929. The general focus of the magazine revised the subject, research methods and the very understanding of the subject Febvre appealed to a “different history”, which included not only the history of wars and accessions to thrones, but also the study of all aspects of everyday human life in the interwar periods.

In 1935, Braudel left for Brazil, where he was offered a professorship at the University of Sao Paulo. In 1937 he returned to France, and the following year he began work at the Practical School of Higher Studies (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes) in Paris. His friendship with Lucien Fevre grows stronger, and Braudel decides to write under the direction of Fevre a book about the medieval Mediterranean. But the war interrupted these plans.

In 1939 Braudel joined the French army. In 1940, he was taken prisoner and spent the next five years in prison camps, first in Mainz, then, from 1943, in a maximum security concentration camp on the Baltic coast (near Lübeck). In captivity, he wrote the work The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the era of Philip II (La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l "époque de Philippe II), which in 1947 was defended as a dissertation, and in 1949 was published and opened the way for Braudel to a great They say that for five years he worked on scraps of school notebooks, on the corner of the table, without any documents and books, from memory, according to the knowledge that he had accumulated while working in the archives and libraries of Spain, Venice, Ragusa ( Dubrovnik). It is no less surprising that he managed to send these records from the concentration camp to France, Fevre. By that time, Fevre remains the only head of the Annals school - in 1944, Mark Blok was shot for participating in the Resistance movement.

After the end of the war and his release, Braudel returned to France and worked at the Sorbonne. In November 1947, Febvre and Charles Moraze founded Section VI (social and economic sciences) with money from the Rockefeller Foundation. practical school higher studies (VI section de l "Ecole pratique des hautes études).

BRODEL, FERNAND(Braudel, Fernand) (1902-1985). French historian and organizer of science. Fernand Braudel was born on August 24, 1902 in Lumeville (Department of Meis), near Verdun. The son of a village teacher, he spent his childhood in the countryside, on his grandmother's farm. In 1908 the family moved to Paris. In 1913-1920, Braudel studied at the Lycée Voltaire, then entered the Sorbonne, from which he graduated in 1923. He hoped to get a position as a teacher of higher education in Bar-le-Duc (Bar-le-Duc), a town not far from his home, but these hopes were not justified. In 1923 he went to Algiers, which was then a French colony, and became a teacher of history, first in Constantine (Constantine), and then in the Lyceum of Algiers (Algiers). There he worked until 1932 and there he met his future wife, Paula. During the same period (1925–1926), Braudel served in the military in the group of occupying French troops in Germany.

However, he aspired to a scientific career. Against the recommendations of the Sorbonne professorship, who advised him to devote his doctoral dissertation to the history of Germany, he began to study the past of Spain. Already in the summer of 1927, Braudel was conducting his research in the archives and libraries of Salamanca (Spain), collecting historical material for his dissertation. Philip II, Spain and the Mediterranean. In addition, he visits other places in the Mediterranean, in particular, in 1934 - Dubrovnik (Yugoslavia), where, according to him, he sees the 16th century with his own eyes.

In 1932 Braudel began teaching in Paris. At the same time, his friendship and collaboration with Lucien Febvre (1878-1956), professor of history at the College de France, was born. The further fate of Braudel is closely connected with Lucien Febvre and his journal Annals of Economic and Social History ( Annales d "histoire economique et sociale), which Febvre and Mark Blok organized in 1929. The general orientation of the journal subjected to revision the subject matter, research methods and the very understanding of the subject of historical science. Febvre appealed to a "different history", which included not only the history of wars and accessions to thrones, but also the study of all aspects of everyday human life in the interwar periods.

In 1935, Braudel left for Brazil, where he was offered a professorship at the University of Sao Paulo. In 1937 he returned to France, and the following year he began work at the Practical School of Higher Studies (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes) in Paris. His friendship with Lucien Fevre grows stronger, and Braudel decides to write under the direction of Fevre a book about the medieval Mediterranean. But the war interrupted these plans.

In 1939 Braudel joined the French army. In 1940, he was taken prisoner and spent the next five years in prison camps, first in Mainz, then, from 1943, in a maximum security concentration camp on the Baltic coast (near Lübeck). In captivity they wrote a work The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world in the era of Philip II(La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l "époque de Philippe II), which in 1947 was defended as a dissertation, and in 1949 was published and opened the way for Braudel to great science. They say that for five years he worked on scraps of school notebooks, on the corner of the table, without any documents and books, from memory, according to the knowledge that he had accumulated while working in the archives and libraries of Spain, Venice, Ragusa (Dubrovnik) . It is no less surprising that he was able to send these records from the concentration camp to France, Fevra. By that time, Febvre remained the only head of the “Annals school” - in 1944, Mark Blok was shot for participating in the Resistance movement.

After the end of the war and his release, Braudel returned to France and worked at the Sorbonne. In November 1947, Febvre and Charles Moraze (Charles Moraze) founded the VI section (social and economic sciences) of the Practical School of Higher Studies (VI section de l "Ecole pratique des hautes études) with the money of the Rockefeller Foundation.

In 1949, Braudel moved from the Sorbonne to the College de France, where he became head of the department of modern civilization.

After the death of Lucien Febvre in 1956, Braudel became president of the IV section of the Practical School of Higher Studies and remained so until 1973. He took the position of Febvre at the College de France and became editor-in-chief of the Annals (from 1946 to 1994 the magazine was called Annals. (Economics. Societies. Civilizations.)" ("Annales. Economies. Sociétés. Civilizations").

In 1958, Braudel's fundamental methodological article was published. History and social sciences: time of great duration.

In 1959, he conceived the creation of an open scientific center and library called the "House of Human Sciences" ("Maison des sciences de l" homme). In 1970, with the help of the Ford Foundation, the "House of Human Sciences" finally opens, and Braudel becomes its chief administrator.

In 1967 Braudel published the first version of the 1st volume of the work Material Civilization, economy and capitalism(of Civilization and Capitalism), but he is not completely satisfied with it. He worked hard until 1979, when he finally published the final version of his three-volume work.

F. Braudel brought up a galaxy of remarkable French historians: G. Duby (Georges Duby), M. Ferro (Marc Ferro), F. Fourier (Francois Furet), J. Le Goff (Jacques Le Goff), E. Leroy-Ladurie (Emmanuel Leroy-Ladurie), J. Rivel (Jacques Revel) and others. Braudel supported and promoted talent in his academic empire, but also closely monitored his potential rivals and competitors.

In 1970, due to disagreements with the Annals staff, he resigned as editor-in-chief, remaining only a nominal member of the new collective leadership of the journal. From that moment on, the scientist gives all his energy to the "House of Human Sciences" and his last multi-volume work French identity which he failed to complete .

Braudel's influence on world historiography is difficult to overestimate. His name is associated not only with changes in French historiography (which directly affected the Annales school), but also with serious changes in the paradigm of modern historical science throughout the world. F. Braudel changed the subject of historical science by introducing new spatio-temporal boundaries of the object and subject of historical research. At the same time, he retained the methods of obtaining positive (objective) knowledge about an object, traditional for scientific history. The scientist proposed a new methodology for the synthesis of social sciences based on the allocation of the structure of social time. Traditionally, historical research has been built either around specific events in time, such as the history of a political revolution (for example, the French Revolution), the history of war (the Hundred Years War), or large historical periods (the history of the Middle Ages), or around some spatial-historical formation, for example , states (history of England), religious movements (history of Christianity) or socio-economic formations (history of antiquity). Braudel criticizes traditional historiography based on the description of historical events that are directly related to political history and are measured in relatively short chronological units. For his research, he introduces the concept of time of long durations (la longue durtée). With the help of this concept, demographic progressions, changes in economic and social conditions, cyclical fluctuations in production, exchange and consumption become the subject of historical research, i.e. concepts widely used by such social sciences as demography, ethnology, economics, sociology, etc. In this approach, the subject of history is not separate historical individuals, but structures slowly changing in time - "systems of fairly stable relations between social reality and the masses." Such subjects are the urban economies of Venice in the 15th–16th centuries. or Antwerp-Amsterdam 16-17 centuries, rice production in China 13-17 centuries. or the agrotechnical revolution in England in the 17th–18th centuries, maritime trade over long distances, or the quasi-autonomous trade of Russia in the 16th–18th centuries. This allows us to overcome a certain anthropocentrism of the idealized objects of historical science, which makes us look for a specific historical figure as the main character on the historical stage, thereby giving a decisive importance to chance in the description of history (an anecdote about Napoleon's cold as a fatal factor for the French during the battle of Borodino). ). On the other hand, teleologism is overcome in historical science, which arises from the transfer by the historian to a group of persons distinguished by some signs (for example, bearers of the Protestant ethic or advanced class consciousness) of signs that are inherent only to a separate individual. Widely using economic statistics and retrospective geography, Braudel creates a broad historical panorama of "eventless history", in which events are recorded not as local phenomena of the political life of society, but as "anomalies" discovered by the historian of the natural course of the historical life of society. Such, for example, are the customs riddle of Narva, or the financial stability of the British pound sterling from 1561 to 1920. It is they who demand their explanation in the history of the emergence of capitalism.

The identification of a new dimension of history and a specific historical subject in the form of researched structures allowed Braudel to create an original model of historical research. First, the geographic, demographic, agrotechnical, production and consumer conditions of material life are considered, or, as Braudel called them, the “structures of everyday life” of the subject of study. This is something that does not change for a long time, calculated in centuries, and constitutes the material conditions for the existence of a person in a given geographical and social environment. Then, the actual economic structures of society associated with the sphere of exchange (markets, fairs, stock exchanges and credits, trade and industry) and the social structures that arise on their basis are analyzed, starting from the simplest trade hierarchies and ending, if the subject of study requires it, the state. Finally, in the last part of the study, it is shown how, as a result of the interaction of the previously identified structures, the subject of study itself arises, be it the world of the economy of modern capitalism ( Material civilization, economy and capitalism of the XV-XVIII centuries., tt. 1–3. M., 1986–1992) or modern France ( What is France. M., 1994–1997). Due to the fact that the subject of Braudel's research is the civilizations of the Mediterranean, the emergence of capitalism or the identity of France, considered as moments of great time durations, the results obtained by the scientist go beyond the narrative presentation of history. In terms of his influence on the development of historical science, Fernand Braudel can be put on a par with such figures as Leopold von Ranke, Theodor Mommsen, Jacob Burckhard, Fustel de Coulange, Lucien Fevre, Mark Blok and Arnold Toynbee.

Despite the fact that specific scientific work in accordance with the methodology developed by Braudel, which involves large-scale expensive research, is still quite difficult for modern Russian science in the conditions of its insufficient funding, the works of F. Braudel are examples of modern historical research for many Russian historians and teams as well. scientists.

Fedor Blucher

Fernand Braudel

French Yearbook 2002. M., 2002.

In a brilliant constellation of eminent historians special place are occupied by those whose works determine the direction of the development of science, set its level, set the tone, dictate fashion. Fernand Braudel, an academician of the French Academy, a corresponding member of 10 foreign academies, an honorary doctor of 18 universities, the founder of “geohistory” and “global history”, one of the founders of the “new historical science”, which marked the beginning of modern “historiographical science”, undoubtedly belongs to their number. revolution."

Braudel's writings have been translated into every major language, his name has been included in encyclopedias, and his ideas have inspired many historians. In the USA, a special "Brodel Center" has been created, which for more than 20 years has been publishing a magazine covering historical problems in the spirit of Braudel's concepts.

Much has been written about Braudel, including in Russian; his detailed voluminous biography appeared, but Braudel himself spoke best of all about his formation as a historian in an article that appeared in 1972 in the USA, and 12 years later published in Russian.

Without pretending to be a detailed analysis of Braudel's works, let us dwell on the main milestones of his life path.

Fernand Braudel was born on August 24, 1902, in the small village of Lumeville-en-Hornois, in Lorraine, almost on the border with Germany, where his parents usually spent the summer months. Braudel's father taught mathematics in one of the Parisian schools, his paternal grandfather was a peasant, then a soldier, and then a shoemaker. Mother - a native of southern France, led the household. Fernand and his older brother spent their childhood in the countryside, where the future historian, according to his wife, "lived like a real peasant's son." The children were looked after by their paternal grandmother, Emilia Cornot, whom Braudel loved dearly, called the light of his childhood and dedicated his last major work called “What is France?” to her. Impressions of village life: the surrounding nature, old village houses (the Braudel house was built in 1806), an old church and a mill, neighbors - peasants whom he knew well, their way of life, a constantly renewed series of rural works - remained forever in his memory . “I think that for my development as a historian, this long and repeatedly renewed experience of rural life was of considerable importance. What others learned from books, I knew from the very beginning, drawing it directly from life,” Braudel recalled, calling himself “a historian with peasant roots.” Bordering Germany, Lorraine, where many residents spoke German, according to Braudel, was “full of memories of past wars, as a child I, along with members of my family, visited Napoleon at the battle of Austerlitz and when crossing the Berezina.”

In 1909 Braudel entered the primary school in the Parisian suburb of Meriel, where the future famous film actor Jean Gabin was his classmate, and then to the Lycée Voltaire in Paris. Studying was easy for him: in his own words, he "adored history", had a rare memory, from childhood, as a native of Lorraine, spoke German, loved Latin and Greek, wrote poetry, at one time even took Russian language lessons and, thanks to received from his father training, excelled in mathematics.

After graduating from the Lyceum, Braudel wanted to study medicine, but his father insisted on entering the Polytechnic School so that his son would become an engineer. In the end, the matter ended in a compromise: Braudel, without much desire, entered the Faculty of Humanities (des Lettres) at the University of Paris, at the famous Sorbonne, where he began to study history. “Like all leftist students of that time,” he was attracted by the 18th century revolution. Thesis Braudel's "The Beginning of the Revolution at Bar-le-Duc" was dedicated to the revolutionary events in the small town of Bar-le-Duc closest to his native village.

After graduating from the university, Braudel, still a very young 20-year-old man, passed very difficult exams that required lengthy cramming for the highly valued title of “agrezhe” in France, the owner of which received the right to teach in the senior classes of the lyceum and even at some university faculties. "Agrezhe" were not numerous, they were well paid and in their position they approached the teachers of higher education. Braudel wanted to become a history teacher at the Lycée Bar-le-Duc, in his native Lorraine, but the administration of the lyceum preferred another candidate, and then Braudel abruptly changed his plans and went to work in Algiers, in the lyceum of the city of Constantine, and then to the lyceum of the capital Algeria.

Officially, Algiers was then considered an overseas part of France; its coastal towns were mostly French, but in reality it was a very different African country from France. For the first time, Braudel saw and passionately fell in love with the Mediterranean Sea, the hot southern sun, and the elegant seaside cities of Algeria. “It was a gift from the gods ... I began to live,” he said.

Braudel plunged headlong into work, quickly gained fame as a brilliant lecturer, who, to the surprise of others, spoke without notes and notes, made friends with his students, traveled on horseback and on camels the mountains and deserts of Algiers. He taught with pleasure - of course, in the spirit of the then prevailing "event" or "positivist" history, whose adherents saw their main task in the most accurate account of events, based on archival documents, mainly political, diplomatic and military history.

Opponents of "event" history, who condemned the primitive "history-story", who believed that the historian should not only tell, but pose and solve problems, study not only political, but also socio-economic issues, address not only the distant past, but also to the present, were then still very few.

Braudel spent almost 10 years in Algeria, and this gave him the opportunity, in his own words, to see France "inside out", to look at it from the other side mediterranean sea, to feel that his native country is only a small part of the vast and diverse world, and its history is part of the world's global processes. “I think that these pictures, this Mediterranean, seen as if “from the other side”, had a great influence on my historical views,” Braudel testified.

He began to appear in the scientific press with articles and reviews on the history of different countries Mediterranean, dreamed of a university career, but for this it was necessary to defend a doctoral dissertation at the Sorbonne. The requirements for her were very high. The dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Humanities had to be an exhaustive, fundamental, necessarily based on archival documents, a detailed study of an event or historical period. Its volume usually exceeded a thousand pages, sometimes amounting to several volumes. In addition, it was required to submit another “additional dissertation” of a smaller volume on related topics, most often on historiography or source studies. A cherished dream, but also a heavy yoke for novice historians, the dissertation required at least a dozen years of hard work, but it opened the way to the title of university professor, which was considered the pinnacle of a scientific career.

At first, Braudel thought to take up the history of neighboring Germany, but being, in his own words, “a Frenchman to the marrow of his bones,” he doubted that he could be objective, and turned to the history of Spain, which he had already studied a little. He “jokingly learned Spanish”, and in 1928, like other ambitious “agrégés”, he submitted for approval to the Sorbonne the topic of a future dissertation: “Philip II and Spanish policy in the Mediterranean from 1559 to 1574.” This was a classic foreign policy theme for "event" history, and it did not meet with any objections at the Sorbonne, which was the main stronghold of "positivist" historiography. Over the next few years, Braudel, with his characteristic energy and perseverance, in his spare time from teaching, in summer holidays worked in the archives of France, Spain, Italy, Yugoslavia, looking for the documents he needed. He was assisted by his wife, his former student, who learned to read illegible medieval manuscripts. Much to the amazement of his colleagues, Braudel acquired a camera and photographed documents while other historians transcribed them by hand. During the day, Braudel managed to make two or three thousand frames, and then read them with the help of a projection apparatus.

Braudel was very fond of working in the archives and retained this love until the end of his days. The very reading of archival documents not yet seen by anyone since their compilation gave him real pleasure. “I remember how delighted I was when I discovered in 1934 in Dubrovnik (former Ragusa - V.S.) the splendid registers of Ragusa: at last I had before me information about ships, freight, goods, insurance, trade traffic. For the first time I saw with my own eyes the Mediterranean Sea of ​​the 16th century, ”wrote Braudel. He was very interested in trade, prices, the activities of the merchants, shipping, and the history of the economy in general. He felt that geographical conditions, economic development, mode of production and exchange, lifestyle, and other long-term factors influence history more than the intricacies of diplomacy and politics. Braudel began to read the works of economists, including Marx, and founded in 1929 by M. Blok and L. Fevre, the journal Annals of Economic and Social History, which sharply opposed positivist historiography, called for paying special attention to the study of socio-economic problems and enrich history with other "human sciences". The "Annals" of the first generation (the generations of Blok and Fevre) were a lively, cocky, militant, but still little influential magazine. According to Braudel, they had no more than 300-400 readers in France and about 100 in Italy.

Gradually, Braudel began to experience growing doubts about the topic of his dissertation. “Philip II attracted me less and less, and the Mediterranean more and more.” Eventually, "somewhere between 1927 and 1933" his decision matured; he chose the Mediterranean.

In 1932, Braudel returned to France, taught at one of the best lyceums in Paris - the Condorcet Lyceum, and then at the even more famous Lyceum of Henry IV, but did not work there for long. In 1935, he was offered to go to Brazil to teach at the newly established University of Sao Paulo, and Braudel immediately agreed.

Braudel spent 3 years in Brazil. According to him, "there were truly heavenly conditions for work and reflection." Braudel taught with great success, traveled a lot around the country, read a lot and worked on extracts brought from France and photocopies from the archives, boxes with which occupied an entire room. Brazil allowed him again - but on an even larger scale than in Algeria - to look at France "inside out" - from another continent, where the Spaniards, Portuguese, Indians and many other nationalities lived, where European and local Indian culture collided, where in places reminiscent of medieval forms of land ownership, land use and social control. He had "the impression of traveling into the past, as if he could see and imagine yesterday's Europe through Brazil in the first half of the 20th century." He visually saw how different civilizations coexisted - a problem that later took center stage in his subsequent scientific research. As Braudel himself noted, “it was Brazil that allowed me to come to a conception of history that I would not have had if I had remained within the Mediterranean.”

A very important role in Braudel's scientific evolution and throughout his subsequent life was played by a meeting with one of the founders of the Annals of Economic and Social History, Lucien Fevre, a prominent historian and organizer of science, an implacable opponent of "eventful", positivist historiography. In 1932-1933. Braudel met with Febvre several times in Paris, but a longer acquaintance, which turned into a friendship, took place in October 1937 on the ship that Braudel was returning to France from Brazil, and Febvre from Argentina. The journey lasted 20 days, and, according to Braudel, “for Lucien Fevre, my wife and myself, these twenty days of sailing became twenty days of laughter and chatter. It was from then on that I became not just a friend and colleague of Lucien Fevre, but almost his son: his house in Suzh (Jura) became my home, and his children became my children.

Febvre was 24 years older than Braudel, treated him like a son and a talented young associate.

Returning from Brazil, Braudel began teaching at the Practical School of Higher Studies, founded in 1868, a peculiar and highly reputable educational and scientific institution that did not have the right to award degrees and titles, but did not require them from their employees.

Having reread and brought into system his numerous archival materials, Braudel in the summer of 1939 in country house Fevra in the town of Suzhe began to write his dissertation. He worked for a short time. In the autumn of 1939, World War II began, reserve lieutenant Braudel was mobilized and went to the front. He served in the artillery, took part in the battles, and in the summer of 1940, after the armistice was signed, he was taken prisoner along with the remnants of his military unit.

In captivity, Braudel spent 5 long years - first in a prisoner of war camp for officers in Mainz, then, from 1942, in a special regime camp in Lübeck. German camp for officers taken prisoner on Western front, was very different from those terrible camps where Soviet prisoners of war were kept. Captured French officers lived in the former German barracks, several people in a room. They were not beaten, they were not starved, they were not forced to work. It was possible to read, write, correspond with relatives who remained in France, receive food parcels from them and from the Red Cross. In Mainz, prisoners of war even organized a kind of "university", where the most trained of them, including Braudel, lectured in their specialties. Braudel, who had been fluent in German since childhood, was elected "rector" of this "university"; the guards addressed him as "Mr. Rector" and allowed him to use books from the library of Mainz University.

Under such conditions, Braudel decided to work on his dissertation. Relying on his colossal memory and books from German libraries, almost every day from 5 am to 10 pm he wrote his dissertation in school notebooks and sent them to Fevre, from whom he received advice, new books, and sometimes a typewritten text for later editing. . Braudel was incredibly efficient. He said he could write 30, 40 or even 50 pages a day. By January 1941, he had already written 1600 pages (an average of 330 pages per month) and thought that the dissertation was finished, but it turned out that this was only the first version, which was then redone three more times.

According to Braudel, it was at this time that his idea of ​​​​history was finally determined - partly as a result of reflections on the historical fate of the Mediterranean, and “partly as the only possible reaction to the tragic time in which I lived. I had to reject, he explained, reject, step over all those events that the radio and the enemy press bombarded our heads with reports about, or even those news from London that we learned about with the help of underground radio. Down with an event, especially a painful one! I needed to believe that history, that the destinies of mankind are being accomplished at a much deeper level. To choose a long-term scale as a starting point for observations means to be, as it were, in the place of God the Father himself and find refuge there.

In an unimaginable distance from us, and from our everyday troubles, history was made, making its unhurried turn, as unhurried as that ancient life Mediterranean, whose immutability and a kind of majestic immobility I have so often felt.

This is how I came to the conscious search for the deepest historical language that I could comprehend (or invent) - stationary time, or at least time that unfolds very slowly, with a tendency to constant repetition.

In May 1945, Braudel was released from captivity by the British and returned to Paris with a book already "written almost from beginning to end." He was 43 years old, he was in full bloom creative forces, but in the eyes of others he still remained a little-known author of several articles and reviews.

In Paris, he was met and hospitably received in his house by Fevre, who, after the death of Mark Blok, who was shot by the German invaders, single-handedly headed the Annals magazine, renaming it from Annals of Economic and Social History simply into Annals with the subtitle: Economics. Society. Civilizations". The change in the title, which no longer included the word "history", reflected the almost limitless expansion of the journal's subject matter, the desire of its leaders for interdisciplinary research, for the creation of a comprehensive, "total" or "global" history, "whose limits will expand so that they cover all sciences. about man, their totality and universality. Considering Braudel his like-minded and scientific heir, Febvre introduced him to the editorial board of the new Annals and made him his main assistant in managing the journal.

Braudel resumed teaching at the Practical School of Higher Studies and received an invitation to lecture on the history of Latin America at the Sorbonne, where he had long aspired. The students admired him; “I had not just colossal, but super-colossal success,” recalled Braudel, but this is what alerted some of his colleagues, first of all, the dean of the Faculty of Humanities of the Sorbonne, the famous historian Pierre Renouvin, who himself invited Braudel, but soon discovered that the new the rising star shines too bright. In addition, Braudel was closely associated with Febvre and the Annals, and Renouvin, a specialist in the history of the First World War and international relations, was the most prominent representative of the "positivist", "event" historiography. As a result, Braudel was given to understand that he had no chance of becoming a professor and heading the vacant chair of modern history at the Sorbonne, which was claimed by Renouvin's student Professor Zeller. Braudel did not even begin to stand as a candidate and soon left the Sorbonne.

All this time, he worked hard to complete his dissertation, enriching it with a huge number of excerpts from archival documents that have survived from the pre-war period. In May 1946, she was presented for defense at the Sorbonne under a new title: "The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world in the era of Philip II." The title changed in comparison with 1928 showed that the focus of the research is now not the king, but an incomparably more significant historical figure - the world of the Mediterranean. On March 1, 1947, 19 years after the dissertation topic was approved, it was defended. All five members of the Academic Council, including Professor Zeller, Braudel's rival for the chair, were in favor of awarding Braudel the long-awaited degree of Doctor of Humane Sciences.

Published in 1949 at the expense of the author in two volumes with a total volume of 1160 pages, with a circulation of 2500 copies, it brought fame to Braudel. Febvre published an enthusiastic review of this book in the main French historical journal, the Revue Historique. He admired "the perfection of the labor created by the hand of the worker, the abundance and quality of the materials he used, the richness of the imagination that knows no blunders"; argued that “this book is deep and thorough, it belongs to those that become “desktop” for many years ... This book is a revolution in the approach to history. This is a revolution in our old habits. “Historical mutation” of fundamental importance...”

Indeed, innovative in content, saturated with fresh factual material from the archives of different countries, brilliantly written, Braudel's book was one of those works that determine the direction of the work of a whole generation of historians. According to the successful definition of Professor Yu.N. Afanasiev, it became the most important stage in the establishment of a “new structural type of historical reflection”, in which the focus of the historian is not on transient “events”, but on the long-term “structures” of the economy, society, mental life and other aspects of human existence. In The Mediterranean, Braudel made the first successful attempt to create a generalized, "total" or "global" (in the sense of a comprehensive, global approach to the problem) history of an entire large region over a long period of time.

In his own words, the first part of the book, entitled "The Influence of the Environment," dealt with "an almost immovable history," that is, the history of man's relationship with his environment; in the second part, entitled "Collective destinies and general movement”- “history of slow changes”, or “structural history”, that is, the development of the economy, society, state and civilization; finally, in the third part, called "Events, politics and people", the fast-flowing "event history" was studied.

Braudel defined the general direction of his research, which combined history and geography, with the term "geohistory" he introduced. According to his concept, steppes and mountains, highlands and lowlands, seas, forests, rivers and other geographical structures determine the scope of human activity, communication routes, and, consequently, trade; location and growth of cities. On their basis, slowly changing economic and social structures arise: society, state, civilization. They serve as the foundation for relatively rapidly changing, “opportunistic” political events comparable in length to the time of a human life.

The main feature of Braudel’s methodological approach was the opposition of strong, stable “structures” to changing “conjunctures” and even more ephemeral “events”, which, according to Braudel’s figurative expression, represent only the “surface disturbance” of the ocean of history, “dust of small facts”, of little interest to the historian. .

Another important methodological idea, first expressed by Braudel in The Mediterranean, was the idea of ​​different "speeds" of historical time. Braudel distinguished between the time of "long duration" (la longue durée), that is, the time of existence of the most durable "structures" and long-term processes of social development, and "short time" (le temps bref) - the time of rapidly occurring events or individual human life. According to Braudel, the processes of "long duration" are most important for the historian, because they determine the development of mankind. Within the "short time" the historian has almost nothing to do. As Braudel later wrote, this is "predominantly the time of the chronicler, the journalist."

Braudel's concept, first expounded in expanded form in The Mediterranean, caused great controversy. Her one-sidedness, neglect " short time” and “events”, which include such major “events” as revolutions and wars, which undoubtedly significantly affect the course of history. Claims for a "total" or "global", all-encompassing, comprehensive history seemed beyond the strength of one historian. But Braudel's concept deepened the general understanding of the historical process, opposed the hardened "positivist" historiography; responded to the general desire for renewal that gripped French society after liberation from the Nazi occupiers.

The defense of his dissertation and the publication of The Mediterranean opened the way for Braudel to senior scientific and administrative posts. Since the Sorbonne stubbornly rejected the opponents of "positivism", Febvre, Braudel, Professor Charles Morazet and their associates decided to organize an independent center for interdisciplinary research within the framework of the Practical School of Higher Studies, where Braudel already worked. Enlisting the support of the Ministry of Higher Education and receiving a subsidy of 30 thousand dollars from the American Rockefeller Foundation, created to support the "social sciences", in 1947 they founded a new, sixth section of the Practical School of Higher Studies - the section of economic and social sciences, - which soon became the leading center of socio-historical research and gained worldwide fame.

Febvre was the chairman of the section, and Braudel was the secretary, who carried out all the practical organizational work. The leadership of the section also included Moraset, a specialist in the history of economics, and an old acquaintance of Febvre and Braudel, head of the department of economic and social history at the Sorbonne, Ernest Labrousse, who became famous even before the war for his works on the movement of prices and incomes in France XVIII v.

With the assistance of Fevre, Braudel in 1949 was elected a professor at the College de France, an extremely prestigious educational and scientific institution, which since the 16th century. competed with the Sorbonne, was famous high level teaching, but did not have the right to issue diplomas and award academic degrees. From 1949 to 1956 Braudel headed the Council for awarding the title of "agreje" and could influence the training of historians.

The following year, Febvre, resigning due to age from the post of head of the department of modern civilization at the College de France, insisted that Braudel be chosen as his successor. As a result, Braudel began to participate in the training of qualified historians, in the management of the Annals magazine and two other major scientific centers - the Sixth Section of the Practical School of Higher Studies and the department at the College de France.

There was a rush cold war”, and Braudel was attacked from various quarters. Some particularly zealous communists believed that Braudel, who did not pay much attention to revolutions and class struggle, deserved condemnation as an anti-Marxist, retreating from Stalin's "Short Course", and even an "atlantist", that is, a defender of US imperialism. Magazine published by the Communist Party nouvelle criticism argued that Braudel's search for stable historical structures over periods of long duration "poorly hides the fear of the proletarian revolution", "replaces the struggle of classes with conflicts of civilizations" and, ultimately, "justifies the Atlantic Pact", and led by Febvre and Braudel "Annals" " provide arguments to all those who want to slow down the struggle of mankind for peace and its movement towards progress.”

On the other hand, rightists in France and the United States suspected Braudel of sympathies for communism, because he often referred to Marx with great respect, called him the creator of "the most powerful social analysis of the last century," and recruited specialists from a wide variety of political parties into the Sixth Section. beliefs, not excluding the communists. During Braudel's trip to the United States in 1955, representatives of the Rockefeller Foundation asked him why he was hiring communists, and Braudel had to justify himself.

Febvre died in 1956, and Braudel succeeded him as editor-in-chief of the Annales and head of the Sixth Section of the Practical School of Higher Studies. In these posts, his outstanding organizational skills, imperious character, ability to find and attract talents were especially clearly manifested. Braudel turned out to be not only a great scientist, but also an excellent organizer of science, and this is a rare combination. Under him, the Sixth Section received large new grants from the government and American patrons. The number of its employees has tripled; the number of courses taught in various specialties doubled, a publishing and distribution service was created scientific papers. Future luminaries of science came to the Sixth Section: Claude Levi-Strauss, the founder of structural anthropology, Roland Barthes, one of the founders of structural linguistics, Jacques Lacan, a specialist in psychoanalysis, and many other then young, talented scientists.

At Braudel's initiative, the staff of the Sixth Section began to hold major international conferences and organize extensive complex interdisciplinary research, often using then new mathematical methods, especially when processing mass sources. So, they conducted a survey of occupations, social and financial situation 150 thousand French "notables" of the early 19th century; investigated the health, age, geographical and social affiliation of the soldiers of the French Revolution; condition of abandoned French villages.

In the 60s, Braudel's students and followers published a series of brilliant historical works, among which the works of P. Huber on the city of Beauvais and its inhabitants in the Middle Ages, P. Vilar on the history of Catalonia, J. Duby on French medieval society, R. Mandru on the mentality of the Middle Ages, E. Le Roy Ladurie on the peasants of Languedoc, a huge 12-volume historical and statistical study by P. Shonyu on maritime trade between Spain and Latin America in the 16th century In total, under the auspices of the Sixth Section in 1948-1971. 164 monographs on history were published, not counting many articles. On average, 6-8 monographs appeared every year. Almost all of them were written in the spirit of the “structural” history preached by Braudel: they covered, for the most part, not events, but stable public structures and long-term processes historical development; they almost did not touch on the political and military history, but on the other hand, a lot of attention was paid to demography, economics, social relations, food history, housing, technology, and later - mentality. Unlike positivist historians, their authors sought to enrich their research with the achievements of related sciences about man, which were then experiencing a period of rapid growth - demography, historical anthropology, structural linguistics, collective psychology, sociology, widely used mathematical and statistical methods.

Even in language and style, they strove to differ from the “positivists” they hated: they boldly updated their vocabulary, introduced new concepts, gave their books unusual catchy titles; wrote quite difficult language, but - in its best examples - bright and accessible to the general reader. In the context of the general “structuralist offensive” of the 1960s, their work came to the center of public attention. Historians, including Braudel, have become welcome guests on television and other media. The circulation of their works grew rapidly, foreshadowing even more rapid growth in the 70s. "Structural history" has become a fashion, the dominant trend in French historiography and one of the main trends in world historical science. The “Annals” of the second (after Blok and Febvre) generation, led by Braudel, turned into the most authoritative, world-famous historical journal, covering mainly long-term processes at the junction of history and other “sciences of man”. In the words of one of the leaders of the modern "Annals", "the journal has become a kind of trademark of French historical science."

Braudel himself acquired enormous scientific authority. Together with Renouvin and Labrousse, he, in fact, led the French historical science. These three outstanding historians played a decisive role in the distribution of state credits for science and higher education, determined the main directions of scientific research, supervised the training of personnel.

Braudel's scientific activity developed at this time in two main directions. Firstly, he once again revised the Mediterranean, enriched it with new research materials, provided it with maps, diagrams, and illustrations; secondly, he began to implement an even more grandiose plan, suggested to him by Febvre back in 1950, - to study the material conditions of life and the development of the economy of the whole world for 400 years from the 15th to the 18th centuries. It seemed that such a colossal task exceeded the strength of one person and required, at least, the work of an entire scientific institute, but Braudel coped with it alone.

In 1966, the second edition of The Mediterranean was published and distributed in print runs unprecedented for a scientific book (a total of 70,000 copies). In later years it was translated into Italian, Spanish, English, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Greek, German, Dutch, Chinese and Korean. In 1967, the first volume of Braudel's new capital work Material Civilization and Capitalism appeared, initially in a public edition, without a scientific apparatus.

In an effort to expand international cooperation between scientists, Braudel founded a new center for interdisciplinary humanitarian research - the House of Human Sciences, one of the tasks of which was to hold international conferences and invite foreign scientists to France. In the early 1960s, in the center of Paris, on Boulevard Raspail, on the site of the former Cherche-Midi prison, a large building of modern architecture made of glass, steel and concrete was built, where the main services of the Sixth Section moved and other scientific organizations were located.

Braudel headed this, now known to all French scholars, a large scientific complex, which includes scientists' offices equipped with modern means of communication and copying equipment, libraries, meeting rooms, economic and administrative services, a well-equipped house for foreign scientists coming to Paris, and much more. .

Braudel was at the height of his scientific and administrative career when student unrest began in France in the spring of 1968, which quickly developed into a nationwide strike and political demonstrations of a huge scale. The rebellious students subjected the "bourgeois university" and " bourgeois society", called for "saying no to everything", clashed with the police, built barricades, rejected the power of professors and demanded that it be replaced by "student power", disrupted lectures, refused to take exams, in which they saw a means of social discrimination.

Braudel, who was then touring the United States, decided to immediately return and meet with the striking students. This meeting was unsuccessful for him. For the first time in his life, Braudel failed to master the audience; the students did not let him speak. To his great and unpleasant surprise, Braudel found that young people consider him - like all professors - the bulwark of the very outdated education system that he criticized all his life.

The turbulent events of May-June 1968 led to the dissolution of parliament, early elections and the resignation of the first president of the Fifth Republic, General de Gaulle. Great changes also took place in the system of university education, which had existed almost unchanged since the time of Napoleon I. The Sorbonne was divided into 13 Parisian universities; the number of departments has increased many times; professorships were occupied by relatively young ambitious people who sought to establish themselves in science and did not have any respect for the former authorities. "Structural History" seemed outdated to them; they called themselves "poststructuralists" and later postmodernists. According to Professor Maurice Aimard, Braudel's successor as administrator of the House of Human Sciences, young historians said that Braudel "became a kind of" former "scientist, that he could neither understand anything in the 1968 movement, nor accept new, less authoritarian rules for the use of academic power, established by the student "revolution". Some of them generously added that he was unable to complete Material Civilization and Capitalism. Even Braudel's students from the third generation of the Annales school began to move away from the study of problems of long duration and turn to the study of "events", to move from socio-economic history to the history of mentality.

Under such conditions, Braudel did not want to lead either the Annals or the Sixth Section. In 1969, he handed over the management of the magazine to a trio of "young directors" from the third generation of the Annales school - Jacques Le Goff, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and Marc Ferro. As Braudel said, “From that moment on, I stopped doing the Annals. They have become alien to me." In 1972, at the age of 70, Braudel left the leadership of the Sixth Section and the chair of modern civilization at the College de France, retaining only the post of administrator of the House of Human Sciences. Le Goff became director of the Sixth Section, which in 1975 became part of the university institutions under the name "School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences".

Freed from the main part of the organizational and administrative work, Braudel again turned to work on Material Civilization and Capitalism. In 1979, 12 years after the first volume, the second and third volumes appeared. The first volume was equipped with a scientific apparatus and republished; and the entire three-volume edition was published under a slightly modified title: "Material Civilization, Economy and Capitalism of the 15th-18th Centuries."

Braudel saw the main task of this work in "outlining the field of action of pre-industrial economies and covering it in its entirety." In the center of his attention were the three main layers of the life of society: everyday "material life", the market economy and "capitalism" (more precisely, commercial and financial capital). In the first volume, entitled The Structures of Everyday Life, Braudel studied the sphere of everyday life of people, including the dynamics of the population of various regions of the world, food systems, clothing, housing, technology, transport, money circulation, the role of cities, the contradictions between rich and poor. In the second volume - "Games of Exchange" - Braudel set himself the task of exploring "the totality of the mechanisms of exchange, from the simplest barter trade to the most complex capitalism", including the instruments of exchange, the role of merchants and banks, trade over long distances, formation of the world market. In the special chapter "Society or Set of Sets" in general form considered "social hierarchies", the role of the state, the relationship of various civilizations and, very briefly, "revolutions and class battles".

In the third volume - "Time of the World" - the entire world economic history was presented in chronological order over four centuries as the interaction of the three main "economic worlds" - the Euro-Atlantic, the Ural-Asian and the Far East.

Written on the basis of a huge amount of archival materials and summarizing many works of historians and economists in 6 languages, Braudel's new work has become a major event in world science. He contributed huge contribution in the study of the material culture, economy and social relations of medieval society, although, like Braudel's previous work, he paid little attention to political, diplomatic and military events.

While working on "Material Civilization, Economics and Capitalism", Braudel did not leave other projects, including leading, together with Labrousse, the publication of the capital collective 8-volume "Economic and Social History of France" from 1450 to the present, in which he wrote a significant part of the first volume and general conclusion (together with E. Labrousse and J. Bouvier).

Having completed this edition at the age of 80, Braudel immediately began a new great work, where he tried to apply the approaches he developed in Material Civilization, Economics and Capitalism to the history of one country - his native France. He intended to write 4 large books covering the geographical conditions, economic development, state, society, culture and the international role of France, but managed to complete only two of them, which appeared after his death.

The first one explored "space and history", the second (in two parts) - "people and things". The nature of France, its changing borders, forests, mountains, rivers, cities and villages; population, its food, housing and clothing, the development of the economy, which until the twentieth century. remained a "peasant economy" - all this was combined under Braudel's pen into a complex and multi-colored image of France, imbued with the author's deep love for his country.

Braudel's new work was a great commercial success and further increased his scientific authority. By the end of his life, he was called the "dad" of French historians, and less than a year before his death, in 1984, he was crowned with the title of academician.

Braudel retained his amazing capacity for work, a clear and caustic mind, a penchant for irony, an interest in people and science. Five weeks before his death, he was still speaking at a scientific colloquium. Death overtook him on the night of November 27-28, 1985 in a country house in Savoy, in the town of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, while working on another manuscript.

In foreign works about Braudel, almost nothing is written about his contacts with Soviet historians, and they were strong and long-lasting.

In 1958, Braudel first came to Soviet Union, visited Moscow and Leningrad, spoke at the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences and at the Faculty of History of Moscow State University with a report " Current state historical science in France.

Present at his speeches, Professor E.V. Gutnova testifies that Braudel made an enchanting impression on the listeners both with his appearance and with his scientific ideas. He was then probably about fifty years old (actually 56 - V.S.). He was mobile, slender and in his own way very handsome. His thick gray hair contrasted with the hot, sparkling dark blue eyes that overshadowed everything in his face. Braudel's reports, very interesting and completely unusual for us, raised so many new interesting questions, shone with such wit that it was difficult not to succumb to his charm.

In 1966, Braudel made another report at the Institute of History "The Development of French Historical Thought (Lucien Febvre and Mark Blok)", and in 1967 - a report "The Genesis of Capitalism in the 17th-19th Centuries".

When in 1957 in the Soviet Union, 26 years after its publication, the book of M. Blok was finally translated “ Specific traits French Agrarian History” with a foreword by A.D. Lublinskaya, Braudel welcomed this fact, published Lublinskaya's preface in the journal Annaly, but objected to the terms "bourgeois historian" and "non-Marxist historian" used there. As he stressed, "Neither Lucien Fevre, nor Mark Blok, nor myself, nor many of our other colleagues are 'bourgeois historians' or 'non-Marxist historians'."

Returning to this issue in a letter to V.M. Dalin dated July 24, 1981, Braudel reported that he met Marx's Capital sometime around 1925 in Algeria and then read Marx in the 1930s, and this helped him in choosing his own path. “There is no doubt that my concepts, as well as those of the Annals of the first generation, were strongly influenced by Marxism - not as a political doctrine, but as a model of historical, economic and social analysis,” he wrote to Dalin, adding that at 50 years, and especially during the period of work on "Material Civilization and Capitalism", he again returned to Marx more than once, sometimes arguing with him, and sometimes agreeing, but, in the end, came to the conclusion that "he is outdated, because that the world has aged a whole century.”

During his trips to the USSR, Braudel met and became friends with the leading Soviet French scholars: A.Z. Manfred, B.F. Porshnev, V.M. Dalin, E.A. Zhelubovskaya, M.M. Strange, chairman of the National Committee of Soviet Historians A.A. Huber and other scientists.

After the death of Manfred, Braudel sent an excited message to the French Yearbook, where he emphasized that in his eyes Manfred “was the successor of a remarkable galaxy of Russian and Soviet historians who studied the past of our country with passion and brilliance: N. Kareev, I. Luchitsky, M. Kovalevsky, E. Tarle, his teacher V. Volgin, his colleague B. Porshnev... All of them were extremely enthusiastic historians, extremely original.” Naming historians especially close to him, along with Manfred, Strange, Huber, Porshnev, Zhelubovskaya, Dalin, Braudel spoke of them as "a small, amazing group of men and women in Moscow, which we happened to know and love deeply."

The author of these lines also happened to meet Braudel and feel the charm of his personality. In 1963, I had a rare luck for those times - a scientific trip to France; and Dalin, who returned to science after 17 years in prisons and camps, and therefore, as they said at the time, "not allowed to travel abroad," asked me to give Braudel a letter that he did not want to entrust to the post office. Braudel received me in his office at the House of Human Sciences and impressed me with his friendliness and simplicity. I was a young, unknown, aspiring historian, and Braudel was a world-famous scientist, but he spoke to me as an equal. I think, in addition to the fact that I came to him as a messenger from Dalin, this was also due to the curiosity inherent in Braudel; he apparently wanted to look at the younger generation of Soviet historians who might come to replace the generation of Manfred, Porshnev and Dalin.

Of subsequent meetings with Braudel, I especially remember a long conversation in a small, cozy (it seems Mexican) restaurant, where Braudel and his wife invited me in the spring of 1975. When I returned to my room, I wrote down something, and now I see that our conversation turned , mainly around the fate of the Annales school, the general state of French historiography and the French national character. Braudel had already left almost all administrative posts, painfully experienced disagreements with his former students and was very critical. He caustically said that the vast majority of French historians (70% according to him) were mediocrities chewing on the foundations of Ranke's positivism; they write on ridiculously narrow topics, still do not go beyond political and diplomatic history. Specialists in modern history do not want to raise sensitive issues: for example, they write about elections, but do not indicate who finances them, where the money comes from. Braudel assessed the then widespread attempts to “mathematize” history rather skeptically: from his acquaintance with mathematics, he knows that the computer gives the answer that the programmer had previously laid in it. Mathematical methods, of course, are useful in the study of certain particular problems, but they provide little for the general concept of history.

Answering one of my questions, Braudel said that, of course, a description of events, including contemporary events, is necessary, but this is not enough; we must go further, look for the deep forces that determine the course of history. In his opinion, only supporters of the Annales do this (about 20% of the total number of historians), and in addition, Marxist historians (another 10%), but in general, event history still prevails in French historiography. Braudel criticized his students from the “third generation” of the Annales school for the fact that while they are still students, they do not go further than Braudel himself.

French historian who proposed new model/ a paradigm of the study of history, which takes into account many macro-parameters: geographical, social, economic and reduced - in comparison with the traditional works of other historians - the role of individual events and personalities ...

Being in a German POW camp from 1940 to 1945, Fernand Braudel, partly from memory, writes a book: The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world in the era of Philip II / La Mediterranee et le monde mediterraneen a 1 "epoque de Philippe II, which in 1947 was defended as a dissertation.

“It must be said that not all German concentration camps were like Dachau and Buchenwald.
The French officers sat in more decent conditions. They were kept in the former German barracks, did not go hungry and did not even work. Resort!
Prisoners of war were allowed not only to read and write if they wished, they themselves proposed to the Germans to organize a university for prisoners of war in the camp, and cultured Germans agreed with this proposal. Of the most educated prisoners, a teaching staff was formed, in which, of course, Braudel was also included. Moreover, he not only lectured to “students”, but was elected rector of this “university. Apparently, because he was fluent in German.
The concentration camp guards addressed him like this: "Mr. Rector."
Braudel was allowed to order books from the University of Mainz.
These books, plus a huge store of historical knowledge accumulated by that time, allowed him to complete his fundamental work 1600 pages. In fact, the time spent in the concentration camp turned out to be “Boldino autumn” for Braudel. According to him, it was war and lack of freedom that served as an impetus for the further evolution of the scientist's views on history. That is, to the revolution that he later made in historical science.
It was a reaction "to the tragic time in which I lived," he wrote. Braudel. - I had to discard, reject, step over all those events ... Down with the event, especially painful! I needed to believe that history, the destinies of mankind, are being accomplished at a much deeper level. To choose a long-term scale as a starting point for observations means to be, as it were, in the place of God the Father himself and find refuge there.
And Braudel did this, stepped over the boundaries of history proper and laid the foundation for "geohistory".
How did you study history before Braudel? (However, even now it is studied in the same way - both at school and at the institute, because Braudel failed to permanently push the inertial cart of historical science out of the mossy rut.)
History is taught and studied here as a series of events and operating personalities.
Like, then and then such and such events happened. Such and such people acted in them and such and such decisions were made. But why did they happen? Could they not happen? And if actors there were completely different people in the historical arena, how much would history change? Has it changed not in terms of events, of course, but in essence, that is, from the point of view of large time scales? ..
It was Braudel who introduced a new term into historical science - "time of great duration."
In fact, Braudel changed the very subject of historical science!
If before him history studied political events (the Great French Revolution with all the actors) or revolved around some country (the history of Russia), then Braudel flew higher and suggested: let's look at this political flicker from a different point of view - from the point of view economics, demography, geography...
With this approach, the subject of study is no longer individual countries, people and chains of political events, but completely different realities that previously had no name - some stable economic and geographical "organisms" that have existed for quite long epochs.
In the most careful way, Braudel studied the economic organism of Venice in the 16th century, the web of maritime trade in the Mediterranean on the basis of the surviving inventory and accounting books of Ragusa (Dubrovnik), rice production in China over several centuries.
And more and more I came to the conclusion: a person is nothing, a person can slow down or speed up historical events, but cannot radically change them.
There is a certain channel along which the river of history flows. And within this river, ship captains can choose one course or another and even run their ship aground.”

Nikonov A.P., Crises in the history of civilization. Yesterday, today and always, M., Enas; St. Petersburg, "Piter", 2011, p. 228-230.

In 1958, his methodological article was published: History and social sciences: time of great duration / Histoire et Sciences sociales: La longue durée. The author introduces a new concept into history: time of long durations / La longue durée to account for changes in demographic, economic and social processes, the consequence of which are individual historical events.

“I would like social scientists to see history as an exceptional means of knowledge and research. Isn't the present more than half at the mercy of the past, stubbornly striving to survive? And does not the past, through its regularities, its differences and its similarities, represent the key necessary for any serious understanding of the present?

Fernand Braudel, Material Civilization, Economics and Capitalism. XV-XVIII centuries, in 3 volumes, Volume 3, Time of Peace, M., Progress, 1992, p. eleven.

Since 1962 - Fernand Braudel chief administrator of the scientific center and library created on his initiative called: House of Human Sciences / Maison des sciences de l "homme.

By 1979, the most famous work was published in three volumes Fernand Braudel: Material civilization, economics and capitalism, XV - XVIII centuries / Civilization matérielle, économie et capitalisme, XVe - XVIIIe siècle.

Fernand Braudel was influenced by ideas Blok brand; Lucienne Fevre and the editorial board of the journal: Annals of economic and social history ”/ Annales d "histoire économique et sociale.

In turn, the methodology for studying the historical process by Fernand Braudel influenced the writings of many modern historians.