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POLITICAL HISTORY Polit ical History concentrates on the
quest for power
C. R. Elton Political history is the study of that
dynamic activity in the past whichhas direct relevance to the
organizational aspects of society. Itis concerned with those activitieswhich arise from the fact that mencreate, maintain, transform, anddestroy social structures in whichthey live. Dynamic activity depends
on the presence of forceon theemployment of energyand theforce applicable to pol itical systemsis power: the power to do things for,or to, other people. Power
consti tutes the essential theme ofpolitical history
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19TH CENTURY NATIONALISTHISTORY
Nationalist histories writtenduring the mid-19th centurytended to describe polit ics asthe inevitable triumph of
ideals Thomas Macaulay portrayed
British history in the 17th and18th centuries as the victoryof the Whig idea of l iberty
over the despotism of theBritish monarchy
George Bancroft describedAmerican history as theflowering of a uniquelyvirtuous ideal of democracy
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SHIFT IN EMPHASIS
In the 20th century, historians tried to penetrate therhetoric of politicians and discover the realcauses of political activity
Influenced by Marxism and social science Used techniques such as prosopography and
collective biography, they have examined thefamily and social relationships, the material
interests, and the psychological motivations ofthose who contend for power Such as members of legislatures and lobby
groups, leaders of factions and polit ical
parties, diplomats, aristocrats, and clergymen
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CHARLES A. BEARD
Wrote An EconomicInterpretation of theConstitution of the UnitedStates (1913)
Studied the economicinterests of the AmericanFounding Fathers and themeans they used to engineerthe drafting and ratification ofthe Consti tution
Concluded that theConstitution was not createdto foster freedom anddemocracy but to advancethe immediate economic
interests of a small group ofwealthy property owners
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SIR LEWIS NAMIER
Reevaluated Macaulaysinterpretation of 18th centuryBritish politics by using themethods of col lective biography Examined the motives of
individual members ofParliament and suggestedthat the great ideasexpressed in the polit icalrhetoric of the time had lit tle
impact on the actualprocesses of polit ics Which were motivated
primarily by material self-interest
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ORDINARY PEOPLE
Pioneers such as GeorgeRud, Albert Soboul,Ramsey Macmullen, JesseLemisch, and Alfred Younghave introduced the mass
of ordinary people in theirdiscussions of politics inthe past Have explored the
influence of crowds and
mobs in revolutions andpolitical protest as wellas the political influenceof public opinion ingeneral on politics
Alfred Young
Albert Soboul
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SOCIAL HISTORY Traditionally, social historians have looked at how
human beings live and work together, at the
quality of their lives, and at their relationships withone another They have provided descriptions of manners
and morals, diet, costume, home life, and
entertainment They look at humanity in general, regardless of
social or economic class They are especially concerned to examine the
experience of the nameless and faceless, or inarticulate, people usually left out ofaccounts of struggles for political power
Women, children, slaves, and the poor
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SOCIAL/CULTURAL HISTORY
A broad view of social history also takes incultural historyAn examination of the ideas, attitudes,
values, and beliefs that shape a societys
culture
Cultural historians try to reconstruct thepictures and ideas that guide peoples
interpretation of the world They examine evidence neglected by
political historians Folktales, childrens stories, buildings,
art, music, and popular crafts
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VOLTAIRE AND BURKHARDT Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations
(1756) Voltaire Tried to elaborate on the idea that each
age has a unique spirit expressed in allsphere of li fe
Civi lization of the Renaissance in Italy Jacob Burkhardt Demonstrated that the Renaissance was
qualitatively different from the MiddleAges
Although largely based on elite literarysources, he sharply dist inguishedcommon features of Renaissance life Not only elite preoccupations of
statecraft, diplomacy, and economicsbut also the religion, morality, andsocial relations that governed themiddle class as well as the aristocracy
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SOCIAL DIVERSITY Some modern historians object to this sort of
attempt to generalize about the character orculture of an entire people or period
Argue that such generalizations create the falseimpression that nations can be regarded as
though they were individual persons, therebyobscuring the differences between distinctgroups within the nation
These historians instead have tried to create asocial history that sets forth the distinctiveculture and social relations of particular groupswithin society and that describes and explains
how different groups interact
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E.P. THOMPSON The Making of the English Working Class (1963)
Used Marxist notion of class to analyze theclass consciousness of British workersduring the 18th and early 19th centuries
Argued that class was not an abstractconcept that could be defined like astatistical category
Argued that class consciousness resultedfrom the experience of being a Brit ishworker during this period
Warned against merely assuming that sinceBrit ish workers were all workers that they
automatically had a class consciousnessthat was identical and never changed Insisted that the rise of class consciousness
might follow similar patterns in dif ferenttimes and places, but that it never occurred
in just the same way
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MARXIST SOCIAL HISTORY
Historians who adopt aMarxist approachcommit themselves toa specific focus and to
the use of certainconcepts
Notably Marxsconception of class
These concepts maybecome unwieldy
Eugene Genovese
E.J. Hobsbawm
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MOBILITY
Poverty and Progress: SocialMobil ity in Newburyport Stephan Thernstrom Tested old clich that America
was the land of opportunity andthat the descendants ofimmigrants moved up in society Found that most did not and
that they remained at thebottom
Some did move up and it wastheir story, endlessly repeatedand exaggerated by the press,that perpetuated the myth that
American was a land of
opportunity for immigrants
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CONTRIBUTION OF SOCIALHISTORY
Social history has been a valuable corrective to thepredominantly elitist orientation of polit ical history By reconstructing the lives and sometimes the thoughts
and feelings of ordinary people, social historians have
demonstrated how li fe has changed over t ime anddeepened our understanding of the common humanityof people of all ages
Moreover, by focusing on how ordinary people havelived in the past, social historians have also increased
our understanding of the distr ibution of power withinsocieties
Social history provides an understanding of therelationship between how ordinary people lived and how
societies as a whole have functioned and have beenorganized
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THE ANNALES SCHOOL
Marc Bloch andLucien Febvrefounded Annales:
Economies,Civilisations,Socits in late1920s
Both men tendedto operate outsidethe historicalmainstream of thetime
Lucien Febvre
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NONTRADITIONAL GUYS
Marc Bloch wrote a two-volume bookon the Middle Ages (Feudal Society)where he never once described abattle, never recounted the life of
ruler Instead concentrated on the
relationship between the threemajor classes of medieval societyand the unique way each viewed
the world Clergy, nobi lity, and peasantry
Lucien Febvre was interested inpopular beliefs during the early
modern period Marc Bloch
CREATION OF THE ANNALES
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CREATION OF THE ANNALESSCHOOL
Bloch and Febvre created a forum for themselves
and the new history they engaged in by foundingthe Annales Gradually attracted a scattering of like-minded
scholars
Not really a school United by their frustration with traditional
history and the way its practitionersmonopolized the French historical
profession; by their deep attachment to socialhistory; by their willingness to try a new topicor source; and by their desire to develop atheory that would explain social change overtime
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AFTER WORLD WAR II
Students of Bloch and Febvre would,after World War II, create firm outlinesof the Annales model of social change
Would take the energy and sense ofadventure of the pre-war Annalesgroup and give it a philosophical
direction and justification as well as amore-or-less rigorous methodology
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THE LONGUE DURE
Primarily concerned with the longue dure (long term)
The Mediterranean and theMediterranean World During the
Age of Philip II Fernand Braudel Deals with period from late
1400s to early 1600s
The Peasants of Languedoc Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie Deals with period from the
1300s to the 1700s
Fernand Braudel
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WHY THE LONGUE DURE?
The event, the single historicalepisode, is basically unimportantto the Annales historian Because they are trivial in the
long term What is important to them is
structure Slow moving, almost timeless,
trends that possess a life of
their own Human intervention hardly
affects them at all Examples of structures
include climate and the basicdemographic system
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
STRUCTURES
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STRUCTURES Structures form the foundation of human li fe in the
past Even the slightest change in one of these
structures has a profound effect on human lifeand activity
Annales historians are not completely deterministic
They do not claim that every aspect of human lifeand behavior is directly tied to structures But they do argue that structures strongly
influence history and play a larger role than anyother factor in shaping the event (any short-term structure-influenced activity by humanbeings)
The only way a historian can systematically studythe slow movement of structures is to study them for
a long period of t ime
STRUCTURAL CHANGE
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STRUCTURAL CHANGE Braudel was concerned with long-
term changes in economic
structures which shifted the focusof international economic activityin the 16th century away from theMediterranean This shift caused secondary
economic systems around theMediterranean to decline,changed old trade routes,altered demographic patterns,cause some towns and citiesto deteriorate and others to
grow and prosper One fundamental change in
structure, occurr ing over acentury, had a big impact oneveryday lives and actions of
human beings
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WEAKNESSES
Annales model falls down when it tries topinpoint exactly how changes in theunderlying structures cause short-term
changes to take place
Annales historians also have difficulty inisolating when things change, of locatingthose crucial transition points when social orany other type of change takes place
MENTALIT
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MENTALIT Baroque Piety and
Dechristianization inProvence during the 18thCentury
Michel Vovelle
Classic Annales work onchanges in peoples beliefsover time
Sampled 30,000 wil ls over a75 year period in the 18thcentury and countedvarious religious aspect
embedded within them
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VOVELLES ARGUMENT
Claimed that indicators of pietydeclined in a proportional andabsolute sense as the 18th centuryprogressedArgued that this decline
demonstrated that society inProvence became less intense inreligious feeling during the 18thcentury
A fundamental change in attitude
took place during this time andVovelle asserted that he hadprecisely located one of thoseelusive transition points whensocial change took place
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PROBLEMS
Vovelle is never able to say why this declinein religious feeling took place when it did Cannot link this change in attitude to any
underlying cause Did not even conclusively demonstrate that
dechristianization occurred in the first place Annales school made a good try at trying to
account for causation in social history, attrying to develop a way to explain why socialchange takes place, but, in the end, it doesntquite make it