A history of civilizations Fernand Braudel; translated by Richard Mayne
Publisher: New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : A. Lane, 1994.
ISBN: 0713990228
DDC: 909
LCC: CB78
Edition: 0.00 (7.50 Can.) (Đ25.00 U.K.)
Summary:
Fernand Braudel was one of the greatest historians of the twentieth
century. A leading member of the Annales school, he rejected a narrow
focus on Western warfare, diplomacy, and power politics, and opened
up economic and social history to influences from anthropology,
sociology, geography, psychology, and linguistics. In the late 1950s,
when the Annales approach was widely accepted in French universities,
a major reform introduced the study of "the main contemporary
civilizations" into the final year of secondary schools.
Traditionalists attacked the new stress on the social sciences and
eventually triumphed, but Braudel was firmly committed to such
changes. This marvelous survey of world history, the last of his
books to be translated into English, was originally intended for
French "sixth-formers." Yet its real value is far more permanent.
Even an "educational story," Braudel once suggested in a lecture, can
become a "tale of adventure," provided the historian manages to "find
the key to a civilization" and is not afraid of simplicity - "not
simplicity that distorts the truth, produces a void, and is another
name for mediocrity, but simplicity that is clarity, the light of
intelligence." Such a light shines throughout A History of
Civilizations. After an introductory section examining the nature of
cultures and civilizations, their continuities and transformations,
Braudel surveys broad historical developments in almost every corner
of the globe: the Muslim world - from the rise of Islam to
post-colonial revival; Black Africa - from the slave trade to the
dilemmas of development; the Far East: China, India, the maritime
states and Japan; Europe - from the collapse of the Roman Empire to
political union; the European civilizations of the New World: Latin
America and the United States; the English-speaking universe: Canada,
Southern Africa, Australia, and New Zealand; and the other Europe:
Russia, the USSR, and the CIS. For this excellent translation,
Richard Mayne has gently updated the text. And yet, as he explains in
his Introduction, very little was necessary. Braudel always had an
astonishingly firm grasp on the broad sweep of history - a grasp
which, "in the hands of a master, can help explain the most dramatic
convulsions in the past, the present, and the future."
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