The making of a historiographic novelty: the Annales and the process of intellectual development of a historiographic movement

• Grant number: 13/19954-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: November 01, 2013
• End date: October 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History
• Principal Investigator: Miguel Soares Palmeira
• Grantee: Mariana Ladeira Osés
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The Annales d'Histoire Économique et Sociale, founded by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre in 1929, have been praised by modern historiography as a turning point in the production of historic knowledge in the twentieth century. This complimentary approach has, nevertheless, often been criticized by other sections of historiography which try, sometimes bluntly, to deny the so called "novelties" brought to light by the periodic. This project aims at formulating and clarifying several questions concerning the Annales that demand a non judgmental approach. What we seek is an understanding of intellectual production as a process, of the social and intellectual gears involved in forging the idea of what's "new" in human sciences through sources that are usually overlooked by historians: letters and book reviews. We trust that, by analyzing both the letters exchanged by Bloch and Febvre between 1928 and 1938 and the book reviews published in the periodic in the same period, it is possible to look at the work of these authors in a broader perspective and, therefore, to reveal levels of intellectual production that allow a more refined understanding of the process through which a historiographic novelty is forged.