Marc Bloch and the Annales approach to history

We have a name, a journal, and a school of history in the first sentence. Don't let that become a list to memorize. The basic relationship is that Bloch's work exemplifies the Annales approach, and he helped establish and develop it. The question we need answered is what makes this approach different.

The next sentences explain. Its central subject is human beings and the world they inhabited, rather than just political events and leaders. So instead of treating history as a sequence of famous rulers and battles, look at how people lived: their fields, homes, workplaces, and institutions. The list includes palaces and courtrooms as well as huts. This is a wider view of human life, not a rule that only poor or ordinary people count.

There is also a difference in the historian's job. The positivists would publish facts that supposedly speak for themselves. Annales historians interpret the evidence, connecting practices with the social and political world around them. What did people assume? How did they perceive their world? That is what “mentalité” names here. The unfamiliar French word is less intimidating once we keep that meaning attached to it.

Now the books show what this looks like in practice.

In The Royal Touch, the starting point is the belief that a monarch could cure disease by touching an afflicted person. Does a royal hand actually cure scrofula? We don't need to settle that medical question. Bloch uses the stories to investigate ritual kingship—its origins, significance, and decline. The interesting historical question is what the belief reveals about kingship, not whether the treatment worked.

French Rural History takes us into agriculture. Different farming patterns, present-day landscapes, and old documents become evidence about social life. Notice that Bloch can ask new questions of an old source. Interpretation isn't just finding an unknown fact; it can involve discovering a different meaning in something already available.

Feudal Society then examines the medieval social structure. The last paragraph explains the central relationship: one person owes loyalty to another, running from the monarch down through vassals to the lowest ranks. That makes the hierarchy concrete. The point isn't merely who occupies which rank, but how this system of dependency shapes the way people think, pray, and even express love.

That brings us back to the opening method. A social institution helps explain a culture's assumptions and expressions. The three books have different subjects, but they illustrate the same broad contribution to understanding human beings in their historical worlds.

The writer is favorable toward that contribution. The books remain “widely read and highly influential,” and The Royal Touch is called “pacesetting.” We should keep both the innovation and the continuing importance in view, rather than letting one memorable example stand in for the whole discussion.