Burke Chapter 1

In the introdction to The French Historical Revolution, Peter Burke explains that his goal is to allow the reader to see the Annales movement as a whole.

Chapter 1 describes the approaches to history before the Annales school.  Basically, history was told through major political and military events.  Then, Leopole Von Ranke introduced a paradigm shift in the 1800s, however, his followers were more narrow-minded and his non-political view of history was excluded.

Critics of historians, in particular Francois Simiand, attacked the "idols of the tribe of historians" to be the political idol, individual idol and chronological idol.  These idols must be toppled, he said.

In 1900, Henri Berr founded a journal called the Revue de Synthese Historique which encouraged historians to collaborate with other disciplines.  Two admireres of this journal were Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch.