In Chapter 2, Burke goes into the backgrounds of the leaders of the Annales movement' Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch. Bloch specialized in the Middle Ages and Febvre was interested in historical geography. Burke explains that both men thought about history in a problem-oriented way. I don't quite understand this idea so I hope to discuss this in class. Anyway, both men eventually taught at the University of Strasbourg in 1920-1933 which were critical times for the Annales. The two men were surrounded by a "lively interdisplinary group".
In 1928 Febvre and Bloch became joint editors of a French journal entitled "Annales d'histoire economique et sociale". The editors "pleaded for a new interdisciplinary approach to history". For example, Bloch used non-literary sources, such as estate maps when researching for his book French Rural History and proposed approaching history through a "regressive" or backward method since we know more about later periods. I wonder if the Annales journal is still in existence today.
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