"Total History" and Human Agency: A Brief Reflection on the Annales School of History

Practitioners of what is often called 'histoire totale' (or ‘total history’)——have engaged with the question of contingency, determination, human agency, and change in several discernible phases.[1]

Total History and Human Agency: The First Generation

Total history is an approach to the study of history most closely associated with the academic journal Annales d’histoire économique et sociale, founded by the French historians Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch.

As a methodological outlook, it has implications for both the object of historical study (in that ‘all aspects of society’ must be seen as part of the total historical reality) as well as the methods of historical study (by integrating ‘the skills and tools of an array of ancillary disciplines’).[2] Total history attempts to situate humanity within the context of the wider streams of historical continuity and change.[3] 

Febvre famously recognised, for instance, that the advent of electrical lights had a more important historical impact than the ‘transient solutions’ of many singular diplomatic events and developments.[4] Nonetheless, both Bloch and Febvre continued to emphasise ordinary human decision-making—albeit within the ‘constraints imposed by economic and political pressures’.[5] 

Their histoire totale approach served to highlight human agency within the historical process. Febvre insisted that, while total history demanded that ‘landscapes, machines, institutions, beliefs, writings … constitute the subject-matter of history’, humans remain the object of the historian’s ‘grasp’.[6] 

Fernand Braudel and the Second Generation of Annalistes

In contrast, the second generation of Annalistes, Fernand Braudel and his immediate followers, shifted their focus from human action within total history towards a ‘structuralist’ perspective—or ‘geo-historical structuralism’.[7]

Braudel’s three-layered framework of historical contingency—emphasising the longue durée (‘history whose passage is almost imperceptible’), conjonctures (‘slow but perceptible rhythms’), and histoire événementielle (‘surface disturbances, crests of foam that the tides of history carry on their strong backs’)—situates ‘traditional history’, the history of events and humans, within the context of the range of environmental factors outside of human control.[8] He was ‘little tempted’ by events, or even by conjunctures, which he called ‘merely a grouping of events’.[9] 

While Braudel continued to position humans at the centre of his research and to privilege ‘ruptures and catastrophes’ in his historical analyses, his emphasis on longue durée had the effect of minimising the role of human agency within historical processes, or perhaps of situating it within its broader structural context.[10] 

The qualitative historians who immediately followed Braudel, substantively maintained Braudel’s structuralist perspective on historical contingency, although they applied the tools of history more narrowly—pursuing histoire-problème, rather than histoire totale, as Green and Troup note.[11] 

Mentalités and the Third Generation of Annalistes

The third generation of Annalistes turned their attention once again towards the agency of humans—this time with a focus on mentalités, or ‘collective thought structures or mind-sets of the past’, especially as it pertained to ordinary people’s attitudes towards ordinary lives.[12] 

In the tradition of histoire totale, the concept of mentalités occupies what one historian calls ‘the conceptual space between the history of ideas […] and social history’—although some of the most important work on mentalités was conducted by non-Annales practitioners.[13] 

While Bloch and Febvre had been much interested in Émile Durkheim’s notion of représentations collectives, the new mentalités historians returned to and built upon their early exploration of the idea—emphasising that the mental structures of individuals and groups were not dependent on material conditions. Instead, such representations were themselves ‘constituents of reality’.[14] 

Accordingly, historians like Lynn Hunt argue that the history of mentalités undermines the entire Annales paradigm.[15] However, Peter Burke highlights that mentalités historians, consistent with the broad legacy of histoire totale, continue to adapt and evolve by selectively appropriating and incorporating insights from other traditions.[16] 

Conclusion

The attitude towards agency and contingency in historical development within newer approaches to histoire totale, what Anna Green and Kathleen Troup suggest may be a fourth generation of Annalistes, is much more difficult to discern.[17] This is no doubt in part a result of the eclectic and diverse range of approaches embraced by Annales scholars since the 1990s.[18]

While all Annales historians engage with the interface between humans and the totality of history in various ways, their approaches to human agency have varied greatly over the past century.

Such diversity is inevitable given the nature of histoire totale as a loosely unifying principle.

Endnotes:

[1] Green and Troup, Houses of History, p. 107; Lynn Hunt, ‘French History in the Last Twenty Years: The Rise and Fall of the Annales Paradigm,’ Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 21, 1986, p. 209; George Huppert, ‘Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch: The Creation of the Annales’, The French Review, vol. 55, 1982, p. 510.

[2] Green and Troup, Houses of History, p. 107; Robert Forster, ‘Achievements of the Annales School,’ The Journal of Economic History, vol. 38, 1978, p. 58.

[3] Olivia Harris, ‘Braudel: Historical Time and the Horror of Discontinuity,’ History Workshop Journal, no. 57, 2004, p. 172; Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, ‘Motionless History,’ Social Science History, vol. 1, 1977, pp. 115–116.

[4] Lucien Fabvre, ‘A New Kind of History,’ in Peter Burke (ed.), A New Kind of History: From the Writings of Lucien Febvre, trans. K. Folca, New York, 1973, https://archive.org/details/newkindofhistory0000febv, accessed 15 August 2025, p. 30.

[5] George Huppert, ‘Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch: The Creation of the Annales’, The French Review, vol. 55, 1982, p. 511.

[6] Fabvre, ‘A New Kind of History,’ p. 31–32.

[7] Green and Troup, Houses of History, pp. 107–108; Hunt, ‘French History,’ pp. 210–211; Samuel Kinser, ‘Annaliste Paradigm? The Geohistorical Structuralism of Fernand Braudel,’ The American Historical Review, vol. 86, 1981, p. 64.

[8] Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 2nd revised edn, 2 vols, trans. Siân Reynolds, New York, 1975, https://archive.org/details/mediterranean0001unse, accessed 15 August 2025, pp. 20–21; Hunt, ‘French History,’ 212.

[9] Braudel, The Mediterranean, vol. 2, pp. 1244; Jacques Le Goff, Time, Work & Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, Chicago, 1980, https://monoskop.org/images/a/ab/ Le_Goff_Jacques_Time_work_and_culture_in_the_middle_ages_1980.pdf, accessed 15 August 2025, pp. 227–229.

[10] Fernand Braudel, ‘The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II,’ reproduced in Anna Green and Kathleen Troup, The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in History and Theory, 2nd edn, Manchester, 2016, pp. 118–121; ‘Braudel,’ p. 172.

[11] Green and Troup, Houses of History, p. 110.

[12] Green and Troup, Houses of History, p. 111; Patrick H. Hutton ‘The History of Mentalities: The New Map of Cultural History,’ History and Theory, vol. 20, 1981, p. 237; Le Goff, Time, Work & Culture, p. 229.

[13] Peter Burke, ‘Strengths and weaknesses of the history of mentalities,’ History of European Ideas, vol. 7, 1986, p. 440; Green and Troup, Houses of History, p. 112; Hunt, ‘French History,’ pp. 216–217; Hutton, ‘The History of Mentalities,’ pp. 237–239.

[14] Roger Chartier, ‘Intellectual History or Sociocultural History? The French Trajectories,’ in (eds.) Dominick LaCapra and Steven L. Kaplan, Modern European Intellectual History: Reappraisals and New Perspectives, eBook edn, Ithaca and London, 1982, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb04883.0001.001, accessed 15 August 2025, pp. 40–41; Green and Troup, Houses of History, pp. 111–112; Hunt, ‘French History,’ p. 217; Hutton, ‘The History of Mentalities,’ pp. 240–247.

[15] Hunt, ‘French History’, p. 217.

[16] Burke, ‘Strengths and weaknesses,’ pp. 447–448.

[17] Green and Troup, Houses of History, pp. 112–113.

[18] Green and Troup, Houses of History, pp. 112–113.

Bibliography:

1. Braudel, Fernand, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 2nd revised edn, 2 vols (1), trans. Siân Reynolds, London, Fontana/Collins, 1975, https://archive.org/details/mediterranean0001unse, accessed 15 August 2025.

2. Braudel, Fernand, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 2nd revised edn, 2 vols (2), trans. Siân Reynolds, New York, Harper Torchbook, 1976, https://archive.org/details/mediterraneanthe02brau, accessed 15 August 2025.

3. Braudel, Fernand, ‘The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II,’ reproduced in Anna Green and Kathleen Troup, The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in History and Theory, 2nd edn, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2016.

4. Burke, Peter, ‘Strengths and weaknesses of the history of mentalities,’ History of European Ideas, vol. 7, 1986, pp. 439–451, https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-6599(86)90120-8, accessed 15 August 2025.

5. Chartier, Roger, ‘Intellectual History or Sociocultural History? The French Trajectories,’ in (eds.) Dominick LaCapra and Steven L. Kaplan, Modern European Intellectual History: Reappraisals and New Perspectives, eBook edn, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1982, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb04883.0001.001, accessed 15 August 2025.

6. Febvre, Lucien, ‘A New Kind of History,’ in Peter Burke (ed.), A New Kind of History: From the Writings of Lucien Febvre, trans. K. Folca, New York, Harper Torchbooks, 1973, https://archive.org/details/newkindofhistory0000febv, accessed 15 August 2025.

7. Forster, Robert, ‘Achievements of the Annales School,’ The Journal of Economic History, vol. 38, 1978, pp. 58–76, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2119315, accessed 15 August 2025.

8. Green, Anna, and Kathleen Troup, The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in History and Theory, 2nd edn, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2016.

9. Harris, Olivia, ‘Braudel: Historical Time and the Horror of Discontinuity,’ History Workshop Journal, no. 57, 2004, pp. 161–174, https://www.jstor.org/stable/25472731, accessed 15 August 2025.

10. Hunt, Lynn, ‘French History in the Last Twenty Years: The Rise and Fall of the Annales Paradigm,’ Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 21, 1986, pp. 209–224, https://www.jstor.org/stable/260364, accessed 15 August 2025.

11. Huppert, George, ‘Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch: The Creation of the Annales’, The French Review, vol. 55, 1982, pp. 510–513, https://www.jstor.org/stable/392003, accessed 31 July 2025.

12. Hutton, Patrick H. ‘The History of Mentalities: The New Map of Cultural History,’ History and Theory, vol. 20, 1981, pp. 237–259, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2504556, accessed 15 August 2025.

13. Kinser, Samuel, ‘Annaliste Paradigm? The Geohistorical Structuralism of Fernand Braudel,’ The American Historical Review, vol. 86, 1981, pp. 63–105, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1872933, accessed 15 August 2025.

14. Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy, ‘Motionless History,’ Social Science History, vol. 1, 1977, pp. 115–136, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1171054, accessed 15 August 2025.

15. Le Goff, Jacques, Time, Work & Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1980, https://monoskop.org/images/a/ab/Le_Goff_Jacques_Time_work_and_culture_in_the_middle_ages_1980.pdf, accessed 15 August 2025.