The European Alps – an exceptional range of mountains? Braudel’s argument put to the test

Abstract

In his classic work about the Mediterranean in the period of Philipp II, French historian Fernand Braudel designates the European Alps an ‘exceptional range of mountains’ and offers several reasons therefor. In contrast to other parts of Braudel’s work, this argument has gone largely unnoticed in scholarship. This article intends to put it to the test in light of recent publications on the Alps. The first two sections give an outline of Braudel’s dealings with mountain regions and of historical research on the Alps from the 1970s onwards. The third section comments on the suitability of Braudel’s criteria for empirical assessments in a comparative perspective. In the conclusions it is argued that Braudel’s general intuition is still valid to some degree. It is less certain, however, that all the criteria are pertinent. More importantly, the findings emphasize the fact that the history of the Alps cannot be studied without paying close attention to their links with the surrounding lowlands. Thus the question of alpine exceptionality raises the question of the special trajectory of these lowland regions within the larger history of Europe.

Keywords:

• History of mountain regions
• environmental history
• European Alps
• Fernand Braudel

Notes

1. Braudel, Mediterranean, 1: 34.

2. Some examples out of abounding references: Medick, “Entlegene Geschichte;” Bercé, “Préface;” Fontaine, Pouvoir, identités et migrations, 5–10. Of course, there were also critics in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly in the English-speaking world; in 1973 J. Elliott, for example, wrote in The New York Review of Books: “Braudel’s mountains move his men, but never his men the mountains” (quoted by Parker, “Braudel’s Mediterranean,” 241).

3. Braudel, Mediterranean, 1: 33.

4. Braudel’s argument is used as a main question and golden thread in Mathieu, Alpen. Raum – Kultur – Geschichte.

5. Braudel, Mediterranean, 1: 25; for general literature see: Raphael, Erben von Bloch und Febvre; Gemelli, Fernand Braudel; Paris, Genèse intellectuelle.

6. Braudel, Mediterranean, 1: 206–8.

7. Braudel, Mediterranean, 1: 20; Braudel, Écrits sur l’histoire, 11.

8. Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 1: 64.

9. Blache, Montagne; see also Sgard, “Voyage dans les montagnes,” and Sgard, “Savoir sur la montagne.”

10. Braudel, Mediterranean, 1: 30–52, notes 23, 25, 31, 75, 94, 149.

11. Braudel, Mediterranean, 1: 33; Decker, Barock-Plastik.

12. Raphael, Erben von Bloch und Febvre, 109–37; Braudel, “Origines intellectuelles;” Braudel, “Prefazione;” Caygill, “Braudel’s Prison Notebooks;” Hannemann, “Entfesselte Geist.”

13. Braudel, Mediterranean, 1: 33.

14. Braudel, Mittelmeer, 1: 44.

15. Braudel, Méditerranée (1949), 12, and (1966), 30; both versions use the rather unusual word humanités for “human population”; in the second version the roads are qualified (“le nombre de ses grandes routes”).

16. Le Alpi e l'Europa; Guichonnet, Histoire et Civilisations.

17. Bergier, Pour une histoire; Histoire des Alpes (annual journal since 1996, open access version with a latency on http://retro.seals.ch).

18. See also the following related initiatives: Dictionnaire encyclopédique; Tappeiner, Borsdorf, and Tasser, Mapping the Alps; a Wikipedia-sponsored project on alpine history: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progetto:Storia_delle_Alpi.

19. The English translation chose another version: “a reservoir of men for other people’s use” (Braudel, Mediterranean, 1: 51).

20. Viazzo, Upland Communities; Fontaine, Pouvoir, identités et migrations; Lorenzetti, “Economic Opening.”

21. Bätzing, Strukturwandel des Alpenraumes; Mathieu, History of the Alps, 23–46; see also Mathieu, “Überdurchschnittliches Wachstum.”

22. Radeff, Economie globale; Viallet, Alpages; Mocarelli, “Production of Cheese;” Bonoldi, “Luoghi dello scambio;” Blatter, “Transformation of the Alpine Economy.”

23. L’élevage et la vie pastorale; Carlen and Imboden, Kulturgeschichte des Alpwesens; Caselli, Regioni alpine; Gil Montero, Mathieu, and Singh, “Mountain Pastoralism;” Schöpfer Pfaffen, Stoffel, and Vanotti, Unternehmen. Most of the authors named in the text have contributed to these publications.

24. Blatter, “Transformation of the Alpine Economy;” Gil Montero, Mathieu, and Singh, “Mountain Pastoralism,” 5–6; Mathieu, Alps, 50–3.

25. Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 1: 120; in the Mediterranean, he gave a lengthy survey of “archaic” transhumance and nomadism, but judged the peasant sector solely by cereal production.

26. Luther, Grande peur dans la montagne, 381, translated from the French; see also Reichler, Découverte des Alpes; Mathieu and Boscani Leoni, Die Alpen.

27. Korenjak, “Wasserschloss Europas;” Korenjak, “Land im Gebirge;” Reichler, Alpes et leur imagiers.

28. Mathieu and Singh, “Religion and Sacredness;” Mathieu, Third Dimension, 29–30, 120–8; Frei, Transferprozess der Moderne; Hoibian, Invention de l’alpinismue; Tissot, “Alpine Tourism.”

29. Mathieu, “Mountains in Urban Development,” 22–6.

30. Braudel, Mediterranean, 1: 41–7, 49.

31. Blache, Montagne, 13–56; an earlier, often-quoted treatise giving a survey of different genres de vie agricoles (forms of agrarian life) in the Alps is Martonne, Alpes, 152–71.

32. Frei, Transferprozess; Anker, Matterhorn, 278–91.

33. Braudel, Mediterranean, 1: 38–41.

34. Stephen, Playground of Europe, 228, 258, 261; later editions usually skipped this essay.

35. Collantes has highlighted the correlation of upland development with national contexts in comparative studies for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: “Peasant Republic” and “Rural Europe.”