Unity, era and world in La Méditerranée

Abstract

The second edition of La Méditerranée (1966), the one that is generally known and translated, does not contain the ‘Conclusions’ to Part One of the work, which were present in the first edition, from 1949. Braudel wrote this chapter, entitled ‘Geohistory and determinism’, to look in depth at the connection between environment and history, the problem of the historiographic importance of geographical space for the interpretation of men's actions. He begins by drawling the reader's attention to three types of historiographic experience (repetitions and evocations), each of which he considers to be a form of victory over time. These are geographical analogies, distant in space and time; analogous events that happen at a distance from each other in time but in the same geographical space; the encounter between immobile islands of life, because in the Mediterranean there is no brutal break between past and present. Braudel's reflections on these experiences allow us to consider in depth the historiographic notions of unity (which does not reduce the plurality of spaces), world (without geographical limits) and age (without temporal axiality), as well as a non-deterministic idea of the relationships between the geographical environment and human action as a place where history generally occurs.

Keywords:

• Braudel, F.
• French historiography
• History of historiography
• Geohistory
• Critical philosophy of history
• Post-historicism

Notes

[1] Braudel (1949, pp. 295–304): ‘Conclusion: Géohistoire et determinisme’.

[2] ‘Dépaysement’ (Braudel 1949, p. 297) is the loss of identity due to the loss of the usual points of reference, such as when one suddenly finds oneself in a foreign country.

[3] I have examined certain aspects of these themes analytically in Mari (2001), particularly Chapter 3.

[4] Braudel (1949, p. 304): Botero affirms that ‘Lombardy, by stretching out in pleasant countryside, has commonly been calmer than Tuscany, which is distinguished by its mountains and valleys’. ‘In short’, comments Braudel, ‘the wisdom of the lowlands and the semi-madness of the wild mountains. Is this really a questionable image?’

[5] Braudel (1949, p. 301). And cf. Arendt (1998, p. 233): ‘action has no end. The process of a single deed can quite literally endure throughout time until mankind itself has come to an end. That deeds possesses such an enormous capacity for endurance, superior to every other man-made product, could be a matter of pride if man were able to bear its burden, the burden of irreversibility and unpredictability, from which the action process draws its very strength. That this is impossible, men have always known. They have known that he who acts never quite knows what he is doing … and that its very meaning never discloses itself to the actor but only to the backward glance of the historian who himself does not act’.