The French Annales School Study

The Annales School of France is one of the most famous historical schools in Western historical scholarship in20th century. The Annaliste historians criticized the western traditional historiography of19th century and facilitated the developing of the New History trend in Western historiography of20th century from the end of the1920s. It has been influenced the French even the international historiography. The Annales School declined with the reorientation of the western historiography from the end of eighties in the20th century. The study of the Annales School is very useful to understand the development, achievements and limits of the French even the whole western historiography.The thesis is a compositive study of the Annales School. In the Introduction part, I summarize the relative researches in and out of China. In Chapter One, I expound the evolution of the Annales School. I illuminate the consistence and continuity of the Annales School and point out the different periodical characteristics and the diversities of the research between the different Annaliste historians. In Chapter Two, I research the influential historic graphical thought of the Annales School, such as the total history, interdisciplinary research, longue duree^histoire-probleme, mainly on the questions about their origins, practices, changes, the contribution and the limits. In Chapter Three, I analyze the historiographical practice of the Annaliste historians in serial history, mentalite history, civilization history, new cultural history and then explore the academic value and weakness of these studies. In Chapter Four, I review the international influence of the Annales School’s in a global perspective and explain how the Annales School influenced the international historiography widely under the circumstance of the world reality and academy by researching the diversity of the influence and acceptance of the Annales School in different countries and regions. In Chapter Five, based on the four chapters before, I try to answer the core questions of the thesis. I point out the bias of the traditional opinion for the question in comparative way and then sum up the inner factors for the Annales School’s success, their relations between the Annales School and Marxist historiography and other factors so on.In Conclusion, I point out that the Annales School is not a school in strict meaning, which reflects the continuing innovating and pursuing in history research of French historians gathered round the Annales. There is no doubt that the Annales School made great contribution to the development of the world historiography.