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Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century, Vol. 1: The Structures of Everyday Life

(Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century #1)

Fernand Braudel,

Siân Reynolds (Translator)

4.32 · Rating details · 1,440 ratings · 89 reviews

This is the first of three fascinating volumes in which Braudel, the renowned historian and celebrated author of The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World, offers what is in effect an economic and social history of the world from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution. Like everything he writes, it is new, stimulating and sparkles like champagne.

Braudel's techniq ...more

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Paperback, 623 pages

Published December 23rd 1992 by University of California Press (first published 1979)

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Jan 06, 2010 AC rated it it was amazing

Shelves: early-modern, markets, braudel-annales, great-divergence-world-system, 16th-17th-centuries

(Not everyone will find this book easy to read. The author makes no concessions whatsoever to the reader. The book is crammed with place names and technical vocabulary from weaving, joining, planing, sailing, ploughing, leaching, waxing, glazing, coining, minting, metallurgy, etc. etc... none of which are ever located or explained. Readers of Whitman or Catullus, poets who revel in proper nouns, will not be troubled by this cornucopia of names. For me, the book was fabulous, rich, insightful... (Not everyone will find this book easy to read. The author makes no concessions whatsoever to the reader. The book is crammed with place names and technical vocabulary from weaving, joining, planing, sailing, ploughing, leaching, waxing, glazing, coining, minting, metallurgy, etc. etc... none of which are ever located or explained. Readers of Whitman or Catullus, poets who revel in proper nouns, will not be troubled by this cornucopia of names. For me, the book was fabulous, rich, insightful... it is true that the author often seems to careen from topic to topic. But genius has the right to be careless. Ultimately, perhaps, Braudel does not have a solution to many of the items he discusses -- but he asked fascinating questions. That is often a cliché, to be sure -- but not in this case.)

I have never read a book quite like this one -- though I have often dreamt of it. The first volume of Braudel's C&C looks at the structures of everyday life: demographics, agricultural, wheat, rice, maize, beer, cider, forks, utensils, curtains, how flooring was done in the 16th and 17th century, ceilings, windows... how they opened, how high doors were, luxury, poverty, dress... and that is only in the first 3 chapters... It is astonishing....

In addition, while weaving together this sundry material, the writing is suffused with such insights and genius -- that it has at times quite an effect. (Braudel is the man who wrote the entire first volume of his magnum opus, the Mediterranean, from MEMORY -- while imprisoned by the Germans during WWII...). To take just one example -- in his discussion of luxury, he talks about the treasures that are squandered for meaningless things -- the Chinese sending silver to Java and Vietnam in exchange for salted bear paws; the Spaniards spending their silver, won by the death of thousands... millions of Amerindians -- to the 'hated' Dutch in exchange for powdered wigs (for Spanish gentlemen...) -- and observes that a society that cannot spend its accumulated capital on extending productively the means of production thus is showing signs of senility, a phenomenon peculiar to an 'ancien regime'. I read this paragraph while observing the following facts this week: that a society that can spend $250 million making the special effects for a movie can't pay its teachers, train its students properly, or fix its bridges...; that a society that can underwrite (with tax-payer subsidies/backstops/etc.) $145 billion of end-of-year bonuses to otherwise teetering banks, can't find $6 billion to bail out its largest economy (California) -- that such a society is, in Braudelian terms, showing signs of senility and decay... perhaps terminal decay.

And that, as I say, is only in the first three chapters....

These chapters cover the most trivial elements, as chapter four and following start on the topics of energy, metallurgy, gunpowder, transportation, urban planning, etc... Volume II then deals with markets; Vol. III with the consolidation of capital. In sum, a really amazing book.

(I feel as if I have just stepped into a great cathedral...) ...more

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Jan 15, 2015 Jonfaith rated it it was amazing

Shelves: flat_circle_of_lies_and_despair

Books, even history books, run away with their authors. This one has run ahead of me. But what can one say about its waywardness, its whims, even its own logic, that will be serious and valid? Our children do as they please. And yet we are responsible for their actions.

I have a discovered a recent treat, finishing a book early in the morning and basking in its brilliance during the day. There is something more indulgent than ascetic in the practice. Braudel's magnificent first volume was complet Books, even history books, run away with their authors. This one has run ahead of me. But what can one say about its waywardness, its whims, even its own logic, that will be serious and valid? Our children do as they please. And yet we are responsible for their actions.

I have a discovered a recent treat, finishing a book early in the morning and basking in its brilliance during the day. There is something more indulgent than ascetic in the practice. Braudel's magnificent first volume was completed oh so early today while I listened to obscure chamber music. The effect was nearly intoxicating. Asserting a distinction between the Material Economy and the Market Economy, Braudel attempts to delineate the former as constituted in the daily rituals and practices of humans in their disparate environments. It is the toil of the quotidian. It is the gulf between wealth and poverty. The study displayed isn't an evolution but rather a series of processes, inspirations and missteps.

There isn't a narrative here. Adroit GRer Katie noted the abundance of detail and how one should allow it "to breathe." Hundreds of pages on cereal production and furniture conclude without a sense of surfeit. Maybe it is a testament to Braudel's brilliance, but one never thinks, this is too much. The engine of material progress appears to be necessity. But each proverbial page isn't turned until "it is time." Overcrowding and offshore resources kept pressure on the metaphorical envelope. Cities appear to combust this creative spirit, even as the swells lamented the rising tide of the rabble. China appears to have held all the cards at one time. Did Islam simply run out of trees to maintain its conquering posture? Venice certainly displayed poise and style periodically. Braudel appears a bit cheeky with his notes on revolutions: in this case, artillery, moveable type and oceanic navigation. I was going to separate credit but that would be unwise. Credit is a remarkable agent for developments as well as minatory movement. ...more

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Jul 08, 2007 DoctorM rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history-favourites

Okay, then. Let's be clear: This is how it's done. This is how the structures and flows and mapping of another world, another time are analysed. This is how it's done. The first volume of Braudel's 3-volume "Structures of Everyday Life: Civilisation and Capitalism, 15th-18th-C." is magisterial in the clear sense of the word: the work of a master.

This isn't narrative history. I'll warn you about that. This is an analysis of the bones of history, of the economics and commerce and geography and cl ...more

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Apr 06, 2014 Checkman rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: history buffs with an interest in social history

Shelves: history, non-fiction

Braudel's work is considered to be one of the seminal works in documenting the evolution of everyday life (throughout many centuries) and how it played into the bringing about the modern world. Braudel wasn't interested in kings, battles or the rise and fall of empires and kingdoms.

Braudel's interest was in economics, food production, living spaces and so on. In 2014 this style of historical research isn't radical or unusual and even historians who are primarily focused on the big picture will Braudel's work is considered to be one of the seminal works in documenting the evolution of everyday life (throughout many centuries) and how it played into the bringing about the modern world. Braudel wasn't interested in kings, battles or the rise and fall of empires and kingdoms.

Braudel's interest was in economics, food production, living spaces and so on. In 2014 this style of historical research isn't radical or unusual and even historians who are primarily focused on the big picture will often dedicate a chapter or two examining about the economic and social conditions of the time. So what seemed fresh and different thirty-five years ago might come across as a bit threadbare now. That is if one insists on taking that attitude. "The Structures of Everyday Life" is a work that is an archetype (no I don't want to debate that statement. This isn't college.) and should be read with that in mind. Yes, there has been more research since Braudel lived. Braudel was the primary leader of what is called the Annales School (style of historiography developed by French historians in the 20th century to stress long-term social history) and not all the research has been done by French historians. But his work is very interesting and still has a fresh feeling to it. That's says something about Braudel and the ground that he broke.

Perhaps I liked it because I have come to appreciate how the simplest things can have such a dramatic effect on our everyday existence. Such as the humble dental filling preventing an infection from invading the body or the ho-hum eye exam catching a brain tumor. These things are not battles and emperors. These things effect us as much as those big events. Maybe more so. We now live longer because of those simple things. As a result (well at least partially) there are now more of us. Can you honestly say that hasn't had an effect on the world? This is what interested Braudel and what now interests me.

"The Structures of Everyday Life" is a very dense work and is not a book that is easily breezed through. I am certain that part of that can be attributed to the fact that the book has been translated from French. I've often found translated works to be more challenging - especially academic works. Nevertheless I enjoyed this book and I would strongly recommend it to those who are curious about how people lived and how their lives have changed over the centuries. How our lives have changed. ...more

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Oct 27, 2011 Jan-Maat added it

Shelves: early-modern-history, 20th-century, europe, read-in-translation

The chapter on daily bread is compelling and worth the cover price of the book. An amazing recreation of the early modern period.

The series continues with The Structures of Everyday Life and The Perspective of the World.

...more

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Oct 09, 2012 Katie rated it really liked it

Shelves: early-modern, cultural-history, history

Fernand Braudel is one of the few authors out there who writes books that people call terribly boring and hugely interesting for exactly the same reason: his approach to history is a amass a huge pile of details and then let them breathe. There are 100 pages about population, and a solid 40 about growing wheat. There are whole subchapters about furniture.

This book takes a view of world history from 1500-1800 and delves especially into issues of population, food, drink, fashion, technology and m ...more

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Jul 24, 2011 John Jr. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history

"The past is like a foreign country: they do things differently there." One need only have seen a painting of England's Elizabeth I to have realized as much—who nowadays wears a ruff? Though Fernand Braudel had in mind a different purpose in writing The Structures of Everyday Life, it could be taken as another stack of evidence for L. P. Hartley's pithy observation. And it's a bounty.

This book is one part of a three-volume survey of pre-industrial economic life—of the entire world, not only that ...more

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Feb 02, 2011 Anders rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Braudel is a French historian famous for his longue duree conception of large-scale change, which he laid out in his Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme, XVe-XVIIIe siècle, tome 1 : Les structures du quotidien, written in a POW camp in WWII (ha, what did YOU do when you were in a POW Camp in WWII? Olivier Messaien, put your hand down.) In this three volume set he lays out his argument for a conception of history as taking place on three main spheres: material life, which has develop ...more

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Jun 30, 2020 Jamie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history

This is history on a grand scale, a magisterial examination of life from the 15th to the 18th century. As the title says, it is about everyday life; kings and conquerors are mentioned only in passing. The book focuses on ordinary people: what they ate and how they dressed, their homes and furniture; their industry and economy. While recognizing that the primary sources are often incomplete and sometimes of questionable accuracy, Fernand Braudel nevertheless amassed an astonishing amount of detai This is history on a grand scale, a magisterial examination of life from the 15th to the 18th century. As the title says, it is about everyday life; kings and conquerors are mentioned only in passing. The book focuses on ordinary people: what they ate and how they dressed, their homes and furniture; their industry and economy. While recognizing that the primary sources are often incomplete and sometimes of questionable accuracy, Fernand Braudel nevertheless amassed an astonishing amount of detailed information on the lives of merchants, peasants, and bankers.

The Renaissance may have been creating magnificent art at this time, but most people were untouched by it, the rhythms of their daily lives at the start of the 15th century going on as they had for millennia. As the centuries advance Braudel paints a picture of slowly accumulating changes; for instance, with waterwheels replacing manpower to grind grain, run sawmills, and shape metals. In the cities sophisticated financial systems were developed to spread risk and leverage credit. As the book progresses readers can see the modern world starting to emerge right before their eyes.

It was a hard life, and for many a short one. “There was a constant tendency toward equilibrium between the patterns of birth and deaths. Under the ancien régime the two coefficients were both at around the same figure: 40 per 1000. What life added, death took away.” (p. 71) This was especially true for the most vulnerable. “In the Beauvaisis in the seventeenth century 25 to 33% of new-born children died within twelve months; only 50% reached their twentieth year.” (p. 90)

Although the book focuses mainly on Europe, it also includes the Middle and Far East when there is sufficient data, and spends some time comparing and contrasting the civilizations. The Middle East, for example, did not have the resources of wood and coal to support large scale industrialization of the kind that was developing in Europe,“The fact that wood was used everywhere carried enormous significance in the past. One of the reasons for Europe’s power lay in its being so plentifully endowed with forests. Against it, Islam was in the long run undermined by the poverty of its wood resources, and their gradual exhaustion.” (p. 363)

In China the vast pool of manpower slowed the need for more efficient ways of doing things. “The early settlement and then the spectacular increase in population in the Far East were only possible because of the small amount of meat eaten. The reasons for this are very simple. If the choices of an economy are determined solely by adding up calories, agriculture on a given surface area will always have the advantage over stock-raising; one way or another it feeds ten to twenty times as many people.” (p. 104) Horses were much less common for transportation than sedan chairs, with one team of men carrying the chair and others following along and waiting for their turn. Even with a dozen men per chair it was still cheaper than buying, stabling, and maintaining a horse.

Braudel provides some interesting insights into the daily lives on Europeans when he discusses what they ate and how religion affected their options. “Fish was all the more important here as religious rulings multiplied the number of fast days: 166 days, including Lent, observed extremely strictly until the reign of Louis XIV. Meat, eggs and poultry could not be sold during those forty days except to invalids and with a double certificate from doctor and priest.” (p. 214)

The book is at its best in its discussions of applied technology, as commerce prodded experimentation and new developments. “The two principle sources of energy were draught-animals and wood combustion (windmills...cannot have represented more than a third or a quarter of the power of the water under control)” (p. 371) New inventions, however, were starting to change the age-old systems of putting energy to practical use. “The average watermill gave five times the yield of a hand mill operated by two men – it was itself a revolution; but the first steam-driven mill would do five times the work of a watermill.” (p. 371)

Another great advance came with the first, primitive forms of blast furnaces to provide enough oxygen to purify molten iron.

Smelting was achieved for the first time with the installation of enormous water-powered leather bellows and tunnels in the blast furnaces; which virtually means that cast iron was ‘discovered’ in the fourteenth century. Iron or steel could thereafter be obtained as required from cast iron, their common starting point, by extensive decarbonization (iron) or incomplete decarbonization (steel)” (p. 378)

With smelting came new technologies that would, over time, change the world forever, and modern civilization started to appear. “The great technological ‘revolutions’ between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries were artillery, printing and ocean navigation. But to speak of revolution here is to use a figure of speech. None of these was accomplished at breakneck speed, and only the third – ocean navigation – eventually led to an imbalance, or ‘asymmetry’ between different parts of the globe.” (p. 385)

And finally, Braudel examines the cities, where a critical mass of people, money, and opportunity created powerful financial and mercantile empires. The rich got much richer, and resentment arose among the rest of the people, no longer content with the Church’s support of wealth and power, and its casual command that people should accept their station in life, because that is where god put them.

In the financial sphere, the towns organized taxation, finances, public credit, customs and excise. They invented public loans...One after another, they reinvented gold money, following Genoa which may have minted the genovino as early as the late twelfth century. They organized industry and the guilds; they invented long-distance trade, bills of exchange, the first forms of trading companies and accountancy. They also quickly became the scene of class struggles. For if the towns were ‘communities’ as has been said, there were also ‘societies’ in the modern sense of the word, with their tensions and civil struggles: nobles against bourgeois; poor against rich (‘thin people’ popolo magro against ‘fat people’ popolo grosso). The struggles in Florence were already more deeply akin to those of the industrial early nineteenth century than to the faction-fights of ancient Rome. (p. 512)

This book is a remarkable achievement, well deserving its status as a classic work of social and economic history. The breadth of Braudel’s scholarship is amazing, as is his ability to connect data to make a larger point or provide insight into people’s daily lives. He often assumes considerable knowledge on the part of the reader, however; for instance, when he writes “Bramante, who pulled down the old quarter round St Peter’s in Rome (1506-14), was one of Baron Haussmann’s first predecessors in history,” he expects the reader to already know who Haussmann was. This book isn’t something to read quickly, but it is so full of enlightening history that it well repays the effort. ...more

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Apr 29, 2020 Todd Stockslager rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history

Review title: Everyday people

History is often told as accounts of the "great men" or "great moments" which end up in the classroom and in the national consciousness. Braudel takes a different path: he tells the history of everyday people and everyday life in the 15th to 18th centuries, in this first of a three-volume survey history. Volume II (subtitled The Wheels of Commerce) covers more traditional national economic history of the period, and Volume III (subtitled The Perspective of the World) ...more

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Oct 07, 2009 Kater Cheek rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: didn-t-finish

Those who think about the apocalypse, and wonder if it will happen to us, should read this book and be reminded that great tragedies are the norm, rather than the exception for most of human history.

I'm going to start a review of this book even though I'm not done with it, because I think I may not finish it. It's a little on the pedantic side, with the author using academese and endeavoring to prove the merits of his methodology even at the cost of readability. It has illustrations, which are n Those who think about the apocalypse, and wonder if it will happen to us, should read this book and be reminded that great tragedies are the norm, rather than the exception for most of human history.

I'm going to start a review of this book even though I'm not done with it, because I think I may not finish it. It's a little on the pedantic side, with the author using academese and endeavoring to prove the merits of his methodology even at the cost of readability. It has illustrations, which are nice.

For a writer, this is a good sort of book to read if one is writing about anything pre-industrial. The omnipresences of famine, plague, and wars slips our mind when we are fortunate enough to be healthy, fat, and safe. For those prone to depression, it's a bit hard to read of the endless misery and brutality of most of human existence.

Update: nearly two weeks later, and I'm still reading it. This is why I hate research. I really do. Because you read books that are informative but BORING. BORING. BORING. Really, I get that he's done a gazillion hours of research, but did he have to put everything in? And it's so Eurocentric that even I'm a little offended. I'm still learning interesting facts, like that Europe seemed to be the only place where people ruthlessly followed clothing fashions, but I'm also learning boring and useless things, like how many quintals of wheat a horse could thresh as opposed to a pair of oxen.

Don't know if I'm going to finish it or not. I feel like I've got sunk costs now, but damn, it's boring. Why oh why can't historians write well? Do they really think we're going to be impressed by big words and lots of details? Do they really think that convoluted sentence structure makes us think they're smarter? The writer is trying to cover four centuries of life, all over the world, but he skips Africa and Australia almost entirely, dwells on France overmuch, and tends to throw everything together with such poor organization that it's hard to tell which fact relates to which century.

After this I'm going to have to read some YA to cleanse my palette. ...more

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Apr 28, 2012 Nova rated it it was amazing

What is up with the French since the end of World War II? They are producing first rate minds of a caliber unmatched by any other Western country.

I had never heard of the author until he was recommended to me and now, after I finish Vol II and III, I am going to look for other authors from the same school of analysis. Books like this I judge by how many times I have stopped reading and thought about what was on the page I had just digested. It happened frequently during this book. Well written, ...more

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Aug 18, 2007 Sean Sullivan rated it liked it

Shelves: economics, politics, worldhistory

The first volume of Braudel’s massive work on the construction of capitalism in the 15th to 18th century sets the stage for all that is to come. It is an exhaustive survey of the social and economics conditions in Europe and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the world at the beginning of the 15th century.

The amount of primary research that went into this is mind boggling. Everything you ever wanted to know about how much livestock the average farmer in Batvia had to what were the trends in fashio ...more

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Jun 05, 2018 Aaron Gertler rated it it was amazing

I can't possibly top this review from Reddit. Read it.

If the review sounds interesting, the book will be interesting; if not, not. I'm the sort of person who will happily read 20 pages about how much better bread has gotten since the 17th century, so... yes, I'm a fan of The Structures of Everyday Life, as well as Braudel's whole thing.

(I suppose it's good to know about kings and battles, but most of human history, measured in "total moments of human experience", has been about things like "ma ...more

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May 15, 2020 Gib rated it it was amazing

Ahhh!

So that's why we're the way we are! And for topical entertainment, check over the section on pandemics. ...more

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Jun 24, 2012 Jonathan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history

This, the first volume of Braudel's magnum opus, is a wide-ranging world tour of everyday life and it's varied conditions in the pre-industrial world. So much ink has been spilled on the Annales School of history that I feel that I have little to add on that, but Braudel is a pleasure to read, and doing so makes me wish that I had a better memory to keep track the endlessly fascinating facts and anecdotes that inhabit every page. One should also note that reading such a long work is not the chor ...more

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Apr 16, 2015 Sunny rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

Not a bad book. Too detailed for me though overall and I must admit that I had to skip it in places. The book is about the way in which Europe predominantly segued into the 19th century and it covers the 15th – 18th centuries and all the fascinating things that happened. It juxtaposes developments in Europe against what happened in the Islamic world, china and India most of the time. The book has some really random chapters in it. It covered: populations around the world, development of food, th ...more

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Jun 05, 2016 Rebecca rated it really liked it

Shelves: history

Incredibly broad and dense look at elements of daily life around the world, including housing, food, money, clothes, transportation, and more. Exhaustively researched, and very insightful. His points tend to get away from him though. It's less of a problem in the middle, but in the chapters on population and later on cities, he gets lost in his own argument and then just hares off on random points before dropping the entire line of inquiry. Also, weighted very heavily towards European history. B ...more

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Feb 17, 2013 Becky added it

Shelves: unfinished

Abandoned. A fascinating, if dense book, but I was concerned that I was filling my head with dated and wrong ideas and nothing to counter them. Unfortunately writing grand unifying accounts of history is out of vogue unless you're Jared Diamond... and probably for a reason. ...more

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Feb 26, 2008 Avis Black rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 4-stars, economics

He doesn't get 5 stars because of the torturous prose (it must be nasty to read in French), but this is a simply brilliant book. ...more

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Sep 24, 2012 Carl Johnson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: economics

This book, the first of three volumes, reset my level of expectations for history books when the English translation came out in 1979.

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May 25, 2019 Peter Harrison rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history, economics

The foundation layer for Braudel's trilogy this book is interesting for it's focus on the base level of life. Energy use, transport, cereal crops, patterns of travel and settlement, and so on during the period for the 15th and 18th centuries, and therefore the lead up to the development of capitalism and the modern age.

This makes the basis for an interesting read, in particular in the chapters on cereal cultivation and the difference imposed by the differing needs of a wheat-based or rice-based ...more

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Oct 21, 2019 Zo rated it it was amazing

This is close to a perfect work of history. Every page overflows with interesting and new-feeling material/insights/perspectives. I don't think the book really has an overall narrative or argument (though at times he does draw broader conclusions), but it doesn't need one. It is an astounding work of documentation, and brings world after world to life in ways that make me want to read and learn more about all of them, while also doing a good job of gesturing at standing historical questions rega ...more

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Jul 20, 2019 Josh Katzenmeyer rated it really liked it

This reads like a history textbook reborn as a fever dream. It's unlikely that anyone would walk away from this and retain more than half of the information, but I imagine with each new visit readers will walk away with something they'd never mulled over too seriously: the importance of the German stove and its history, French doctors who claim to cure syphilis with fire, women from the middle ages boasting about their dirty feet, a king's wine freezing at the pour, the outstanding leisure of ow ...more

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Jul 05, 2017 Patrick rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history, educational, self-organization

Longer review to come after I finish parts II and III. So far, though, I feel comfortable saying that this is one of the most eye-opening and awe-inspiring works of history I've ever read, one of the few that really impresses me with the sheer size of the past, while maintaining readable and pleasant prose throughout. Braudel is a master of giving details on details which slowly cohere into some kind of pattern, and then pulling back to give a smart, crisp conclusion which makes that pattern com ...more

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Jan 03, 2021 Tyler rated it really liked it

Shelves: no-ebook

This book is not for everyone. Basically a huge pile of details, collected from (it seems) research, paintings, and speculation of the author. Mostly centered on Europe and especially France, with occasional nods to China and India. Despite the seemingly haphazard coverage, many of said details are quite fascinating and, as noted by the author, not the sort of thing that tend to get much coverage in typical history books - what did people wear? What did they eat? What did their houses look like? ...more

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Jul 06, 2020 Ann Evans rated it it was amazing

If you are interested in history, but tired of all the kings, queens, and generals, this book will intrigue you. It is about the Common [Wo]Man. Braudel did his research in the halls of records, not the palaces. What did people eat? What work did they do? What changed their lives? What were their rituals, clothes, and habits? The breadth of research is astonishing and I discovered, after learning all that, that people five hundred years ago were pretty much like me—a reassuring discovery.

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Sep 20, 2019 Erik Wirfs-Brock rated it really liked it

Just a vast mass of interesting facts about everyday life during the indicated. Kind of overwhelming, took me forever to read. Thesis in this first volume seems kind of weak, but it's more fun to read then his great volume on the history of the Mediterranean. ...more

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Jun 16, 2018 Erika Schelby rated it really liked it

Essential: This is a book to read over and over. It is a reference text,
showing the amazing connections and mutual learning processes
going on in our world.

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Jul 15, 2018 Justin rated it it was amazing

Foundational text of the Annales school of historiography. Indispensable.

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Fernand Braudel

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Fernand Braudel was a French historian and a leader of the Annales School. His scholarship focused on three main projects: The Mediterranean (1923–49, then 1949–66), Civilization and Capitalism (1955–79), and the unfinished Identity of France (1970–85). His reputation stems in part from his writings, but even more from his success in making the Annales School the most important engine of historica ...more