The Annales School: Post-War Institutionalization and the Braudelian Synthesis

The Second World War catastrophically interrupted the linear development of the Annales paradigm. Marc Bloch, having documented the French collapse in L'Étrange Défaite, was forced into retirement under anti-Semitic laws and joined the Resistance. During this period, he authored his methodological testament, The Historian's Craft. Meanwhile, Lucien Febvre single-handedly steered the Annales journal in Paris. Following liberation and Bloch's execution, Febvre emerged as the sole architect of the school's future.

Febvre ascended to the pinnacle of the French academic system, tasked with reforming the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE). In 1947, he became president of its new Sixth Section, dedicated to integrating the social sciences. This allowed him to realize the 1920s vision of a powerful research center embedded within a social science institute. Febvre, supported by Fernand Braudel, Charles Morazé, and Robert Mandrou, became the key figure in institutionalizing the Annales paradigm, transforming a heretical movement into an established orthodoxy between 1945 and his death in 1956.

This institutional success was fueled by France's post-war political climate. The national narrative shifted toward self-liberation, emphasizing the internal Resistance. As France's global political power waned, it launched a cultural-scientific offensive, capitalizing on Cold War dynamics and American fears of communist influence. The Fourth Republic and later de Gaulle's Fifth Republic leveraged this to make Paris a global laboratory for social thought on decolonization, ideological competition, and consumer society.

American philanthropy, notably from the Ford Foundation, helped finance the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (MSH). Under Clemens Heller, the MSH operated as an agile partner to the Sixth Section (later the EHESS), funding international scholars and projects. Under one strategic roof, the EHESS and MSH merged French academic rigor with a global network, meticulously curated under Braudel's patronage even before he formally succeeded Febvre in all his roles in 1956.

Fernand Braudel's worldwide prestige was built on his monumental 1949 work, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. Written partly in a German POW camp, it introduced his seminal tripartite temporal scheme: the nearly immobile longue durée of geography, the cyclical rhythms of social and economic conjonctures, and the superficial histoire événementielle of political events. His work argued that structures like economic systems and states, moving at the pace of generations, were the true engines of history.

Braudel's contemporary, the economic historian Ernest Labrousse, focused on long-run economic cycles of prices and wages. More connected to the traditional Sorbonne, Labrousse was less dismissive of short-term history. His disciple, Michel Vovelle, would later bridge social and political history through the history of mentalities during the French Revolution. Despite differences, Braudel and Labrousse collaborated on a definitive six-volume social and economic history of France (1970-1982).

The 1960s Annales, under Braudel's direction, prioritized social structures and economic cycles. Research ideals turned toward quantification and serial history (histoire sérielle), utilizing early computers. Braudel's school worked to map France's economic regions and establish a framework of global economic zones (économies-monde). This culminated in Braudel's three-volume Civilization and Capitalism, an ambitious application of Annales methodology to world history, directly influencing Immanuel Wallerstein's world-systems theory.

Under Braudel, the Sixth Section and Annales became more hierarchical, coordinating large collective research projects. This period also saw a complex interplay between the Annales and Marxism. Figures within the school, like Guy Bois and Pierre Vilar, identified as Marxists. Braudel acknowledged intellectual debts to Marx regarding early capitalist development but criticized Marxist historiography for its economic determinism and dogmatic handling of historical causation, positioning the Annales approach as a more nuanced structural alternative.