Braudel's Conception of TIME

The writing of history all depends on how the historian will be able to explain and recreate the past. Amongst the past philosophers that I am able to do readings on, Braudel might as well be of those who sparked my interest. History writing as we know is not just about narration or recreation of the past but it has always had an overtone underlying those events. There must be in one way or another reason for an event to happen. When we mean history writing, one of the more familiar schools was the Annales School, which was founded in 1929 by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, where Braudel based his principles.


His essay On History is his take on the Annales School having the imprint of structuralism. For Braudel, history is not just the retelling of the before and the after of an event but also the understanding of the nature of society by carefully examining its structure. When we say structure what he means is the stretches of time that the event has happened and with all its institutions, culture and practices. He tried to examine the development of the society that does not occur at a steady rate but rather in a span of time -- the span of time that can be short or can last for centuries or even thousands of years. These have something to do with three principal time span of historical analysis.


The first of this time span is the history of the event. By this, we mean the events that have happened over a very short period of time. This span of time usually focuses on the events that however short has caused such an effect on the society like the Great Wars, events in politics, and also the study of the individuals who were a\major players in this events. It focuses on the major events that we can actually write a narrative on because it has a beginning, middle and an end. What makes this sort of history interesting is that even if it is short, there’s a dramatic twist to it. There are personalities who evolved out of those events. There’s a particular change that has happened over a very short span of time. Historians usually consider this as traditional history and that it may be from five to seven years or as short as one year.


The second time span would have to be that of the conjuncture. The conjuncture on the other hand is an intermediate time span. It runs around 20 or 50 years and might as well be cyclical because it studies the normal cycles. Economic history, the history of technology can be considered as a part of this life span. There are certain aspects of the society that happens on a cycle. If we are going to study it, an event has happened before. It followed a certain age. We might include the history of science and talk about the age of Galilee, Newton and Einstein. They are all in a conjunctural level in that one follows the other. So in a sense, conjuncture is much deeper than history of the event because it attempts to explain the mind frame of hwy those things happen.


The third one is history and the longue duree or long duration is the longest because it is measured in centuries or even thousands of years. This is the deepest and the most profound. Because the time span is some 100 – 500 years, the longue duree covers even the history of civilizations itself, the geographical history of a nation, the wars and how they relate to one another as sort of a wave of conflicts. The changes may be slow or gradual but there is unity in some way. The pace being so slow that it covers an immense stretch of time and space. But there’s a sense of richness studying these events. It focuses not just on the event by itself but rather the thematic approach to it. The transformation is slow but the collective thought is there.



Now, the three time spans basically differs but they are still about the study of the humanity and of how mankind stepped up and change over time or became stagnant in some way. There is what Braudel calls a structure that is a pattern of relationships between man and the institutions and entities. There’s a particular behavior for a specific time frame. And from these behaviors we can make a model of these structures. Braudel was also able to mention three relatively rigorous uses of language for the recreation of the past. These he calls the language of necessary facts where there is a model, contingent facts where there is some sort of a hypothesis and no exceptions and the last being the language of conditioned facts where there is a theoretical model of strategies and outcomes.

The three time span is an obvious showing that history can happen at different rhythms or different pace. We may have different approach to the study of history but as always we talk about the event, the people, and the relationship of these events to us and how it has affected our lives. Lucien Febvre said to have repeated and I quote “History, science of the past, science of the present.” I would have to quip that this explains Braudel. History no matter how short or how long is the time span that has happened is still history. It covers all the ages and the entire time span and along with it the story of humanity. The story of all our struggles, all our victories and how each one of us was able to survive the change.

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Sources:

Braudel, F. (1982). On history. (S. Matthews, Trans.).

University of Chicago. (Original work published 1969).

Staloff, D. (1995). The search for a meaningful past philosophies, theories and interpretations.

NY: The Teaching Co.

Annales School. Retrieved October 14 2008 from http://www.wikipedia.com/ Annales