Annales school

The founders of the French Annales School of history, Lucien Febvre (1878–1956) and Marc Bloch (1886–1944), as well as its most prominent late-20th-century member, Fernand Braudel (1902–1985), were all heavily influenced by geography, both in their formative education and in their subsequent historical research. Febvre and Bloch were students of the French geographer Vidal de la Blache at the École Normale Supérieur, and Braudel fully absorbed the founders’ enthusiasm for la tradition vidalienne (Vidalian tradition).

Specifically, Annalistes took from Vidal the notion that geographical landscapes are the result of human and natural processes in mutual adaptation, both historically and in the present. The constraints and opportunities provided by the environing natural environment thus play a crucial role in terms of the manner in which humans materially ...