FERNAND BRAUDEL

The Mediterranean and the Mediter W orld in the Age ofPhilip II

Preface to the First Edition

1949

Fernand Braudel ( 1902-1985) is probably the most celebrated French historian of the second half of the twentieth century and cer­tainly the best known outside France. He carne to history relatively late, however, his work and career interrupted by World War II. While confined as a prisoner of war in Germany from 1940 to 1945, he wrote, without books or notes, entirely from memory, the book that made his reputation overnight: La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen a l'époque de Philippe 11 (The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age ofPhilip /!), which he defended as a thesis in 1947 and published in 1949· This was an abundant worly the book of a lifetime, and it would undergo severa/ revisions and amplifications. Thirty years later, it was followed by the three volumes of Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme ( 1979), and then by an unfinished, posthumously published three­volume worly L'Identité de la France ( 1986). Braudel's work was thus at once massive and highly concentrated, but it was only one aspect of a lije devoted to inspiring and managing the scientific work of others. As Lucien Febvre's successor as both the editor of Annales and chairman of the Sixth Section of the Eco/e Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Braudel reigned over much of French social science in the 1950s, 196os, and 1970s. He also headed a powerful international network of collaborating scholars, as]. H. Hexter notes in his article, "Fernand Braudel and the Monde Braudellien . . ." (see pp. 355-366).

Here, then, are the first and most famous pages ofThe Mediterra­nean. The book deals with the history of a geographic region, a sea,

From The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip Il, by Sian Reynolds (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), pp. 17-22. First published lA Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen a l'époque de Philippe II (París: Armand lin, 1949), pp. ix-xv.

NG MODELS ANO RESEARCH AGENDAS [ 83 ] co)IPt:TI

~untries along its coast, during the second half of the six­IJ th century. Yet the ambition behind it was far more vast. This lte:riment in geohistory grew in both time and space. Braudel aimed e~othing less than a total history of the Mediterranean basin, rang­~~ Jrom its incredibly varied geography to its multiple trade links, '';;;al structures, and patterns of waifare and diplomacy. The au­~or's model for historical study proved enduringly injluential, even though hardly anyone tried to imitate his scope of analysis: the funda­mentals oftopography, climate, and long-term population trends pro­vided the basis for the history of enduring economic and social pat­JtmS. Braudel did not ignore political history or even particular battles, but they definitely carne last and were by implication only explicable in terms of larger, more lasting injluences.

The book a !so had another goal, namely, to explore the complexity of social time in terms of a hierarchy of three time frames: the deep, almos! static, history of the environment, the overlapping cycles of the economy, and the quick time of events, which for Braudel was of little concern.

1 have loved the Mediterranean with a passion, no doubt because 1 am a northerner like so many others in whose footsteps I have fol­lowed. 1 have joyfully dedicated long years of study to it-much

more than all my youth. In return, 1 hope that a little of this joy and a great deal of Mediterranean sunlight will shine from the pages of this book. Ideally, perhaps one should, like the novelist, have one's subject under control, never losing it from sight and constantly aware of its overpowering presence. Fortunately or unfortunately, the historian has n~t ~he novelist's freedom. The reader who approaches this book in the 5~1rlt I would wish will do well to bring with him his own memories, hts own vision of the Mediterranean to add color to the text and to help rn . . e conJure up this vast presence, as 1 ha ve done m y best todo. M y feeling ~s that the sea itself, the one we see and love, is the greatest document of ttshpast existence. If 1 ha ve retained nothing else from the geographers w 0 taught me at the Sorbonne, 1 have retained this lesson with an un~av~ring conviction that has guided me throughout my project.

t rrught be thought that the connections between history and geo­!rap~ic space would be better illustrated by a more straightforward ex­t~p e than the Mediterranean, particular! y since in the sixteenth century pie sea Was such a vast expanse in relation to man. lts character is com­rn ex, awkward, and unique. lt cannot be contained within our measure­bie~ts and classifications. No simple biography beginning with date of

rt can be written of this sea; no simple narrative of how things hap-

_(_8_4 __ 1 ________ s_o_c_r_A_L __ H_r_sT __ O_R_Y_A __ N_D_G __ L_O_B_A_L_H __ rs_T_O __ R_Y_(~r~9~45_ 1 pened would be appropriate to its historyo The Mediterran o . l o o 1 ean 15 ~v1enda sz~g e sea, 1t 1s a comp ex of seas; and these seas are broken IS an s, mterrupted by pemnsulas, ringed by intricate coastl" o ¡· k d h 1 d o Ineso lts IS m e to t e an , 1ts poetry more than half-rural, its sailors peasant with the seasons; it is the sea of vineyards and olive tre:a~ much as the sea of the long-oared galleys and the roundship f chants, and its history can no more be separated from that of :ho surrounding it thaon ~~e clay can be separ;ted fr~~ the handseof potter who shapes 1t. Lauso la maree tente n terro ( Praise the stay on land"), says a Proven~al proverbo sea

So it will be no easy task to discover exactly what the historical ter of the Mediterranean has beeno lt will require much patienc different approaches, and no doubt a few unavoidable errorso e, could be clearer than the Mediterranean defined by oceanographe

o ~ og1st, or even geographer. Its boundaries have been charted and labeledo But what of the Mediterranean of the historia;? no lack of authoritative statements asto what it is notolt is notan mous world; nor is it the preserve of any one power. Woe betide historian who thinks that this preliminary interrogation is un that the Mediterranean as an entity needs no definition because it long been clearly defined, is instantly recognizable and can be by dividing general history along the lines of its geographical What possible value could these contours ha ve for our studies?

But how could one write any history of the sea, e ven over a only fifty years, if one stopped at one end with the Pillars of and at the other with the straits at whose entrance ancient Ilium stood guard? The question of boundaries is the first to be from it, all others flowo To draw a boundary around anything is to fine, analyze, and reconstruct it, in this case to select, indeed philosophy of historyo

!o assist me, I did indeed have at my disposal a prodigious artJcles, papers, books, publications, surveys, sorne purely historical, ers no less interesting, written by specialists in neighboring disci ~nthropologists, geographers, botanists, geologists, technologistso 1s surely no region on this earth as well documented and written as t?e Mediterranean and the lands illuminated by its glowo But, say 1t, at the risk of seeming ungrateful to m y predecessors, that this of publications buries the researcher, as it were, under a rain of many of these studies speak a language of the past, outdated in w~ys tha~ oneo Their concern is not the sea in all its complexity but m mute ptece of the mosaic-not the grand movement ofMedo life, but the actions of a few princes and rich m en, the trivia of the bearing little relation to the slow and powerful march of history

EfJ NG MODELS ANO RESEARCH AGENDAS [ Bs l subjecto So many of these works need to be revised, related to the

l before they can come to life againo .rb.f:;n, roo, no history of the sea can be written without precise knowl­cd ofthe vast resources of its ~rc~i~eso He~e th~ task would appear to lletyond the power~ of an mdividual htstonano There is not one

eenth-century Medlterranean state that does not possess its charter siJt rn usually well furnished with those documents that ha ve escaped : f¡;es, sieges, and disasters of eve~y kind known to the Mediterranean 1r0rldo To prospect and catalog thts unsuspected store, these mines of lht purest historical gold,. wo_uld take not one lifetime but at Ieast twenty, or the simultaneous dediCatwn of twenty researcherso Perhaps the day tril1 come when we shall no longer be working on the great sites of )listory with the methods of small craftsmeno Perhaps on that da y it will IJecome possible to write general history from original documents and Jll)l from more or less secondary workso Need I confess that I ha ve not been able to examine all the documents available to me in the archives, aomatter how hard I triedo This book is the result of a necessarily incom­plete studyo I know in advance that its conclusions will be examined, discussed, and replaced by others, and I a m glad of ito That is how history progresses and must progresso

Another point is that by its inauspicious chronological position, be­tween the last flames of the Renaissance and Reformation and the harsh mward-looking age of the seventeenth century, the Mediterranean i~ tbe second ?alf of the sixteenth century might well be described, as it ~by Lucten Febvre, as a ''faux beau sujeto" Need I point out where lts mterest lies? It is of no small value to know what became of the Mediterranean at the threshold of modern times, when the world no longer revolved entirely around it, served it, and responded to its ~ythmso The rapid decline of the Mediterranean about which people d ve always talked does not seem at all clear to me; rather, all the evi­~~~e ose~ms to P?int to the contraryo But even leaving this question

' 1t IS my behef that all the problems posed by the Mediterranean are of ex · 1 h o h h · bis o ceptwna uman nc ness, t at they must therefore mterest all to iwna~s and nonhistorianso I would go so far asto say that they serve lQ h ummate our own century, that they are not lacking in that "utility"

~ J0stnctosense which Nietzsche demanded of all historyo

0rr not mtend to say much about the attraction and the temptations •rered b h o

tep o Y suc a subJeCto I have already mentioned the difficulties, de-.... : b~ns, and Jures it holds in storeo I would add Jo ust this that among ~ ... sttng ho o o ' ance A. otstoncal works, I found none whtch could offer general guid-but · historical study centered on a stretch of water has all the charms s~ndoubtedly all the dangers of a new departure.

Ince th 1 h 01 o e sea es were so eavt y wetghted on both sides, was I right in ·

[ 86 ] SOCIAL HISTORY AND GLOBAL HI STO RY (1945- 1 G MODELS AND RESEARCH AGENDAS ( 87 ] cO~pETIN ~-----------------------------------------------

the end to come clown on the side of the unknown, to cast ~e guided by their experience, go to their aid, and be active aside and decide that the adventure was worthwhile? theJr a Vl~~aign for a new kind of history, rethought, elaborated in

M y excuse is the story of how this book was written. When 1 in th;e c:ut worthy of being voiced ~eyond her f~o~~i~rs; an imperiali~t in 1923, it was in the classic and certainly more prudent form of a fran es if one insists, aware of 1ts own posstbihttes and of what 1t of Philip Il's Mediterranean policy. My teachers of those days historyd~ b~t also desirous, since it had been obliged to break with them, approved of it. For them, it fitted into the pattern of that hadhto t ;ing traditional forms-not always entirely justifiably perhaps,

f of s at e . f . d history which was indifferent to the discoveries o geography, little 1 that pass. The perfect opportumty was offered me o takmg a -cerned (as diplomacy itself so often is) with economic and social but ete of the very dimensions, demands, difficulties, and pitfalls of the

w~g . d lems; slightly disdainful toward the achievements of civilization, . historical character 1 had already chosen, m or er to create a unJque

gion, and also of literature and the arts, the great witnesses of h' ry that could be different from the history our masters taught us. ¡sto . worthwhile history; shuttered up in its chosen area, this school To its author, every work seems revolutwnary, the result of a struggle itas beneath a historian's dignity to look beyond the diploma tic files, for mastery. lf the ~editerranean has done no m?re than force us out of real life, fertile and promising. An analysis of the policy of the P our old habits, it wtll already ha ve done us a servtce.. _ _ King entailed above all establishing the respective roles played in This book is divided into three parts, each of whtch ts 1tself an essay elaboration of that policy by the king and his counselors, through in general explanation. . _ . ing circumstances; determining who played major roles and who The first part is devoted toa htstory whose passage IS almost tmper-reconstructing a model of Spanish foreign policy in whi~h the ceptible, that of man in his relationship to the environment, a history in ranean was only one sector and not always the most important. which all change is slow, a history of constant repetition, ever-recurring

For in the 158os the might ofSpain turned toward the Atlantic. It cycles. 1 could not neglect this almost timeless history, the story of man's out there, whether conscious or not of the dangers involved, that contact with the inanimate, neither could 1 be satisfied with the tradi-empire of Philip 11 had to concentrare its forces and fight for its tional geographical introduction to history that often figures to little pur-ened existence. A powerful swing of the pendulum carried it toward pose at the beginning of so many books, with its descriptions of the transatlantic destiny. When 1 became interested in this hidden mineral deposits, types of agriculture, and typical flora, briefly listed and of forces, the physics of Spanish policy, preferring research in this never mentioned again, as if the flowers did not come back every spring, tion to labeling the responsibilities of a Philip II ora Don John of the flocks of sheep migrate every year, or the ships sail on a real sea that and when 1 carne to think, moreover, that these statesmen were, changes with the seasons. their illusions, more acted upon than actors, 1 was already beginning On a different level from the first there can be distinguished another move outside the traditional bounds of diplomatic history; when 1 history, this time with slow but perceptible rhythms. lf the expression to ask myself finally whether the Mediterranean did not possess, had not been di verted from its full meaning, one could call it "social the long-distance and irregular actions ofSpain (a rather arid topic history," the history of groups and groupings. How did these swelling from the dramatic confrontation at Lepanto), a history and a destiny currents affect Mediterranean life in general-this was the question 1 its own, a powerful vitality, and whether this vitality did not in asked myself in the second part of the book, studying in turn economic deserve something better than the role of a picturesque background, systems, states, societies, civilizations, and, finally, in order to convey was already succumbing to the temptation of the immense subject lllore clearly my conception ofhistory, attempting to show how all these was finally to hold my attention. deep-seated forces were at work in the complex arena of warfare.

How could 1 fail to see it? How could 1 move from one set of archivCS For war, as we know, is not an arena governed purely by individual to another in search of sorne revealing document without having fllJ responsibilities. eyes opened to this rich and active life? Confronted with records of~ Lastly, the third part gives a hearing to traditional history-history, many basic economic activities, how could 1 do other than turn wwar

0 ~ne might say, on the scale not of man but of individual men, what Paul

that economic and social history of a revolutionary kind that a srna acombe and Fran<;ois Simiand called "l'histoire événementielle" that is, group of historians was trying to promote in France to the dignity thal the history of events-surface disturbances, crests of foam that the tides was no longer denied it in Germany, England, the U nited S tates, all ~f histo~y carry on their strong backs. A history of brief, rapid, nervous indeed in Belgium, our neighbor, or Poland? To attempt to encornpasS Uctuations, by definition ultrasensitive; the least tremor sets all its an-the history of the Mediterranean in its complex totality was to fo_Jl_o~ .... __ te_n_nae quivering. But as such, it is the most exciting of all, the richest in

( 88 ) SOCIAL HISTORY AND GLOBAL HISTORY (1945 _1

human interest, and also the most dangerous. We must learn to this history with its still-burning passions, as it was felt, described lived by contemporaries whose lives were as short and as short ' as ours. lt has the dimensions of their anger, dreams, or illusions 1 sixteenth century, after the true Renaissance, carne the · ·

11

the poor, the humble, eager to write, to talk of themselves and of This precious mass of paper distorts, filling up the lost hours and ing a false importance. The historian who takes a seat in Phi!' c~air a~d reads his papers finds himself tr~nsported .into a strang~p dtmenswnal world, a world of strong passwns certamly, blind lik other living world, our own included, and unconscious of the e realities of history, of the running waters on which our frail barks tossed like cockleshells. A dangerous world, but one whose spells enchantments we shall ha ve exorcised by making sure first to chart underlying currents, often noiseless, whose direction can only be cerned by watching them over long periods of time. Resounding are often only momentary outbursts, surface manifestations of larger movements and explicable only in terms of them.

The final effect then is to dissect history into various planes, or, to it another way, to divide historical time into geographical time, time, and individual time. Or, alternatively, to divide man into a tude of selves. This is perhaps what 1 shall be least forgiven, even ifl in my defense that traditional divisions also cut across living which is fundamentally one, even ifl argue, against Leopold von or Karl Brandi, that the historical narrative is not a method, or even objective method par excellence, but quite simply a philosophy o like any other; even ifl say, and demonstrate hereafter, that these 1 ha ve distinguished are only means of exposition, that 1 have felt it in order in the course of the book to move from one level to another. 1 do not intend to plead my case further. lfl am criticized for the in which the book has been assembled, 1 hope the component parts be found workmanlike by professional standards.

I hope too that 1 shall not be reproached for my excessive ambit. for my desire and need to see on a grand scale. It will perhaps prove history can do more than study walled gardens. lf it were otherwise, would surely be failing in one of its most immediate tasks, which be to relate to the painful problems of our times and to maintain with the youthful but imperialistic human sciences. Can there be study of humanity, in 1946, without historians who are ambitious, scious of their duties and of their immense powers? "lt is the fear great history which has killed great history," wrote Edmond Faral, 1942. May it live again!

'fhe Annales and Postw~r programs for Systematlc

Research

Annales (I929-I939) sought to promote coll~bo~ative The prewa~ ction on various historical tapies. An artzcle zn the research an rejie . or enquete served asan invitation to collab-.r-m ifa questzonnazre, ' . . h . Jv• · ··. 0 At Marc Bloch's initiative, various themes zn agrarz~n ~story ora~o~ ifinition of types of nobility thus appeared as en<:luetes zn the or t e t When this format was revived in the I950S, zts focus was Journa. d d there was an an·ay ofnew resources to draw upon. The ~~=~: ::re now supported by a research i.nstitution, the Centre de Recherches Historiques of the Ecole Pratzque des Hautes Etudes (Sixth Section). Research was also organiz~d, ~ot only at the E_cole but in the Centre National de Recherche Sczentifique and the u~wer­sities New technologies were available to research tear:zs. !h.zs ~a~ the g~lden age of collaborative research, of programmatzc, dzscdelzn;l historical labor, which enjoyed a substantial budg_et, a c~nst ra e aruJ replenishable worliforce of students ~nd techmc~l asszstants, a~: often the intellectual authority of leadzng names tn !he_fi.eld. T

. . . .+ · l d d other quantztatzve sources, systemattc exploztatzon o1 sena ata an . soon enhanced by the use of computers, proved remarkably effectzve in a variety of areas, as we shall see. Th~ enquete was a way of deji.ning new subjects and trying out worktng hypotheses.

The very different research programs outlined in the three ex~erpts h

. . .+ h if · ·ries suggested zn the t at follow gwe sorne zdea o1 t e range o znquz . pages of the postwar Annales. Roland Barthes, soon to be ~n znterna­tionally renowned cultural critic, demonstrates the early mf!uence of semiotics (the analysis of cultural objects as systems _of szgns~ and structuralism in his tantalizing piece on the psychosoctal "!eanzng of food. Franrois Billacois lays out a program for systemattc res~arc~ into crime and criminality, a topic that would attract many hzs:orz­ans' attention in the 197os. Jacques Le Goff ~hows th_at me~ze~al spiritual trends could be subjected to systematzc analysts by lznktng the placement of mendicant orders to the growth of tow~s. Although collaborative research was carried out in organized semznars and re-