Fernand Braudel quotes

Fernand Braudel was a French historian renowned for his influential work on the Mediterranean and the Annales School. His approach emphasized the importance of long-term social, economic, and geographical factors in shaping history. He transformed the study of history by introducing new perspectives on time and structure. Here are 13 of his quotes:

Events are the ephemera of history; they pass across its stage like fireflies, hardly glimpsed before they settle back into darkness and as often as not into oblivion. Every event, however brief, has to be sure a contribution to make, lights up some dark corner or even some wide vista of history.

Fernand Braudel

Everything must be recaptured and relocated in the general framework of history, so that despite the difficulties, the fundamental paradoxes and contradictions, we may respect the unity of history which is also the unity of life.

Fernand Braudel

Happiness, whether in business or private life, leaves little trace in history.

Fernand Braudel

All history must be mobilized if one would understand the present.

Fernand Braudel

Leadership of a world-economy is an experience of power which may blind the victor to the march of history.

Fernand Braudel

The mere smell of cooking can evoke a whole civilization.

Fernand Braudel

There are always some areas world history does not reach, zones of silence and undisturbed ignorance.

Fernand Braudel

Social science virtually abhors the event. Not without reason; the short-term is the most capricious and deceptive form of time.

Fernand Braudel

The earth is, like our own skin, fated to carry the scars of ancient wounds.

Fernand Braudel

The companies only developed if the state did not intervene in the French fashion. If on the contrary a certain degree of economic freedom was the rule, capitalism moved in firmly and adapted itself to all administrative quirks and difficulties.

Fernand Braudel

India survived only by virtue of its patience, its superhuman power and its immense size. The levies it had to pay were so crushing that one catastrophic harvest was enough to unleash famines and epidemics capable of killing a million people at a time. Appalling poverty was the constant counterpart of the conquerors' opulence. (...) The Muslims (...) could not rule the country except by systematic terror. Cruelty was the norm burnings, summary executions, crucifixions or impalements, inventive tortures. Hindu temples were destroyed to make way for mosques. On occasion there were forced conversions. If ever there were an uprising, it was instantly and savagely repressed: houses were burned, the countryside was laid waste, men were slaughtered and women were taken as slaves.

Fernand Braudel