The aim of this book is to analyze, to describe and to evaluate the achievement of the Annales School, a journal of historical studies founded in 1929 in France. The journal was founded in order to promote a new kind of history the substitution of a problem-oriented analytical history for a traditional narrative of events, and the history of the whole range of human activities in place of a mainly political history.

This critical text describes, analyzes, and evaluates the acheivements of the Annales School, combining chronological and thematic approaches. The author distinguishes three generations in the history of the Annales movement. In the first phase, from the 1920's to 1945, the movement was small, radical, and substantive, fighting a guerrilla action against traditional political history and the history of events. Its leaders, and the founders of Annales, were Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch. After the Second World War, the movement's rebels took over the historical establishment. During this second phase, which lasted untill about 1968, the movement was most nearly a school, with distinctive concepts and mehods, and was presided over by the towering figure of Fernand Braudel. The third phase of the movement was marked by fragmentation.

彼得•伯剋（Peter Burke），英國曆史學傢，當代著名新文化史傢。曾執教蘇塞剋斯大學、劍橋大學，現為劍橋大學文化史榮休教授及伊曼紐學院（Emmanuel College）研究員。研究專長為西方史學思想和歐洲文化史。著作宏富，包括《圖像證史》《語言的文化史——近代早期歐洲的語言和共同體》《曆史寫作的新視野》《20世紀的曆史與曆史學傢》《什麼是文化史》《文化史的風景》《意大利文藝復興》等數十種，作品被翻譯成三十多種文字齣版。

譯者：

劉永華，廈門大學曆史係教授。主要從事明清以降社會文化史、社會經濟史、當代西方史學理論等方麵的研究。著有Confucian Rituals and Chinese Villagers: Ritual Change and Social Transformation in a Southeastern Chinese Community, 1368-1949等書。