ABSTRACT
Braudel’s inaugural lecture at the Colle`ge de France in 1950 links anxiety and history. History (it says) depends on material social conditions. It is the ‘‘child of its time’’: if it produces anxiety [inquie´tude], it’s ‘the very anxiety which weighs on our own hearts and minds’. Braudel is reflecting on a century already ‘too rich in catastrophes’, that has both invalidated and transformed the traditional methods and aims of history. The events of the previous four decades have been particularly cruel, hurtling us towards the common destiny of human beings, hence towards the crucial problems of history. If only to remain alert, historians ‘had constantly to draw on the suffering and flagrant insecurity of human beings’. History is no longer a calm, reassuring enterprise. It leaves us uncertain about how to define its scope. The idea of the ‘solid ground of history’, to which both Ranke and Goethe subscribed, seems utterly alien. After all, Braudel asks: ‘why should the fragile art of writing history escape the general crisis of our epoch?’ (Braudel 1984: 15-17, 19). However, Braudel doesn’t see apprehension as endemic in history.
It can be remedied: the scope of hitherto traditional history just needs broadening. The alarming complexity of human experience is better managed by extending historical interests to include economics, institutions, social architecture, civilizations, and the various different locations and time-scales they imply (Braudel 1984: 23ff.). But the remedy defeats itself. Enlarging the scope of history only
