ABSTRACT
The sociological holism of Durkheim and the historical synthesis of Henri Berr have left deep marks on the face of historical science. In challenging the individualistic determinism of certain historians, in shaking off the yoke of metaphysics, they forced history's way into the family of the social sciences and humanities, although this process had begun in the last third of the 19th century. With the founding of the Annales d'histoire économique et sociale in 1929, Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch in effect signed the birth certificate of this new, multidisciplinary history. The Durkheimian school was disintegrating: its founder was dead, and many of its promising collaborators had been lost in the Great War. Synthesis had been rendered obsolete by the advance of the social sciences that were rapidly asserting themselves. And so began the era of specialization, which, within a few decades, would lead to the fragmentation of the social sciences.
