The term ''new history'', from the French term ''nouvelle histoire'', was coined by
Jacques Le Goff
Jacques Le Goff (1 January 1924 – 1 April 2014) was a French historian and prolific author specializing in the Middle Ages, particularly the 12th and 13th centuries.
Le Goff championed the Annales School movement, which emphasizes long-term t ...
and
Pierre Nora
Pierre Nora (born 17 November 1931) is a French historian elected to the Académie française on 7 June 2001. He is known for his work on French identity and memory. His name is associated with the study of new history. He is the brother of t ...
, leaders of the third generation of the
''Annales'' school, in the 1970s. The movement can be associated with
cultural history
Cultural history combines the approaches of anthropology and history to examine popular cultural traditions and cultural interpretations of historical experience. It examines the records and narrative descriptions of past matter, encompassing the ...
, history of representations, and ''
histoire des mentalités''. The new history movement's inclusive definition of the proper matter of historical study has also given it the label ''total history''. The movement was contrasted with the traditional ways of writing history which focused on
politics
Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...
and "
great men". The new history rejected any insistence on composing
historical narrative; an over-emphasis on
administrative documents as basic source materials; concern with individuals' motivations and intentions as explanatory factors for historical events; and the old belief in
objectivity.
The approach was rejected by
Marxist historians
Marxist historiography, or historical materialist historiography, is an influential school of historiography. The chief tenets of Marxist historiography include the centrality of social class, social relations of production in class-divided so ...
because it downplayed what
Marxists
Marxism is a left-wing to far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict and a dialectic ...
believed was the central role of
class
Class or The Class may refer to:
Common uses not otherwise categorized
* Class (biology), a taxonomic rank
* Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects
* Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used differentl ...
in shaping history.
History in schools
The teaching of history in French schools was influenced by the ''nouvelle histoire'', as disseminated in the 1960s and 1970s by ' and ''Enseignement 70'' and other journals for teachers. Also influential was the
Institut national de recherche et de documentation pédagogique. Joseph Leif, the inspector-general of teacher training, said pupils should learn about historians' approaches as well as facts and dates. Louis François, dean of the history/geography group in the Inspectorate of National Education, advised teachers to provide historic documents and promote "active methods", which would give pupils "the immense happiness of discovery".
Proponents said it was a reaction against the
memorization of names and dates that characterized traditional teaching and left bored students. Traditionalists protested loudly that it was a
postmodern innovation that threatened to leave the youth ignorant of French patriotism and national identity.
Germany
The ''nouvelle histoire'' became controversial after 1945 in
German historiography The historiography of Germany deals with the manner in which historians have depicted, analyzed and debated the history of Germany. It also covers the popular memory of critical historical events, ideas and leaders, as well as the depiction of thos ...
, where it especially influenced
medieval studies
Medieval studies is the academic interdisciplinary study of the Middle Ages.
Institutional development
The term 'medieval studies' began to be adopted by academics in the opening decades of the twentieth century, initially in the titles of books ...
. However most German historians considered the approach too
positivistic
Positivism is an empiricist philosophical theory that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positive—meaning ''a posteriori'' facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience.John J. Macionis, Linda M. G ...
for their taste, and not
philosophical
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
enough.
See also
*
Historiography
Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians ha ...
*
Social history
Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in his ...
References
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{{Annales School
Historical schools
Historiography