Beschreibung:
How are we to account for the birth of the 'Annales' school at the turn of the thirties? How did it come to influence firstly certain circles of social scientists and secondly French historians? The originality of the 'Annales' school and perhaps the main reason for its effectiveness- stems not from its programme but from its strategic character : 1) to create a rallying point for the social sciences in place of the declining Durkheimian school and the school of geography ; 2) to legitimize history in the eyes of the social sciences and to win for it a kind of leadership. Marc Bloch's and Lucien Febvre's project was inspired by a rather technocratic conception of the relations between science and society typical of the so-called 'spirit of the thirties'.