§-Quick questions
NSWHistory ExtensionConstructing History
Quick questions on The Annales school for HSC History Extension
7short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is widening the evidence?Show answer
Because the Annales asked new questions, it admitted new evidence. Parish registers, price series, harvest records, maps, climate data, wills, folk customs and material objects all became sources. Later Annales historians such as Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, whose Montaillou (1975) reconstructed a medieval Pyrenean village from inquisition records, and the quantitative and cultural historians of the third generation (Jacques Le Goff, and later Roger Chartier), pushed this further. The price was real: critics argued that the longue duree drained human agency from history and that mentalities risked speculation, and the school itself later turned back toward narrative and culture.
What is using this in an answer?Show answer
Use the Annales as your prime case of method following questions. The argument to make is that by asking about structures and mentalities rather than events and statesmen, the school redefined what counted as evidence and even relegated the political narrative that empiricism took to be history itself. Set Braudel's foam-on-the-waves against Ranke's archive to show two incompatible answers to the same key question of how history is constructed, then judge what each gains and loses.
What is always carry a dated, named anchor?Show answer
Replace "the Annales widened the evidence" with "Bloch and Febvre founded the journal Annales d'histoire economique et sociale in 1929" or "Braudel's The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (1949) divided time into three tiers."
What is use Braudel's image as your bridge to the key question?Show answer
"Foam on the waves" is a vivid, examinable phrase that lets you argue directly that a change in questions (about structure, not just events) produced a change in method and evidence, which is the core of Constructing History.
What is q1?Show answer
Identify the founders of the Annales school and the year its journal was founded. [3 marks]
What is q2?Show answer
Explain how Braudel's three tiers of time reordered the weight given to political events. [6 marks]
What is q3?Show answer
Analyse how the Annales school's concepts of total history, mentalities and the longue duree redefined what counts as historical evidence. [8 marks]
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