9 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
The French historical school founded by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre around the journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale — rejecting political and event history in favor of long-term structures, geography, economy, and collective mentalities.
Braudel's tripartite model of historical time: the longue durée (deep structural time — geography, climate, slow-changing social structures), conjonctures (medium-term economic and demographic cycles), and événements (short-term political events).
The Zuo Zhuan (Chronicles of Zuo) — a narrative commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals providing detailed accounts of the political and military events of the Zhou dynasty period, serving as a major source for Confucian historical ethics.
The Shujing (Classic of History) — one of the Five Confucian Classics, containing purported speeches and documents of ancient Chinese kings and ministers, providing normative models of wise rule.
Prominent figure situated within the French intellectual context. Founder of the Revue historique (1876), the first French academic history journal, which established the German-style scientific approach to history in France.
Nietzsche's second Untimely Meditation arguing that history must serve life — identifying three types of historical consciousness and warning against the paralysis of excess historical sense.
Han dynasty court historian and father of the great historian Sima Qian, who wrote the Treatise on the Six Schools of Thought — the earliest systematic overview of pre-Han philosophical schools.
American historian whose 1893 'Frontier Thesis' argued that the American frontier experience was the formative force in American democratic character — one of the most influential and most debated theses in American historiography.
American Mormon historian (1944-2021), excommunicated from the LDS Church in 1993 for his scholarly work. Known for meticulous archival research producing revisionist accounts of early Mormonism, particularly on folk magic, polygamy, and the institutional history of the Church. One of the most consequential and controversial Mormon historians.