The Revival of Narrative: Reflections on a New Old History ...

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THE REVIVAL OF NARRATIVE 7was preceded by Malinowski's Scientific <strong>The</strong>ory <strong>of</strong> CultureY5had along run, despite its failure to <strong>of</strong>fer an explanation <strong>of</strong> change over timeand the obvious fact that the fit between the material and biologicalneeds <strong>of</strong> a society and the institutions and values by which it lives hasalways been less than perfect, and <strong>of</strong>ten very poor indeed. Bothstructuralism and functionalism have provided valuable insights, butneither has come even near to supplying historians with an allembracingscientific explanation <strong>of</strong> historical change.All the three main groups <strong>of</strong> "scientific historians", which flourishedrespectively from the 1930s until the 1950s~ the 1950s to mid-1970s~ and in the 1960s and early I ~ ~ Owere S , supremely confidentthat the major problems <strong>of</strong> historical explanation were soluble, andthat they would, given time, succeed in solving them. Cast-iron solutionswould, they assumed, eventually be provided for such hithertobaffling questions as the causes <strong>of</strong> "great~revolutions" or the shiftsfrom feudalism to capitalism, and from traditional to modernsocieties. This heady optimism, which was so apparent from the I 930sto the I 960s~was buttressed among the first two groups <strong>of</strong> "scientifichistorians" by the belief that material conditions such as changes inthe relationship between population and food supply, changes in themeans <strong>of</strong> production and class conflict, were the driving forces inhistory. Many, but not all, regarded intellectual, cultural, religious,psychological, legal, even political, developments as mere epiphenomena.Since economic and/or demographic determinism largelydictated the content <strong>of</strong> the new genre <strong>of</strong> historical research, theanalytic rather than the narrative mode was best suited to organizeand present the data, and the data themselves had as far as possible tobe quantitative in nature.<strong>The</strong> French historians, who in the I 950s and I 960s were in the leadin this brave enterprise, developed a standard hierarchical arrangement:first, both in place and in order <strong>of</strong> importance, came theeconomic and demographic facts; then the social structure; and lastly,intellectual, religious, cultural and political developments. <strong>The</strong>sethree tiers were thought <strong>of</strong> like the storeys <strong>of</strong> a house: each rests on thefoundation <strong>of</strong> the one below, but those above can have little or noreciprocal effect on those underneath. In some hands the new methodologyand new questions produced results which were little short <strong>of</strong>sensational. <strong>The</strong> first books <strong>of</strong> Fernand Braudel, Pierre Goubert andEmmanuel Le Roy Ladurie will rank among the greatest historicalwritings <strong>of</strong> any time and place.6 <strong>The</strong>y alone fully justify the adoptionfor a generation <strong>of</strong> the analytical and structural approach.5 Bronislaw Malinowski, A Scientific <strong>The</strong>ory <strong>of</strong>culrure, andorher Essays (ChapelHill, N.C., 1944).6 F. Braudel, La Midirerranee er le monde midirerranien a l'epoque de Philippe II(Paris, 1949);P. Goubert, Beauvais er le Beauvaisis de 1600 a 1730 (Paris, 1960);E. Le Roy Ladurie, Les paysans du Languedoc (Paris, 1966).
8 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 85<strong>The</strong> conclusion, however, was historical revisionism with a vengeance.Since only the first tier really mattered, and since the subjectmatterwas the material conditions <strong>of</strong> the masses, not the culture <strong>of</strong> theClite, it became possible to talk about the history <strong>of</strong> ContinentalEurope from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries as "l'histoireimmobile". Le Roy Ladurie argued that nothing, absolutely nothing,changed over those five centuries, since the society remained obstinatelyimprisoned in its traditional and unaltered "kco-dkmographie".'In this new model <strong>of</strong> history such movements as the Renaissance,the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the rise <strong>of</strong> the modernstate simply disappeared. Ignored were the massive transformations <strong>of</strong>culture, art, architecture, literature, religion, education, science, law,constitution, state-building, bureaucracy, military organization, fiscalarrangements, and so on, which took place among the higher echelons<strong>of</strong> society in those five centuries. This curious blindness was the result<strong>of</strong> a firm belief that these matters were all parts <strong>of</strong> the third tier, a meresuperficial superstructure. When, recently, some scholars from thisschool began to use their well-tried statistical methods on suchproblems as literacy, the contents <strong>of</strong> libraries and the rise and fall <strong>of</strong>Christian piety, they described their activities as the application <strong>of</strong>quantification to "le troisikme niveau".<strong>The</strong> first cause <strong>of</strong> the current revival <strong>of</strong> narrative is a widespreaddisillusionment with the economic determinist model <strong>of</strong> historicalexplanation and this three-tiered hierarchical arrangement to which itgave rise. <strong>The</strong> split between social history on the one hand and intellectualhistory on the other has had the most unfortunate consequences.Both have become isolated, inward-looking, and narrow. InAmerica intellectual history, which had once been the flagship <strong>of</strong> thepr<strong>of</strong>ession, fell upon hard times and for a while lost confidence initself;" social history has flourished as never before, but its pride in itsisolated achievements was but the harbinger <strong>of</strong> an eventual decline invitality, when faith in purely economic and social explanations beganto ebb. <strong>The</strong> historical record has now obliged many <strong>of</strong> us to admit thatthere is an extraordinarily complex two-way flow <strong>of</strong> interactionsbetween facts <strong>of</strong> population, food supply, climate, bullion supply,prices, on the one hand, and values, ideas and customs on the other.Along with social relationships <strong>of</strong> status or class, they form a singleweb <strong>of</strong> meaning.7 E. Le Roy Ladurie, "L'histoire immobile", in his Le rerriroire de I'hisrorien, 2vols. (Paris, 1973-a), ii; the article was written in 1973.8 R. Darnton, "Intellectual and Cultural History", in M. Karnrnen (ed.), Hisrory inOur Time (forthcoming Ithaca, N.Y., 1980).
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