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The Historian's Craft

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Historian Marc Bloch was Jewish. Under normal conditions this would not be a problem. But Bloch lived in France when World War II started; when the Nazis invaded and began to round up every Jew they could get their hands on. After refusing to leave France, Bloch joined the French Resistance to drive the occupiers out of the country. The Germans eventually captured Bloch and after a lengthy detention that involved torture, executed him. Bloch was a well known historian who wrote several studies on French medievalism, most notably `La Societe Feodale.' His importance, other than this book, revolves around his association with the Annales School of historical inquiry, a school that also included historians Lucien Febvre and Fernand Braudel. `The Historian's Craft,' written while Bloch was imprisoned and never completed, has become a staple in the study of history since its publication.

`The Historian's Craft' transcends any specific field of historical study. This is not an examination of French medievalism or Russia in the 19th century; it is not about the history of the American West or African slavery. Instead, the author looks at the techniques of historical inquiry. He tries to help the beginning researcher and writer of history develop a mindset of questions and tactics that would be helpful in studying the past. Any history student who reads this book at first does not understand why the book is such a big deal. `I know all of this already,' is probably a common response to Bloch's book. Then you realize that the reason you know this is due to the importance of what the author wrote. You absorbed it from professors who learned it from reading this book.

This French historian deals with a massive amount of information useful to the budding historian. Sections on perspective, sources, statistics, criticism, and analysis contain page after page of wise, insightful information. When discussing fraud and error in historical sources, for example, Bloch points out how historians too often accept at face value government documents or legal sources. Any student of history worth his salt should always question his sources not only to discover their veracity but also to uncover possible motivations for falsehood when the document turns out to be a forgery. If this sounds like detective work, it is. One of the most important things a historian will ever do is work out every angle in his research. This is not always possible, of course, but the best historians generally tend to be the ones who ask the most nuanced questions about their sources.

The most serious drawback to this book is the uneven translation. Some sections are the height of clarity; others are cloudy and nearly unreadable. The best example of haziness is in the part about statistical study. I strongly feel that the translator did not understand what the author attempted to say in the original French. I reread this part at least twice and still am not sure what it meant. It is time for a new translation. A lesser problem concerns Bloch's citations of French historians. If you have never heard of Thiers, Mabillon, or Fustel de Coulanges, you should probably look them up in an online encyclopedia and read about them. These arcane references are certainly not the fault of Bloch; he is only citing historians he was familiar with in the course of his own work. For American students, some of these guys are extremely obscure.

This book, despite the limitations placed upon it by a poor translation, is an absolute must read for serious students of history. At the very least, one must recognize this man's name so that they do not look like an ... when it comes up in conversation. Bloch has performed a great service to the study of history, and he richly deserves his position in posterity.

Any book that ends with an ellipsis is frustrating, but this little gem by Marc Bloch, one of the 20th century's great historians before his tragic death at the hands of the Nazis in 1944, is a wonderful explanation of history as a social science and scholarly pursuit. Even in its unfinished form, "The Historian's Craft" provides useful working definitions of history as an academic subject, and some of the general guidelines that should be adhered to by historians. Rather than being a dry, jargon-filled text, the writing style here is very readable and engaging - thus, even though professional historians or history students would be the most interested in its content, it can be read and enjoyed by non-historians (for whom I believe Bloch intended it to a certain extent). This book should definitely top the reading list of any college student even thinking of majoring in history.

Regretably unfinished, The Historian's Craft attempts to show the importance of historical study. It addresses issues ranging from the reasons for historical study to the problems encountered by historians in analysing evidence left by the past. It considers historical criticism and revisionism, showing the reader what types of revisionism is acceptable and what types are to be feared. Bloch died before completing the work, and the missing chapters on the causes of history and applying historical lessons to the future are greatly missed. The text is very readable, with many anecdotes to drive a point home. The lack of footnotes is due to his untimely death, but the purity of his vision and clarity of his logic eliminate the need for full documentation.

To Marc Blanc, the craft of history is an endeavor not to be taken lightly. It is far from a trivial indulgence of human curiosity but a serious science, in fact, "the most difficult of all the sciences." The Historian's Craft is Bloch's portrait of the paragon of history as well as a road map for striving toward that ideal.

Before buying or reading this work, the reader should be aware of three of its unusual aspects. First, by virtue of tragic circumstances, the book is in unfinished form. Bloch, a renowned scholar who was active in the French resistance, was captured by the Nazis and eventually executed, leaving only approximately two thirds of the envisaged work complete. Second, as a result of his fate, the written chapters published in this book did not undergo the polishing they certainly would have received before publication. As a result, the work is uneven and the last finished chapter in particular ("Historical Analysis") is difficult to follow in parts, ponderous in its structure and language and largely lacks the clarity and smoothness of earlier chapters. Finally, the book contains many references to, from the layman's perspective, relatively obscure contemporary and historical French academics. To the eye and ear of the amateur, these allusions disrupt the cadence of the book and diminish the power of its logic.

With those disclaimers in place, there are many fascinating and enjoyable components to the book. First and foremost, suffused throughout is Bloch's passion for the practice of history. Yet his passion is not the naïve infatuation of youth but rather a mature expression grounded in the sober responsibility and extreme difficulties inherent in the craft. For Bloch, history is to be written, "with integrity, with truth, with the utmost penetration into its hidden causes, and thus, with difficulty." As it is "the science of men in time," history therefore requires an understanding of the dizzying number of varied forces that interact with, impact and respond to the mind of man. Thus, the ideal historian is a polymath steeped in linguistics, psychology, archeology, sociology, geography, biology, economics, and other fields that collectively are the tools of understanding. Furthermore, he should have the skill to communicate this understanding with the "great delicacy of language and precise verbal shadings (that) are necessary" to convey his subject accurately. Bloch understands that this ideal is not to be found in one person but leaves the clear impression that his had been a life devoted to its pursuit.

His writings on Evidence, The Transmission of Evidence and Historical Criticism are lucid, practical field guides replete with examples from Bloch's scholarly pursuits. In discussing historical evidence, he details in interesting fashion the growing recognition of the importance of "unintentional" evidence relative to narrative sources written for posterity. His writing on the collection or transmission of historical evidence is notable for its counter-intuitive discussion of the unexpected boon to historical preservation provided by cataclysms. While acknowledging the terrible loss to posterity from many disasters, he notes that, "the peaceable continuity of social existence is much less favorable to the transmission of memory than is sometimes supposed." Calamities disrupt plans of privacy and, in extreme cases such as the eruption of Vesuvius, preserve the ancient from typical destruction at the hands of progress. Historical Criticism, which may be summarized as the effort to discern truth from falsehood through systematic, rational analysis issuing forth from a predisposition to doubt, is treated in fascinating detail. Systematic fraud, unintentional error and societal predispositions and prejudices are sources of falsehood that Bloch illustrates with the skill of a detective.

This is not a work without flaws, but its strengths carry the day for any reader with an interest in the field of history. Perhaps the best summation of this book is given voice by Bloch's own tragically ironic words, set down in his Introduction in relation to the state of his profession, "The incomplete, if it is perpetually straining to realize itself, is quite as enticing as the most perfect success."

This book is simply one of the finest short works on historiography. Not only does it provide a concise overview of methods, techniques, and common errors, but it also stimulates one's intellectual insight into writing about history and thinking about the world it describes.

Marc Bloc's style of writing (or the translation) is extremely complicated. At many times, I had to re-read many paragraphs two to three times, just to get a gist of what he was trying to express.

Nonetheless, Marc Bloc displays that same complexity in the ideas he wishes to express. Although he apologizes for the lack of accuracy in some of his examples, he makes no such concessions on his views. Highly authoritative on controversial topics, like evidence, forgeries, and the perennial question of "why study history?", Marc Bloc attempts to use the subject of history as a platform to discuss other social issues i.e. economics, philosophy, abeit in an indirect manner.

Also, his chapter on Nomenclature deserves a good thorough read . It's very mind boggling and incisive. Although his final chapter on Historical Analysis has been dealt with by other historians like Carr, it does convey Bloc's passion for history - a trait which will certainly rub off on any history enthusiast.

Given its linguistic style and the subject matter, The Historian's Craft is not the book you would want to take to bed with.

Marc Bloch--veteran of World Wars I and II, historian, professor, writer, French patriot--entreats us in this spare volume to maintain our objectivity, to interpret history with the skepticism of the journalist and the scientific method of the researcher. He identifies some of the pitfalls, the improperly translated idiom, the anthropomorphism of time and place, and relying too heavily on the written accounts of earlier historians, as means by which the understanding of historical events can be skewed. And history must be viewed as a continuum, a rolling cause-and-effect leading from then until now and beyond, events which seldom fit easily into our need to categorize them by fixed dates. But then, historians already know these things, so of what value is "The Historian's Craft" today?

There is a poignancy to this book that Marc Bloch may not have anticipated from his moment in time, but looking back toward the era in which he wrote, the reader can see "The Historian's Craft" as Bloch's attempt to instill order and sanity into the turbulent and almost inexplicably surreal fall of France during World War II. I interpret this book as his salve, his struggle to maintain objectivity during the madness he observed as the Nazis overwhelmed his country. Older than fifty now, having earned the right to a quiet life in academia but refusing to leave his beloved France, Block joined the Resistance, fought against the Nazis, was captured, tortured and killed. And so, "The Historian's Craft" becomes a record to help us interpret Marc Bloch's life and the era of occupied France, as well as lessons in craft from a learned man.

Bloch wrote: ...a generation represents only a relatively short phase. Longer phases are called civilizations."

In the preface, Joseph R. Strayer makes an argument for studying history by noting it is "the living connection between present and past which makes history something more than a game for dilettantes." In this book, Bloch presents the subject with a passion. On page 8 he writes "history has its peculiar aesthetic pleasures" and indeed it does. A few pages later, he describes how the process of researching and writing is as much an enjoyment as the end result by paraphrasing Peguy in saying "the good husbandman takes as much pleasure in plowing and sowing as in the harvest."
Bloch gets philosophical when he discusses the variety of sources available to a historian. He says the number is limitless, in that anything man touches, says, writes, or makes says something about him. As "art" the process of investigation undertaken by the historian says something about the observer as well as the observation, Bloch notes. This is a worthwhile read in that it helps a person reflect on how history is recorded and passed down. Bloch is to be commended for perserving his reflections on the craft that held so much excitement for him.

This book of reflections by a master historian (and victim of the Nazis, which cut short his illustrious career), is not of the same order magnitude of a philosopher-historian like R. G. Collingwood (who made use of Bloch's work on France in the medieval period), but it contains many insights and historical remarks that make it interesting and informative.

I have read and enjoyed this book for years and think you will find it well worth reading and re-reading. The following famous lines from the book illustrate the zest and love he has for the subject:

"The good historian is like the giant of the fairy tale. He knows that wherever he catches the scent of human flesh, there his quarry lies."

I have it in French, and the English translation, and highly recommend it.

It feels like a sin against personality to critique a book like Marc Bloch's "The Historian's Craft," written while he was on the run from the Gestapo, full of anxieties about his family, nation and profession, separated from the tools of his craft; and in the end unfinished because the Germans caught, tortured and murdered him. So consider this less a review than a comment inspired by a work in progress, whose progress was permanently interrupted.

Bloch writes that he and his college mates considered themselves the last of the "Dreyfus generation." In the subsequent four decades, Bloch went to war against the Germans, launched Annales with Lucien Febvre (who assembled a text for "The Historian's Craft" from Bloch's manuscripts), changing the way European historians work, went to war against the Germans and was killed. An eventful life for a scholar but not unprecedented for a French one. Schoolboys setting out in 1788 or 1829 could have looked for as tumultuous a 40 years. In this, the mindset of a French historian must be different from that of an American.

If a single word had to be found to describe Bloch's assessment of his craft, it would be unsparing. Frenchmen like to think of themselves as coolly rational, for all their reputation among the English as excitable Latins. No Frenchman was ever cooler than Marc Bloch.

To me, the most interesting chapter is the one on historical criticism, where he lists example after example of mistakes made and later found out, but the chapter on observation is similar. As a consumer of rather than a writer of history, I was less taken by the early chapters on the philosophy of history. Having read numerous inaugural addresses of presidents of the most notable historical associations, many titled "What Is History?", I conclude that history is what we make of it.

As a consumer, I cannot agree with Bloch that history should not be judgmental. Surely he is right that history writers should not work from conclusions backward. France, which never completed its revolution, is particularly rich in that sort of history, and even, for a short time, was led by a polemical liberal historian, Guizot. Bloch concludes, "In a word, in history, as elsewhere, the causes cannot be assumed. They are to be looked for."

Of course. But once found -- or thought to be found, or partially elucidated -- the causes and conclusions can usefully be judged. If they are not, then we might as well read novels.

We need always to keep in mind the opinion of Samuel Huntington, the diplomatic historian, and Marshall Sahlins, the anthropologist, that there is not a universal agreement about correct behavior. The Fifth Commandment is an aberration. And only the fool will assume that the ideas of correct behavior that he learned in his own upbringing are necessarily the best. But history does, or should, allow us to know what the choices have been, and it would then be immoral (and amoral, too) to fail to rank them.

It can be a matter of life and death. My reading of the history of Islam reveals a thousand years of military expansion, slavery, economic destruction, intellectual poverty and degradation, ending -- as far as the modern world is concerned -- in 1709, although still continuing to today against premodern people who are not as well armed. From 1709 to 1948, with the exception of occasional outbreaks like the Mahdists, Muslims lost their aggressive habits against Europeans, because they were not as well armed.

Since they have obtained modern weapons, they have resumed old ways. Bloch and Febvre popularized a history of la longue duree (its continuities). Bloch might not have agreed himself, but I consider it Blochian to dismiss fantasies that declare Islam to be a religion of peace. History says it never has been.

The Muslims themselves misunderstand their own history, even the part they have lived through. I recall an interview with a Palestinian woman who complained that the Israelis could push her around because they had tanks. Well, at times the Palestinians and their allies have had tanks. What did they do with them?

Pushed people around, until they were pushed back.