BRAUDEL, MEXICO, AND GRAND STRATEGY - The Revenge of Geography - page 231

BRAUDEL, MEXICO, AND GRAND STRATEGY
The late Oxford historian Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote in 1972 that no group of scholars had
a more “fertilizing effect” on the study of history than the so-called Annales group, founded
in 1929 by Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch, and named for the Paris periodical in which they
frequently published: Annales d'Histoire Economique et Sociale . Foremost among these
Frenchmen was Fernand Braudel. In 1949, Braudel published The Mediterranean and the
Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II , a work that broke new ground in historic-
al writing by its emphasis on geography, demography, materialism, and the environment. 1
Braudel brought nature itself into a work of history, thereby immeasurably enriching the dis-
cipline, as well as helping to restore geography to its proper place in academia. His massive
two-volume effort is particularly impressive because he wrote much of it while a prisoner
of the Germans during World War II. In Braudel's vast tapestry of a narrative, permanent
and unchanging environmental forces lead to enduring historical trends that go on for many
decades and centuries, so that the kinds of political events and regional wars with which we
concern ourselves seem almost preordained, if not mere minutiae. It was Braudel who helps
us understand how the rich forest soils of northern Europe, which required little to make an
individual peasant productive, led ultimately to freer and more dynamic societies compared
to those along the Mediterranean, where poorer, more precarious soils meant there was a
requirement for irrigation that led, in turn, to oligarchies. Such poverty-stricken soils, com-
bined with an uncertain, drought-afflicted climate, spurred the Greeks and Romans in search
of conquest. 2 In short, we delude ourselves in believing that we are completely in control of
our destinies; rather, Braudel leads us to the attendant realization that the more we are aware
of our limits, the more power we have to affect outcomes within them.