Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T03:59:00.886Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Chronological Depths and the Longue Durée

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2017

Christian Lamouroux
Christian Lamouroux*
Affiliation:
EHESS – UMR 8173
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This short contribution seeks to place David Armitage and Jo Guldi’s article within a broader historiographical context, enlarged to include the history of China. From the outset, Fernand Braudel was careful to link his vision of the longue durée with the new “area studies” exploring international cultures. By studying social and economic history and more generally by using approaches drawn from the social sciences, European and American specialists of China have deconstructed the overly longue durée of Chinese history and shed light on its dynamism, previously repressed and concealed by the notion of a so-called “civilization.” This process facilitated a successful specialization, which can today be supported by the “big data” being compiled in circles close to the two authors.

Type
Debating the Longue Durée
Information
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales - English Edition , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , June 2015 , pp. 285 - 291
Copyright
Copyright © Les Éditions de l’EHESS 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Palmer, Robert Roswell, “A Century of French History in America,” French Historical Studies 14, no. 2 (1985): 160–75, here pp. 173–74 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, cited in Armitage, David and Guldi, Jo, “The Return of the Longue Durée: An Anglo-American Perspective,” Annales HSS (English Edition) 70, no. 2 (2015): 219–47 Google Scholar here, pp. 225–26.

2. Armitage and Guldi, “The Return of the Longue Durée,” 227.

3. Aymard, Maurice, “La longue durée aujourd’hui. Bilan d’un demi-siècle (1958–2008),” in Curto, Diogo Ramada, Dursteller, Eric R., Kirshner, Julius, and Trivellato, Francesca, eds., From Florence to the Mediterranean and Beyond: Essays in Honour of Anthony Molho, 2 vols. (L. S. Olschki: Florence, 2009), 2:559–80 Google Scholar; here pp. 559–60. Cited in Armitage and Guldi, “The Return of the Longue Durée,” 223.

4. Cited by Maurice Freedman in the introduction to his translation of Granet, Marcel, The Religion of the Chinese People (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975), 29 Google Scholar.

5. Aymard, Maurice, “Étienne Balazs et Fernand Braudel,” in Actualité d’Étienne Balazs, 1905–1963. Témoignages et réflexions pour un centenaire, ed. Will, Pierre-Étienne and Ang, Isabelle (Paris: Collège de France, Institut des hautes études chinoises, 2010), 37–65, here p. 37Google Scholar.

6. Ibid., 57.

7. Will, Pierre-Étienne, “Un cycle hydraulique en Chine: la province du Hubei du XVIeau XIXe siècle,” Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 68 (1980): 261–87 Google Scholar; Will, , “State Intervention in the Administration of a Hydraulic Infrastructure: The Example of Hubei Province in Late Imperial Times,” in The Scope of State Power in China, ed. Schram, Stuart R. (London/Hong Kong: SOAS/Chinese University Press, 1985), 295–347 Google Scholar.

8. Pommeranz, Kenneth, The Making of a Hinterland: State, Society, and Economy in Inland North China, 1853–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

9. von Glahn, Richard, The Country of Streams and Grottoes: Expansion, Settlement, and the Civilizing of the Sichuan Frontier in Song Times (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

10. Smith, Paul J., Taxing Heaven’s Storehouse: Horses, Bureaucrats, and the Destruction of the Sichuan Tea Industry, 1074–1224 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

11. Smith, , “Commerce, Agriculture, and Core Formation in the Upper Yangzi, 2 A.D. to 1948,” Late Imperial China 9, no. 1 (1988): 1–78 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. Yoshinobu, Shiba, Commerce and Society in Sung China, trans. Elvin, Mark (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1970)Google Scholar.

13. Chaffee, John W., The Thorny Gates of Learning in Sung China: A Social History of Examinations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)Google Scholar.

14. Mostern, Ruth, “Dividing the Realm in Order to Govern”: The Spatial Organization of the Song State, 960–1276 CE (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2011)Google Scholar.

15. Weerdt, Hilde De, Information, Territory and Elite Networks: The Crisis and Maintenance of Empire in Song China (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, forthcomingGoogle Scholar).

16. The website for the European project based in Leiden can be found at http://www.chinese-empires.eu/. It is important to note that the international coordination of programs between the consortium participants has also allowed a team, based at Beijing University and directed by Professors Deng Xiaonan (Beijing), Cao Jiaqi (Guangzhou), and Hirata Shigeki (Osaka), to publish two volumes dedicated to the circulation of information within the bureaucracy during the Tang and Song dynasties: Wenshu, zhen-gling, xinxi goutong. Yi tang-song shiqi wei zhu (Beijing: Beijing University Press, 2012).