Bloch defends in this booklet the these that history is a science, albeit with its own methodology and with the limited expectations that you may impose on all human sciences. A somewhat ambiguous position this is, in the then (mid-20th century) still furious discussion with positivism. The booklet contains many valuable insights, but the meandering style makes the reading (in French) not easy; in defense of Bloch: he wrote this in captivity in 1942-43, without access to a library. To reread.

Although I did not find this book particularly inspiring, Bloch's classic is a must-read for any historian.

* Book about the Cromwellian protectorate
* The failure, succes and the contradiction of it
* Failure of the western design. Capture of Hispaniola did not happen but Jamica did
* Shock Cromwells belief in providence being with him and England
* Failures: western design, military generals ruling trial of Quaker James nayler. No successor
* Other failures: not constitution/ parliament kept failing due to its radicals and disagreements
* Regime proper up by support of army.
* After crowmwells death army underpaid and could not keep power by itself so Monck recalled Parliament and disbanded the rump Parliament
* Protectorate was based on the rule of one man Cromwell
* He believed in religious feeling and was a mediator in one sense between the radicals and the conservatives when he died no hope of the protectorate surviving

Figura no melhor que me já chegou às mãos.

I hated this book when I was first assigned to read it in graduate school, and I still hate it today. It is poorly written, meandering nonsense masquerading as deep thoughts. Don’t waste your time. Avoid at all costs.

The Historian’s Craft is written in a conversational style that defies easy analysis. If I reread the text repeatedly, I think I would find more and more nuggets helpful in pursuing historical inquiry. Overall, it was not an easy read but insightful adding a practical lens to the historical field. It could be said this book is the intellectual beginning of the transition from ‘Great Man’ into 'Social History'...although I am a novice. That said, if you are a practitioner of the historical craft, Bloch is essential reading in the historiography of history.

Marc Bloch, as a graduate student, volunteered for the French infantry at the start of WWI. Rising to the rank of captain, he fought at the Meuse, Somme, and Marne and was wounded twice. This experience shaped his understanding of how history was taught and what history was.

Following the war, Bloch rejected the standard historical approach. He rejected the ‘cult of facts’ that formed the traditional political and biographical historical approach. Instead, Bloch sought the intersection of sociology and history, a comparative study of history that broke national barriers and included the human element, as one of the originals in the Annales school. At 53 and a renowned academic historian, he volunteered to fight for France again at the dawn of WWII. Bloch witnessed the changing pace of warfare, detailing his experience in Strange Defeat. And when France collapsed, he turned to the French Resistance. Marc Bloch was captured in March and executed in June 1944.

The Historian’s Craft was written in 1941-1942 and was published after his death in 1949. It opens with the question, “What is the use of history?” If society is held together by beliefs and customs, as much as economic interests, then the past determines the behavior and structure of society. People also seek a connection with the past to understand their place in the societal order. This is especially true when they seek to change their position in that order. Bloch also acknowledges history’s entertainment and motive value but asserts the discipline must “prove its legitimacy as a form of knowledge.” It is not about what you know but what you understand.

The Historian’s Craft challenges the traditional role of chance, the individual, prediction, and determinate or causal facts. Bloch sees two historical schools, one that took history as a science – thus discarding human interaction that strayed from logical comprehension. The other viewed history as an aesthetic play that judged the morality of the past. He took umbrage with both. Bloch described history as the connections between disciplines. “Each science, taken by itself, represents but a fragment of the universal march towards knowledge…it is indispensable to see their connection” to the individual. The focus of history is the human element in time and space.

Bloch might also be called a presentist bent on understanding the present through the past. Tradition, he maintains, is doing things as they have always been done, a driver of the present. “Misunderstanding the present is the inevitable consequence of ignorance of the past.” While challenging history’s academic tradition, Bloch seeks to elevate the field. He asks us for grace. “History is not yet what it ought to be. That is no reason to make history…the scapegoat for the sins which belong to bad history alone.” The historian deals with a motion picture where the current frame is clear, but the images become increasingly blurry as you go backward. Because historical evidence is nearly infinite, part of the historians’ craft is to develop theories to explain what they know.

The historian must contend with the confused memory of the past, practice doubt and judgment, and use a logical approach to inquiry. Evidence may support multiple conclusions. You only see what you see…and thus, probability is the realm of the historian. The historian must verify their findings and describe the rationale for their assumptions. All accounts are questionable! Bloch also sought historical impartiality and wanted to leave judgment on the cutting room floor. Historical judgment is presentism, judging the past by the standard of the day. Finally, he believed history can be known, even if only particular. A people might have a way of handling their tools as evidenced by wear marks, or a piece could be inscribed on a wall glorifying a leader. In either case, the evidence is particular to who used or wrote it. It is not a fact for the ages but a piece of a puzzle.

Bloch saw history as an evolving pursuit. “It is only by this plasticity that history can hope to adapt its classifications…[to] reality…the ultimate aim of any science.” His aim, however, was not an answer to an equation but to enlighten us. “When all is said and done, a single word, “understanding,” is the beacon light of our studies.”

Bloch, a French economic historian and WWI veteran, wrote this unfinished treatise while serving in the French resistance during WWII. He was executed in 1944 by the Nazis. Excellent place to start in understanding the concept of history, or the science of man, as a discipline.

Someone should write a book about people writing books away from their libraries. A passel of them owing to war, WWII in this case (and, I think, in the case of Auerbach's Mimesis); others to distance or remote location (Empson in China). There is something ballsy about saying 'here's my opus--I wrote it from memory since the Nazis blew up my books, the indigenous population cooked them in a stew, the sherpa dropped them in a crevasse...' Anyhoo. Bloch's book is a more elegant, less systematic version of David Hackett Fischer's indispensable Historians' Fallacies. There are some lovely passages here on the historical enterprise, larded with much wisdom about perspective, language, sources and so on. I do wonder how much of the style is owing to the interventions of Lucien Febvre, who rescued the manuscripts on which the text is based, or the English translator Peter Putnam. French medievalists, or just medievalists in general, ought to have a go at this, since most of Bloch's illustrative anecdotes derive from his own historiographical practice. It ends rather abruptly, and the penultimate chapter on Historical Analysis is less polished than the previous three. Nevertheless, worthwhile.

First of all, props to Marc Bloch, who wrote this book essentially from memory while hiding from the Nazis who eventually captured, tortured and killed him. The intellectual capacity to write cogently and compellingly – and the focus to do so while fearing for his life as a Jewish freedom fighter in occupied France – is inspiring, if not intimidating.

The product is a work of remarkable clarity, given its subject, which is basically how history gets written. That's not the most captivating subject, and the result is not the most captivating book – but it's much less dry than you'd expect.

OK, so that's not a ringing endorsement. And basically, at this point, the only reason you're reading this book is you are really invested in historiography (the study of the study of history, an unarguably inward-focused occupation), or you have, like me, been assigned this as part of a graduate course in the subject.

Bloch was an incredibly influential historian before his career was interrupted – and, alas, ended – by World War II. He cofounded Annales, a French historical journal that pushed the field away from the scientific positivism of the 19th and early 20th centuries and more toward using the methods of the social sciences and other fields to tell the stories of those less fortunate than the "great men" on which historians had typically focused before then.

In The Historian's Craft, Bloch lays out a precise, sometimes astonishingly so, overview of how historians work. He's less interested in laying out a philosophy of history than a practice of it, so he spends his time delving into questions of epistemology, critical thinking, comparison and analysis – advocating for greater transparency, understanding and clarity from his colleagues. To Bloch's credit, the book provides ample doses of all three.

Muy interesante.

Há muitos diferentes tipos de sentimentos após a leitura desta complexíssima obra. Antes de mais, para contexto, Marc Bloch, o autor, foi assassinado antes de encerrar definitivamente o seu estudo e a sua obra. Tal levou a que, inicialmente, Lucien Febvre publicasse o trabalho de Bloch, tendo o problema de, por um lado, não ter o texto integral e, por outro lado, ter feito modificações. Foi, então, Étienne Bloch, filho de M.Bloch, a publicar o texto integral.
Ora, foi este contexto, totalmente inserido no livro, que tornou a minha experiência com a obra bastante complicada - não tenho, contudo, nada a apontar a Marc Bloch. Enquanto lia a sua parte da obra, entendi a generalidade das suas ideias, os seus exemplos (sempre muito bem fundamentados) e a sua instrução naquilo que é, grosso modo, a historiografia. Enquanto aspirante a historiador, só me resta elogios e admiração a Bloch.
O problema no livro passa mesmo pela minha edição. Aconselho a quem comprar o livro para, caso se queira focar únicamente no texto de Bloch, a não comprar a obra com a edição das «Publicações Europa-América», pois grande parte do livro acaba por se basear na evolução dos manuscritos propriamente ditos, o que acaba por desmotivar o leitor, pelo menos com base na minha experiência. Estou certo de que, caso não fosse pelo mérito e trabalho de Bloch, esta obra seria cotada ainda com menos pontuação.
Não obstante, há que destacar o facto de esta ter sido a primeira obra que li enquanto estudante de História, o que lhe confere, a título pessoal, um certo apreço.

Deze Nederlandse editie van Marc Bloch’s Apologie pour l’Histoire is uitzonderlijk, vooral omdat het een grondig aangepaste teksteditie is, voorzien van een degelijke inleiding en begeleid door een notenapparaat dat onduidelijkheden toelicht en stellingen van Bloch in zijn context zet en met bibliografische verwijzingen ondersteunt; tenslotte zijn ook nog aanvullende teksten van Lucien Febvre en Bloch zelf toegevoegd.
Ik was enkele maanden geleden al eens begonnen aan een oude Franse editie, maar kreeg me er niet doorheen geworsteld. Dat heeft alles te maken met het onvoltooide karakter van de tekst (Bloch werd door de Nazi’s geëxecuteerd in 1944 terwijl het boek nog niet af was), maar ook met Bloch’s nogal redeneerstijl, voortdurend slingerend tussen algemene stellingen en concrete voorbeelden, zonder veel systematiek.
In de Nederlandse vertaling en met de begeleidende noten kwam de tekst veel beter tot zijn recht. Een dikke pluim dus voor vertaalster en tekstbezorger Marleen Wessel.
Inhoudelijk heeft de tekst van Bloch niet zo erg veel te bieden: het is – zoals de titel zegt – inderdaad een pleidooi voor geschiedschrijving als métier, als ambacht, met zijn sterke en zijn zwakke kanten. Dit lijkt te suggereren dat Bloch geschiedschrijving helemaal niet als wetenschap zag, maar dat is een brug te ver, Bloch raakt die problematiek wel aan maar blijft eerder vaag. Hij voert in elk geval aan dat geschiedschrijving een heel jong vak is dat nog volop in ontwikkeling is en bovendien handelt in de moeilijkste materie die maar denkbaar is, namelijk het menselijke handelen.
Dit boek is door het martelaarschap van Bloch omgeven met een aureool van heiligheid onder historici; voor mij stelde het toch wel wat teleur.