"Braudel's writing also sought to confront the inability of even the greatest historians to predict what would happen next. In this light, his pessimism about human time and human stories can be hard to face. When I teach the Annales school to undergraduates, I read them the most famous line from The Mediterranean: 'When I think of the individual I am always inclined to see him imprisoned within a destiny in which he himself has little hand.' Students always want to argue with this–and I'd be concerned if they didn't. This reminds me how difficult it is to accept Braudel's profound disbelief in human agency. His philosophy of history is one we would rather leave behind in the past, even as the evidence for it continues to pile up."
At the London Review of Books, Erin Maglaque looks at a new translation of Ferdinand Braudel's Out of Italy.
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