Annales School : also known as "La nouvelle histoire" is associated with a historical revolution in how history was perceived and recorded by French historians that began around 1929.

Peter Burke, author of The French Historical Revolution, summarizes the ideas of the Annales school as:

1. substitution of problem-oriented analytical hi story for a traditional narrative of events

2. the history of the whole range of human activities in the place of a mainly political history

3. creating a collaboration with the other disciplines: with geography, sociology, psychology, economics, linguistics, social anthropology, and so on...

Burke also states that the movement had three distinctive phases. The first was during the 1920s to 1945, and was described as "small, radical and subversive, fighting a guerrilla action against tr aditional history, political history, and the history of events." The second, after WWII, was more like the "school" described, with distinctive concepts such as "structure and conjoncture" and distinctive methods such as serial history of changes over the long term. This second phase was dominated by the historian Fernand Braudel. And the third movement began in 1968 and was "marked by fragmentation." There was a definite breakdown of the unified thought of the previous phase. Some turned from socio-e conomic to socio-cultural history while others are reinterpreting the importance of political history. --Kendra Beasley

Sources: Burke, Peter. The French Historical Revolution: The Annales School, 1929-89, Stanford, CA.: Stadford University Press, 1990.