Fernand Braudel Quotes & Sayings

The key problem is to find out why that sector of society of the past, which I would not hesitate to call capitalist, should have lived as if in a bell jar, cut off from the rest; why was it not able to expand and conquer the whole of society? ... [Why was it that] a significant rate of capital formation was possible only in certain sectors and not in the whole market economy of the time? — Fernand Braudel

When the [colonial] contact was violent, in fact, failure was more frequent than success. 'Colonialism' may have triumphed in the past: but today it is an obvious fiasco. And colonialism, typically, is the submergence of one civilisation by another. The conqured always submit to the stronger; but their submission is merely provisional when civilisations clash.
Long periods of enforced coexistence may include concessions or agreements and important, often fruitful, cultural exchange. But the process always has its limits. — Fernand Braudel

For the historian everything begins and ends with time, a mathematical, godlike
time, a notion easily mocked, time external to men, 'exogenous,' as economists
would say, pushing men, forcing them, and painting their own individual times
the same color: it is, indeed, the imperious time of the world. — Fernand Braudel

Leadership of a world-economy is an experience of power which may blind the victor to the march of history. — Fernand Braudel

All history must be mobilized if one would understand the present. — Fernand Braudel

Social science virtually abhors the event. Not without reason; the short-term is the most capricious and deceptive form of time. — Fernand Braudel

Happiness, whether in business or private life, leaves very little trace in history. — Fernand Braudel

History may be divided into three movements: what moves rapidly, what moves slowly and what appears not to move at all. — Fernand Braudel

There are always some areas world history does not reach, zones of silence and undisturbed ignorance. — Fernand Braudel

The earth is, like our own skin, fated to carry the scars of ancient wounds. — Fernand Braudel

Events are the ephemera of history; they pass across its stage like fireflies, hardly glimpsed before they settle back into darkness and as often as not into oblivion. Every event, however brief, has to be sure a contribution to make, lights up some dark corner or even some wide vista of history. Nor is it only political history which benefits most, for every historical landscape - political, economic, social, even geographical - is illumined by the intermittent flare of the event. — Fernand Braudel

The companies only developed if the state did not intervene in the French fashion. If on the contrary a certain degree of economic freedom was the rule, capitalism moved in firmly and adapted itself to all administrative quirks and difficulties — Fernand Braudel

Everything must be recaptured and relocated in the general framework of history, so that despite the difficulties, the fundamental paradoxes and contradictions, we may respect the unity of history which is also the unity of life. — Fernand Braudel

The mere smell of cooking can evoke a whole civilization. — Fernand Braudel

For a century, the Arabs tribes gave Islam the first of these victories. Then the rough mountain peoples of North Africa, the Berbers, helped it to conquer Spain and organize Fatimid Egypt. — Fernand Braudel

Civilization is in fact the longest story of all. Civilization can persist through a series of economies. — Fernand Braudel

There were two, three or four French Revolutions. Like a multi-stage rocket today, the Revolution involved several successive explosions and propellant thrusts. — Fernand Braudel