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Fernand Braudel Quotes (1902-1985)
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About Fernand Braudel
Fernand Paul Achille Braudel (August 24, 1902 β November 27, 1985) was a French historian, who, together with Marc Bloch, revolutionized the 20th century study of his discipline by considering the effects of economics and geography on global history. Leader of the Annales School, his scholarship focused on three main projects: The Mediterranean (1923β49, then 1949β66), Civilization and Capitalism (1955β79), and the unfinished Identity of France (1970β85).
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βEvents 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.β
β[T]he entire course of French history since then has been influenced by something that happened in the eighteenth centuryβ and asks βdid France cease to be a great power not, as is usually thought, on 15 June 1815 on the field of Waterloo, but well before that, during the reign of Louis XV when the natural birth-rate was interrupted?β
βIndia survived only by virtue of its patience, its superhuman power and its immense size. The levies it had to pay were so crushing that one catastrophic harvest was enough to unleash famines and epidemics capable of killing a million people at a time. Appalling poverty was the constant counterpart of the conquerorsβ opulence. β¦ The Muslims β¦ could not rule the country except by systematic terror. Cruelty was the norm burnings, summary executions, crucifixions or impalements, inventive tortures. Hindu temples were destroyed to make way for mosques. On occasion there were forced conversions. If ever there were an uprising, it was instantly and savagely repressed: houses were burned, the countryside was laid waste, men were slaughtered and women were taken as slaves.β
βFor four or five centuries, Islam was the most brilliant civilization in the Old World. ... At its higher level the golden age of Muslim civilization was both an immense scientific success and a exceptional revival of ancient philosophy. These was not its only triumphs; literature was another: but they eclipse the rest. First, science: it was there that the Saracens ... made the most original contributions. These, in brief, were nothing less than trigonometry and algebra (with its significantly Arab name). ... Equally distinguished were Islam's mathematical geographers, its astronomical observatories and instruments ... [.] The Muslims also deserve high marks for optics, for chemistry ... and for pharmacy. More than half the remedies and healing aids used by the West came from Islam ... [.] Muslim medical skill was incontestable. ... In the field of philosophy, what took place was rediscovery - a return, essentially of the peripatetic philosophy. The scope of this rediscovery, however, was not limited to copying and handling on, valuable as that undoubtely was. It also involved continuing, elucidating and creating.β
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Fernand Braudel on Economy of India 2 quotes
βIndia survived only by virtue of its patience, its superhuman power and its immense size. The levies it had to pay were so crushing that one catastrophic harvest was enough to unleash famines and epidemics capable of killing a million people at a time. Appalling poverty was the constant counterpart of the conquerorsβ opulence.β
Fernand Braudel on Contradiction
Fernand Braudel on Poverty in India
βIndia survived only by virtue of its patience, its superhuman power and its immense size. The levies it had to pay were so crushing that one catastrophic harvest was enough to unleash famines and epidemics capable of killing a million people at a time. Appalling poverty was the constant counterpart of the conquerorsβ opulence.β
Fernand Braudel on Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent
β[the Muslims] could not rule the country, except by systematic terror. Cruelty was the norm -- burnings, summary executions, crucifixions or impalements, inventive tortures. Hindu temples were destroyed to make way for mosques. On occasion there were forced conversions. If ever there were an uprising, it was instantly and savagely repressed: houses were burned, the countryside was laid waste, men were slaughtered and women were taken as slaves. [...Islamic rule in India as a] colonial experiment [was] extremely violent.β
Fernand Braudel on History of trigonometry
βAt its higher levels the golden age of Muslim civilization was both an immense scientific success and a exceptional revival of ancient philosophy. These were not its only triumphs... but they eclipse the rest. ...[T]he Saracens ...made the most original contributions [to science]. These, in brief, were nothing less than trigonometry and algebra... In trigonometry the Muslims invented the sine and the tangent. The Greeks had measured an angle only from the chord of the arc it subtended: the sine was half the chord. The Chosranian (...Mohammed Ibn-Musa) published in 820 an algebraic treatise which went as far as quadratic equations: translated into Latin in the sixteenth century, it became a primer for the West. Later, Muslim mathematicians resolved biquadratic equations. Equally distinguished were Islam's mathematical geographers, its astronomical observatories and instruments (in particular the astrolabe) and its excellent if still imperfect measurements of latitude and longitude, correcting the flagrant errors of Ptolemy.β
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Fernand Braudel on Berber people
Fernand Braudel on Augustine of Hippo
βA Berber, born in 354 at Thagaste (now Souk-Ahras) in Africa... The exceptional brilliance of his works (The City of God, The Confessions), his contradictory nature, his desire to bring together faith and intelligence, classical and Christian civilization, the old wine and the new β these deliberate efforts made him in some ways a rationalist. For him, faith came first: but he nevertheless declared 'Credo ut intelligam' β 'I believe in order to understand.' He also said 'Si fallor, sum' β 'If I am mistaken, I exist' β and 'Si dubitat, vivit' β 'If he doubts, he is alive'... Posterity undoubtedly concentrated its attention on St Augustine as a theologian, and on what he wrote about predestination. But Augustinianism gave Western Christianity some of its colour and its ability to adapt and debate β if only by insisting on the vital need to embrace the faith in full awareness, after deep personnal reflection, and with the will to act accordingly.β
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Elst on Fernand Braudel
βBraudel was not a Hindu chauvinist, just a scholarly observer, but in todayβs climate, he would be blacklisted.β
About Fernand Braudel
Fernand Paul Achille Braudel (August 24, 1902 β November 27, 1985) was a French historian, who, together with Marc Bloch, revolutionized the 20th century study of his discipline by considering the effects of economics and geography on global history. Leader of the Annales School, his scholarship focused on three main projects: The Mediterranean (1923β49, then 1949β66), Civilization and Capitalism (1955β79), and the unfinished Identity of France (1970β85).