Fernand Braudel was one of the greatest historians of the twentieth
century. A leading member of the Annales school, he rejected a narrow
focus on Western warfare, diplomacy, and power politics, and opened up
economic and social history to influences from anthropology, sociology,
geography, psychology, and linguistics. In the late 1950s, when the
Annales approach was widely accepted in French universities, a major
reform introduced the study of "the main contemporary civilizations"
into the final year of secondary schools. Traditionalists attacked the
new stress on the social sciences and eventually triumphed, but Braudel
was firmly committed to such changes. This marvelous survey of world
history, the last of his books to be translated into English, was
originally intended for French "sixth-formers." Yet its real value is
far more permanent. Even an "educational story, " Braudel once suggested
in a lecture, can become a "tale of adventure, " provided the historian
manages to "find the key to a civilization and is not afraid of
simplicity - "not simplicity that distorts the truth, produces a void,
and is another name for mediocrity, but simplicity that is clarity, the
light of intelligence." Such a light shines throughout A History of
Civilizations. After an introductory section examining the nature of
cultures and civilizations, their continuities and transformations,
Braudel surveys broad historical developments in almost every corner of
the globe: the Muslim world - from the rise of Islam to post-colonial
revival; Black Africa - from the slave trade to the dilemmas of
development; the Far East: China, India, the maritime states and Japan;
Europe - from the collapse of the Roman Empir to political union; the
European civilizations of the New World: Latin America and the United
States; the English-speaking universe: Canada, Southern Africa,
Australia, and New Zealand; and the other Europe: Russia, the USSR, and
the CIS. For this excellent translation, Richard
