THE STORY OF CRAFTING HISTORY

REVIEW OF INTRODUCTION AND CHAPTER 1 FROM HISTORIANS CRAFT BY MARC BLOCH

SONAL V MANOJ
MA.HISTORY
PONDICHERRY UNIVERSITY

"History never really says goodbye. History says, see you later"(Eduardo
Galeano). Many in course of time has attempted to capture this oscilating and
unending story in paper. But very few has tried to understand and at the same
time share with others the vitality of capturing an oscilating story, there by
providing a valid base for all other attempts of capturing that story and it is this
story of why and how something gone by is to be preseved or anything lost is to
be retained from its ruins that Historians Craft tells us.
At a time when anti-semeticism was at its peak, one person inspite of the
troubles and challenges he has to face, devoted himself in framing answer to a
question that his son posed to him, which he found necessarry to provide
inorder to prove the legitimacy of a discipline to which he devoted his entire
life thereby proving the worth of his discipline as well as his life. As a person
who considered 'himself the last generation of Drefus affair' 1 and one who
focussed on an integral approach bringing other disciplines to the realm of
history and studying it with out compartmentalizing to form what Braudel later
called 'total history' when historians turned mere butterfly collectors amassing
facts with out thinking their significance2, Marc Bloch stands different.
Unfortunately he was no more when his answer to the world was made public
in 1949 through his 'historians craft'.
Before i get into the contents of the book i owe an apology (like Bloch do
citing his inaccess to supplemetary reading and research) for attempting this
review from a bird's eye view by focussing only upon the introduction and the
beginnings of the first chapter.
I remember my teacher once said in the class, 'ask questions to give birth to
history' which is very much true as it was one question of his son that created a
new history proving to the world the authenticity of this discipline. Bloch begin
by talking about the dependence of his civilization in the past for which he
quote the instance of Christianity that finds an origin in documents of past
unlike other religions who base themsleves on mythology. But their lies the
danger that civilizations may change and deter its connections to the past which
ultimately rupture good history in the badly understood one if not considered

1 Dreyfus Affair is a symbolism of the miscarriage of justice and anti-semeticism evolved after the conviction of
Alfred Dreyfus for treason which was later proved wrong.
2 A concept of Lucien Febvre presented by Edmund Burke in the preface to the work historians craft
seriously. At the same time while basing their civilization upon past, its
credibility is being questioned at the time of a crisis 3 ultimately the historian
himself probing his conscience and doubting his choice. So the focus of the
book is not limited to the question a child, but it also has to quench the
ambiguities of a mature man.
The approach Bloch has adopted here to bring out the worthiness of practicing
history is differfent and note worthy. Rather than providing reasons to prove its
merit

3 Bloch here cites the instance of Germany entering Paris