Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie - Historiography

Historiography

One of the most prolific contemporary historians, his mentor was Fernand Braudel, a prominent member of the Annales School. At the beginning of the 1970s, Ladurie founded the movement of the "Nouvelle histoire" (New History). Le Roy Ladurie is a leading champion of "microhistory," in which a historian uses the study of an event, locality, family or life to reveal the "structures" which underlie life in the particular period under study. Some, like Niall Ferguson, have questioned the value of "microhistory," arguing that it is wrong to assume that the study of one village or one incident in one town or one family reveals wider patterns of life in France, let alone the rest of Europe. Another line of criticism has centered around Le Roy Ladurie's use of the term "structures." His critics contend that he has never clearly defined the term, nor explained why "structures" change over time, or even whether the "structures" Le Roy Ladurie purports to find exist.

Le Roy Ladurie has also worked on the history of French regions (Histoire de France des régions, 2004) and on anthropometric history as well as on the impact of climate changes on human history. Besides writing books, Le Roy Ladurie is a prolific essayist writing on variety of subjects such as the utility of computers as method of historical research, rates of delinquency in the French Army in the 19th century, the spread of global diseases and the belief of French peasants that magic could be used to generate impotence. Le Roy Ladurie is also known as one of the first modern environmental historians because his work focused on human agency in environmental change, as well as environmental factors in human history.