«Apologie pour l'histoire ou Métier d'historien» in inglese

TO LUCIEN FEBVRE

BY WAY OF A DEDICATION

IF THIS BOOK should one day be published — if, begun as a simple antidote by which, amid sorrows and anxieties both personal and collective, I seek a little peace of mind, it should turn into a real book, intended to be read — you will find, my friend, another name than yours inscribed upon its dedication page.

You can surmise the name this place requires; it is the one permissible allusion to a tenderness too deep and sacred to be spoken.

Yet how can I resign myself to seeing you appear in no more than a few chance references?

Long have we worked together for a wider and more human history.

Today our common task is threatened.

Not by our fault.

We are vanquished, for a moment, by an unjust destiny.

But the time will come, I feel sure, when our collaboration can again be public, and again be free.

Meanwhile, it is in these pages filled with your presence that, for my part our joint work goes on.

It will keep what was always its rhythm of fundamental agreement, enlivened, on the surface, by the profitable interplay of our affectionate discussions.

Certainly, more than one of the ideas which I propose to uphold I have taken straight from you.

With many of the others, I cannot, in honesty, decide whether they are yours, mine, or both of ours.

I flatter myself that you will often approve.

And you will sometimes rebuke me.

In either case, there will be another bond between us.

Fougères, Creuse,

May 10, 1941

INTRODUCTION

‘TELL ME, Daddy. What is the use of history?”

Thus, a few years ago, a young lad in whom I had a very special interest questioned his historian father.

I wish I could say of this book that it is my answer.

I can conceive no higher praise for a writer than to be able to speak in the same tone to savants and schoolboys alike, but so noble a simplicity is the privilege of the select few.

At any rate, this question from a child, whose thirst for knowledge I was not, perhaps, too well able to satisfy at the time, now serves me well as a point of departure.

Doubtless there are some who will consider this a naïve approach, but to me it seems entirely to the point.