The FMSH Pays Tribute to Fernand Braudel
Marking the 40th anniversary of Fernand Braudel’s death, the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme will hold an international conference on 27–28 November 2025, bringing together leading scholars from across the globe to re-examine his work in light of contemporary debates. Complementing this scholarly gathering, a newly published edition of History, the Measure of the World—drawn from lectures Braudel delivered while in captivity—will be unveiled at the close of the conference’s first day.
The international conference Les mondes de Fernand Braudel. Histoire globale, histoire connectée (The Worlds of Fernand Braudel. Global History, Connected History), to be held on 27 and 28 November 2025 at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, will offer a critical examination of several key aspects of his work.
Talks will explore his conceptions of time and space, his use of analytical scales, and the dynamics of connection, domination and transformation between major global regions. The conference will also consider the relevance of his ideas in a rapidly changing world, highlighting their continuities, limitations and contemporary reformulations.
The two-day event will be structured around four thematic sessions:
- Durations, Spaces, Events
- The Mediterranean: Past and Present
- The Ocean and Its Connections
- What Is Global History?
It will conclude with a round table discussion entitled Forty Years Later.
The conference will take place at the FMSH, founded by Fernand Braudel in 1963, and is held under the auspices of an international academic committee chaired by Sanjay Subrahmanyam (University of California, Los Angeles).
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To mark the anniversary, Éditions de la MSH is releasing a new edition of a pivotal text, drawn from the lectures given by Fernand Braudel during his captivity in the Second World War.
La Méditerranée, Braudel’s seminal work, was written during the Second World War on school notebooks within the walls of the Mainz and Lübeck prisons. While many readers of La Méditerranée know this story, it is less well known that during the same period, Braudel also delivered a series of lectures on history to his fellow prisoners. In these talks, he developed methodological reflections, emphasising the weight of “long duration” history as opposed to event-based history. Advocating interdisciplinarity with the social sciences, economics and geography, he proposed studying the interactions between human societies and their geographical environment through what he called “geo-history”. A foundational work of Braudelian thought and global history, now available once again.
Fernand Braudel – “54 poche” collection, Éditions de la MSH
"L’histoire, mesure du monde. Conférences de la captivité"
The book will be presented at the close of the first day of the conference as part of a special edition of the “Livres en dialogue” series, featuring Christian Grataloup (Université Paris Cité) and Maurice Aymard (EHESS, former Director of the FMSH).
A major historian of the 20th century and founder of the FMSH, Fernand Braudel profoundly reshaped the humanities and social sciences. His thinking—centred on the long durée, the analysis of multiple temporalities and interdisciplinarity—resonates strongly today in relation to the challenges of capitalism, globalisation and ecology.
His landmark work La Méditerranée (1949), followed by Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme (1979), transformed historical writing. As an institutional builder, he played a key role in the creation of the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in 1963, conceived as a space for innovation and the exchange of knowledge.
French historian and writer Fernand Braudel in his office
International Conference
"Les mondes de Fernand Braudel"
27 & 28 November 2025
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Evening Book Presentation
"L'histoire, mesure du monde"
27 November 2025 at 6:30 p.m.
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Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'homme
54 boulevard Raspail, Paris 6e
Autumn at Éditions de la MSH
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Canal-U in the spotlight in the Bulletin des bibliothèques de France (French Library Bulletin)
