History and the 70th anniversary of the execution of Marc Bloch
(because this is so long, I thought I'd just post part of it- maybe I'll post the rest later)
I came across some old stuff I'd written about history in general and Marc Bloch in particular and realized that June 20, 2014 is the 70th anniversary of his execution at the hands of the Nazis at St Didier de Formans just as the allies were about to retake France. He left, unfinished, a book entitled 'The Historians Craft', a piece on historiography. It was published posthumously and I got my grasping hands and greedy little mind on it sometime in my twenties. It was given to me by my father from his library.
Here, edited, is what I wrote in 1997:
I will start with Marc Bloch. Not that his work is the most recent. It's not. It was written (mostly) in 1941 in the middle of a war. It does not have the most compelling title; it is simply called 'The Historian's Craft'. My father admired this book and gave it to me. He was right to admire it.
Bloch wrote about history with hope, an impressive and vastly touching endeavor considering that he was, at the time, in the French Underground, in Nazi occupied France. The dedication is a brief and loving message to a friend and colleague. The introduction notes that western man is historically minded, that socially we are increasingly aware of our place in future history.
"There are more and more books written on historiography and methodology. This points to the question What is the use of history?
when the values of the past are being ruthlessly discarded? What is the use of history when we repeat old errors over and over again?
Bloch thought about these questions and wrote about them. He was a French Jew- thoroughly assimilated and French through and through. He became a member of the resistance at the age of 53 in 1939. In 1944 he was captured, tortured, imprisoned and ultimately executed by the Nazis. The 'Historian's Craft is an unfinished work by a historian who lived history at its ugliest and perhaps at its finest, and who always held on to his faith in the value of history. Bloch espoused a holistic history, one in which the connectedness of all periods and topics was a given. THe point of history is to know ourselves collectively and thoroughly in order to light our way into a better future.
History is imperfect. It is a product of human mind. It the human accounting of human events. It is the want-to-be's revisionism and the hyperbolic often fallacious crowing of the conqueror. All human frailty can be seen seen in the telling of history; in how history has been told. And yet for all its demon hauntedness history has possibility: It can be truthful and it can be handed down truthfully.
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