The city of Strasbourg, part of the Alsace region, is located on the border between Germany and France. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

The history of the area is complicated, originally belonging to the Holy Roman Empire, later annexed to France, then occupied by Germany, and then recaptured by France after World War I.

Friends with good memories should still have an impression of the Versailles Treaty in middle school history textbooks, one of the clauses of which was that Germany ceded Alsace-Lorraine to France.

Lucien Fèvre was a professor at the University of Strasbourg.

He is currently preparing to start a magazine called the Yearbook of Economic and Social History. From the perspective of the future, this magazine pioneered the school of annals, changed the face of world historiography, and made outstanding contributions to the development of modern historiography.

Okay, it's awesome to say, but at this time Lucien Fevre was still "non-mainstream".

In the European historiography circles in the twentieth century, the mainstream school was "new historiography" -- positivist historiography.

This school of historiography emerged in the late 19th century, when the natural sciences made explosive advances and scientists achieved one important result after another. The whole of Western society has fallen into the infinite worship of science, and historians are no exception.

As a result, it has been proposed that the methods of the natural sciences should be applied to the study of history. Through various psychological analyses and attention to the organic connections between things, it is used to reveal the hidden laws behind historical activities.

To put it more bluntly, all history is divided into three elements: "geographical time", "social time", and "personal time". Historians have summed up a set of "scientific formulas" by using natural science thinking, and when studying history, they can simply put them into the "formulas."

Positivist historiography has its advanced nature, which promotes the traditional historical materials to eliminate the false and retain the true, and makes historical research more rigorous. However, the limitations are also very large, and historians continue to do so, which leads to the convergence of historiography towards the natural sciences and ignores the uniqueness of historical research.

Since the First World War, the intellectual, historical, and literary circles of Europe have been filled with decadence, confusion, and rebellion, and a variety of new schools have emerged.

Doubts about positivist historiography are growing louder, but they cannot be overturned for the time being, and Lucien Fèvre is an active among the opponents.

"Haven't you all the manuscripts been confiscated?" Mark Bloch walked into the office and asked.

Lucien Fevre laughed: "There is another one in the mail, which may be received in the next few days." ”

Marc Bloch said bitterly: "I contacted five publishers and publishers, but none of them wanted to help us publish our magazine. ”

"It's normal," Lucien Fèvre likened, "that positivist historiography is a windmill, and we, like Don Quixote, are hard to get the attention of the mainstream community." ”

"What then?" Mark Bloch asked.

Lucien Favre said: "Go to Paris, I have dealt with Louis the Younger of Hachette, and maybe he can help with the magazine." ”

By the end of the week, the two had compiled the contents of the magazine's inaugural issue and left for Paris together with a rough printed sample.

……

In the 20s of the 20th century, it was called the "crazy 20s" by the Western world.

In France, in particular, the terrible situation of the First World War has ended, and the economy has fully recovered in the 20s, showing a dazzling prosperity.

But the psychological wounds brought about by the war are engraved in everyone's bones. So the rich people enjoyed themselves, which was quite a sense of being drunk today. Artists, thinkers, and writers rebelled against tradition and created a mess of new genres.

The poor people did not care about making a revolution, and although their lives were more difficult than before, the aftermath of the catastrophe made people cherish life even more. Moreover, by the end of the 20s, the comprehensive recovery of the social economy also gave the people at the bottom a little hope.

It seems to be a prosperous time!

Lucien Favre and Marc Bloch walked the streets of Paris, looking at the bustling scene, and their mood became much better.

Since Hachette was in the western suburbs of Paris, it was too late to make time, so they simply stayed at a hotel.

It was mid-afternoon, and Favre was bored, so he proposed to go to the bookstore, to which Bloch readily agreed.

As in the United States, the French publishing industry in the 20s was in a boom, with nearly 20,000 titles published each year.

Since it was a weekend, there were a lot of people visiting the bookstore.

Favre went straight to the bookshelf of literature and history, and as soon as he approached, he saw a whole row of new books: "The Rise of Great Powers", "Guns, Bacteria and Steel", "Chrysanthemum and Knife", "The Goddess", and "Dog Officer".

There are five whole films, except for martial arts novels, almost all of Zhou Hexuan's works are here.

The French have enough fun, and they are not afraid that they will not be able to sell at all!

Favre was so impressed by Zhou Hexuan that he solemnly recommended some fragments of "The Rise of Great Powers" to his students to read.

As soon as he saw the author's name on the spine, Favre immediately took it off in surprise.

I saw that on the title page of "The Rise of Great Powers", there is a biography of the author written by Le Goff, a reporter of Le Figaro, and even a bust photo of Zhou Hexuan: Zhou Hexuan, Chinese, born in 1898. As a child, he lived in Southeast Asia and studied English with American missionaries. As a teenager, he wandered the United States and audited at many universities. From 1916 to 1926, he traveled around the world, visiting libraries and archives of various countries to search for materials. He is currently the president of Peking University, a Chinese institution of higher learning, and is known in the Far East for his outstanding historical and literary talents.

"Oh, God! He's only 30 years old, so young. Favre couldn't help but exclaim.

"What's wrong?" Bloch walked over and asked.

Fèvre pointed to the row of works on the bookshelf and smiled: "The works of China Zhou." ”

"The China Week that wrote 'The Rise of Great Powers'?" Bloch said in surprise.

The fragments of "The Rise of Great Powers" have long been circulated in Europe, and historians have heard of them to a greater or lesser extent. And the views on history expressed in this book coincide with Favre and Bloch.

The Annals School, which they founded, advocated the integration of geography, economics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and linguistics into the study of history.

Isn't this the narrative method of "The Rise of a Great Power"?

Therefore, a few decades later, it was generally accepted in the world history community that before Favre and Bloch founded the Annals School, the Annals School had already produced a masterpiece, namely The Rise of Great Powers.

For this reason, Zhou Hexuan is known as the "pioneer of the yearbook school" and "the founder of the yearbook school".

However, there are also different views, and many historians believe that "The Rise of Great Powers" is not a work of the annalist school, but a mature work of modern historiography, which is completely ahead of its time.

Favre and Bloch only flipped a few pages casually, and each went to the checkout with a set of Zhou Hexuan's works.

Favre even decided to revise the inaugural issue of the magazine to include a review of The Rise of Great Powers. Their main purpose in founding the magazine was to overturn the positivist historiography that was currently in vogue, and Zhou Hexuan's "The Rise of Great Powers" was the most powerful weapon.