French historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, former professor at the Collège de France, former president of the French Academy and author of the groundbreaking “History of Climate,” died Wednesday at the age of 94, his family announced today.
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, student of the historian Fernand Braudel, author of “The Dynamics of Capitalism”, was part of the so-called ‘Écoles des Annales’, which privileged the economic and social approach to historical research, was one of the protagonists of the New History movement, and was notable as a precursor of an approach that became known as “microhistory”, due to its attention to anthropological aspects, with works such as “Montaillou, Cathars and Catholics in a French Village 1294-1324”, published in Portugal by Edições 70.
Le French history Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, parmi les plus traduits en Europa et aux Etats-Unis, est décédé à 94 ans. Normally, based on the teacher’s history and literature, the centers of inner life are in the countryside of the world, inequality or encore… pic.twitter.com/GttGz6UyH7
– Agence France-Presse (@afpfr) November 23, 2023
Ladurie was born in Les Moutiers-en-Cinglais, Normandy, in July 1929, graduated from the École Normal Superior de France and received a doctorate in literature.
He held the chair of History of Modern Civilization at the Collège de France for about thirty years, professor at the University of Paris-VII, general manager of the National Library of France, president of the Institute of Social History and the French Academy, in in addition to focusing on the School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences.
His interests led him to write about the rural world, inequalities and to worry about environmental issues and their impact on the historical field, having published a “History of Climate” in 1967, in a pioneering approach to the history of Western Europe. and Northern and United States.
“Historians at the time were not interested in it, they laughed at me, they even said it was fake science,” Ladurie told AFP in 2009. “I admit that I worry about my children and grandchildren in the next century. ‘ He then confessed to the French news agency: who today resumes this interview with the historian.
In 2020, Ladurie published an expanded edition with a new preface to his “Histoire du climat depuis l’an mil” (Flammarion), in which he emphasized the importance of knowing the past climate, the influence of climate change on the landscape, crops and in key social movements, as well as the need to tackle global warming throughout history.
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie also stood out in defending the memory of the Holocaust, after opposing denial theories that emerged since the end of World War II.
Ladurie was an honorary member of the United States Academy of Sciences and the Japanese Academy, among others, and was a columnist for the newspaper Le Monde and the magazines Le Nouvel Observateur, L’Express and Le Figaro littéraire.
In addition to “Montaillou, Cathars and Catholics in a French village 1294-1324”, the historian’s book “Os peasants do Languedoc” is also published in Portugal by Editorial Estampa.
Source: DN
