Marc Bloch bibliography

Born in Lyon to an Alsatian Jewish family, Marc Bloch was raised in Paris, where his father—the classical historian Gustave Bloch—worked at Sorbonne University.

Bloch was a modernist in his historiographical approach, and repeatedly emphasised the importance of a multidisciplinary engagement towards history, particularly blending his research with that on geography, sociology and economics, which was his subject when he was offered a post at the University of Paris in 1936.

A small book, Lyon calls it "light, readable and far from trivial", and showing the influence of H. J. Fleure in how Bloch combined discussion on geography, language and archaeology.

Verging on the antiquarian in his microscopic approach,[4] and much influenced by the work of Raymond Crawfurd—who saw it as a "dubious if exotic" aspect of medicine, rather than history[9]—Bloch makes diverse use of evidence from different disciplines and periods, assessing the King's Evil as far forward as the 19th century.

In this—what Bloch called "mon petit livre"[11]—he used both the traditional techniques of historiographical analysis[11](for example, scrutinising[12] documents, manuscripts, accounts and rolls)[13] and his newer, multi-faceted approach,[12] with a heavy emphasis on maps as evidence.

[14] Loyn has called Bloch's assessment of medieval French rural law great, but with the addendum that "he is not so good at describing ordinary human beings.

[16][note 1] Febvre wrote the introduction to the book for its publication, and described the technique as "reading the past from the present",[12] or what Bloch saw as starting with the known and moving into the unknown.

[15] La Société Féodale was published in two volumes (The Growth of Ties of Dependence, and Social Classes and Political Organisation) in 1939, and was translated into English as Feudal Society in 1961.

[22] Conversely, his last two—The Historian's Craft and Strange Defeat—have been described as unrepresentative of his historical approach in that they discuss contemporary events in which Bloch was personally involved and without access to primary sources.

[19][4] Davies has described The Historian's Craft as "beautifully sensitive and profound";[18] the book was written in response to his son, Étienne, asking his father, "what is history?".

Meanwhile, it is in these pages filled with your presence that, for my part, our joint work goes on.Likewise, Strange Defeat, in the words of R. R. Davies, is a "damning and even intolerant analysis"[18] of the long- and short-term reasons France fell in 1940.

It is true that we emerged from the last war desperately tired, and that after four years not only of fighting but of mental laziness, we were only too anxious to get back to our proper employments...That is our excuse.

[27][note 2] Although one of his best essays, according to Davies—"Liberté et servitude personnelles au Moyen Age, particulierement en France"—was not published when it could have been; this, he remarked was "an unpardonable omission".