A SHORT HISTORY
  "Only yesterday, history was still focussing on the story of contemporary events, the lives of great mean and political fate of nations. But history has changed its methods and the way it identifies areas of study and topics. That is why a specific space for history and its many facets was needed in addition to ‘Bibliothèque des sciences humaines’, though still with the same approach."
  This sketchy plan could be found on the cover of the first volumes of the imprint. Pierre Nora and Jacques Le Goff refined the concept in a manifesto-book, Faire de l'histoire (1974), which defended, as well as illustrated, the New History. Most of the themes that would shape the imprint were presented. In particular, a kind of historical anthropology is promoted that investigates every aspect of humanity and civilisation, including such ethereal phenomena as collective sensibility, imagination and representation. Such seminal works as Yates' The Art of Memory (L'Art de la mémoire) or Michel Foucault's essays are part of this interdisciplinary research, which has been encouraged by the renewal of social science.
  Thimprint's dynamic directors have been true to the teaching of the Ecole pratique des hautes études and the Collège de France and to the legacy of the Annales. This can be seen in J. Le Goff's re-editing in 1984 of Marc Bloch's Rois thaumaturges, and in the importance given to the study of the Medieval mind with the publication of the works of G. Duby, E. Le Roy Ladurie, J. Le Goff, M. Vovelle, E. Kantorowicz, A. Dupont or J-Cl. Schmitt…
  The imprint has been developing its scientific legacy while also taking an active part in the evolution of the discipline. There is an important move back to events (Un meurtre, une société by B. Guenée), biographies (Saint Louis by Le Goff) … Other trends have become popular for a time, sometimes from abroad such as Italian micro-history. Historical anthropology is applied to the study of Antiquity (M. Détienne, J.-P. Vernant) as well as modern and contemporary periods (A. Kriegel, C. Beaune, E. Hobsbawm, M. Ozouf…). In the latter case the main contribution of the "Bibliothèque" consists in the development of a history of politics, rather than political life, with the works of M. Gauchet and P. Rosanvallon. These pursue reassessment begun by François Furet in 1978 in Penser la Révolution française and have quite transformed revolutionary historiography. Also worth a mention are the religious history studies of J. Bottéro and the influential essays on art and cultural heritage written by Ed. Pommier, Fr. Haskell and Kr. Pomian.
  In 1984 P. Nora published Lieux de mémoire. Study of the collective memory of the French yields an impressive descriptive catalogue of its main objects. By studying the role of memory and the relationship of these objects to successive layers of the present Nora is dealing with national identity. It is now a classical work responding to the current concern for remembrance, and is still a model.