"Throughout the Battle of Sadowa, the Prussians seemed to get worse ... Bismarck, present operations, has decided, having lost all hope of finding the death last cavalry charge. He does not belong to the ranks of those able to stay with our arms folded when the blood flow of soldiers. How can it not despair, do not feel crushed by the responsibility? Lighting a cigar, and promises to himself, when he has finished, to spur the horse thoroughly. The only solution, charging the enemy to die ... In fact, if those men are seat, who is at fault than his, who wanted if not himself?
Not so! If Bismarck is on the battlefield for a reason and that is that, at least a century, millions of Germans wanted to see the unity of Germany snapping the beer mugs on their Stammtisch ... Germany, long before Bismarck, already existed as a group of economic interests, the day on which it was created the Zollverein. If Bismarck is Sodowa, gnawed by doubts fatal it only has the force of things, the will of the German men. He is their only representative. "
If we had stopped reading the scene where Bismark off his cigar, he speaks of history evental, that is a story centered on a single event or single character.
Braudel offers us a key to the richest: it speaks of another character, the German people.
His concept of history beyond the lives of individuals, it recognizes a trend in deep, made of great change and major economic trends, trends that run at different speeds: the lives of men, the events that change from day to day, but also other currents, which change the year after year, century after century.
History in Braudel tells us is three dimensional: the concept of space takes on a role, very important. Perhaps most of the time. "If society is living space, it uses the system and consuming it," Measuring the World
History is a fascinating book that offers valuable tools for analysis, but at the same time is rich in narrative and evocative passages.
The scene I described above seems leoniana. Even when
Braudel speaks of the Maghreb, calling it an island between the sea and the desert, between two different economic realities: that of the Sahara, the caravans of the sea and, on the one hand, and one of the few merchants on the other hand, paints scenes that spark my imagination, so that at times it seems to me to read a novel of adventure ... but it is a book on historical method!
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