Mare Bloch and Comparative History Alette Olin Hill, Boyd H. Hill, Jr The American Historical Review, Volume 85, Issue 4 (Oct., 1980), 828-846. Stable URL: bttp//links jstor.org/sic¥2sici=0002-8762%28198010%2985%3A4%3C828%3AMBACH%3E2.0,CO%3B2-L ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hhup:/www.jstor org/about/terms.html. JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission. The American Historical Review is published by American Historical Association. Please contact the publisher for further permissions regarding the use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at hup:/www.jstor.org/journals/aha.himl, ‘The American Historical Review (©1980 American Historical Association ISTOR and the ISTOR logo are trademarks of ISTOR, and are Registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office For more information on ISTOR contact jstor-info@umich.edv, ©2002 JSTOR upslwww jstor.org/ Thu Jul 4 04:57:42 2002AHR Forum Marc Bloch and Comparative History ALETTE OLIN HILL. and BOYD H. HILL, JR. Finally, of what use is linguistics? Very few people have clear ideas on this point, and this is not the place to specify them. But it is evident, for instance, that linguistic questions interest all who work with texts—historians, philolo- gists, ete. Still more obvious is the importance of linguistics to general cul- ture: In the lives of individuals and societies, speech is more important than anything els." FEW HISTORIANS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY have had as much impact upon their profession as has Mare Bloch. Although his career was cut short in 1944 (he was executed by the Germans as a member of the French Resistance), his writings have remained very much alive in subsequent years as historians have striven to expand the horizons of their discipline. Comparative history was the theme of the convention held by the American Historical Association in Decem- ber 1978, and Bloch’s name was frequently invoked by the participants in its programs. Yet the discussions at San Francisco revealed some ambiguity among scholars about the method and its potentialities. Consider, for example, the titles of some key sessions: “Can ‘Comparative History’ Be Defined?”; “How Has ‘Comparative History’ Been Practiced?”; and “Is There an Interdisciplinary ‘Comparative Method?” Questions were more in evidence than answers. Some of the ambiguity stems from Bloch’s own misconceptions about the model from which he derived his ideas on the comparative method—the model of historical linguistics. In mis FAMOUS ARTICLE, “Pour une histoire comparée des sociétés curopéennes,” Mare Bloch asserted that of all of the social scientists only the linguists had ac- * Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), Core Graal Linguists, ed. Chares Bally and Albert Sechehaye, leans: Wade Baskin (New York, 1958), 7-"The orginal French edition, Cars de ings ahd (1916) wa Compile from student notes. Fora recent crits of tructural linguistics, specially the tradition amociated swith Seumure, soe Jacques Deda, “Linguists and Grammatology.” inhi Of Granmaty, trans. Gaya Ghakravory Spivak altimore, 1876) 37-78. Alo sce Ren€ Thom, “Topaogi e inguistgue,” in Andie achiger and Raghavan Narasimhan, eds, lays Toplogy and Related Tops: Minas ds & Geared 828‘Marc Bloch and Comparative History 829 curately differentiated the techniques involved in comparison? True com- parison, he declared, entails “two widely different intellectual processes.” Bloch derived these two processes, which we will call “universal” and “historical,” from the French linguist Antoine Meillet (1866-1936). In “The Definition of the Comparative Method,” Meillet wrote, “There are two different ways of prac- ‘icing comparison: one can compare in order to draw from comparison either universal laws or historical information. These two types of comparison, equally legit imate,” he claimed, “differ absolutely.”* Méillet, one of the most respected and prolific scholars in comparative Indo- European linguistics during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, published monographs on the grammars of the Greek, Latin, Germanic, Ira- nian, Old Slavonic, and, most notably, Armenian languages. In addition, he produced in 1903 a theoretical tract on the comparative study of all known Indo-European languages, Introduction a Uétude comparative des langues indo-europé- ers. A pupil of Ferdinand de Saussure, he was appointed professor of com- parative Indo-European grammar at the College de France in 1906.’ His inter- ‘sts included sociology as well as linguistics; beginning in 1901, he collaborated with Emile Durkheim on the journal L’Année Sociologique® Bloch relied upon Meillet’s La méthode comparative en linguistique historique, pub- lished in 1925, for his decision to follow the historical rather than the universal linguists.” He described the two methods, or “processes,” as follows: ‘ham (Beri, 1970), 226-27 Fra convincing argument ato why historians should acquaint themselves with linguists, ee Nancy S. Steve, "The Study of Language ad the Study f History” Jone ftp, Hl, 4 (1978): 401-13, * Boh, “Pour une histoire compare des sci europdennes” paper delivered a the Sith Intemational