Febvre, Lucien (1878–1956)

French historian who in 1929 founded, with his colleague Marc Bloch, the highly influential journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale. His pupil Fernand Braudel became the leading exponent of the Annales school, of which Febvre and Bloch were the pioneers. This new kind of history emphasized economic and social change, studying human affairs and the impersonal forces that really influenced people rather than narrating the deeds of the famous or dealing with only dramatic events.

Drawing on research in social psychology and human geography, and influenced by the anthropologist and philosopher Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Febvre developed the idea of ‘collective mentalities’ that went beyond individual thinkers, their beliefs and values and that differed from age to age. For example, in his classic Le Problème de l'incroyance au XVIième siècle: La Religion de Rabelais/The Problem of Unbelief in the 16th Century: The Religion of Rabelais 1942, he argues that the writer Rabelais and his contemporaries could not have been atheists because the mentality required for disbelief did not exist at the time.

For much of his career Febvre was a professor at Strasbourg University and then president of the VIth section of the Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, now the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. In the latter post he was succeeded by Braudel.