Longue durée

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The longue durée (French pronunciation: [lɔ̃ɡ dyʁe]; English: the long term) is the approach to the study of history championed by the group of historians comprising the Annales school. It gives priority to long-term historical structures over what French sociologist François Simiand called histoire événementielle ("evental history", the short-term time-scale that is the domain of the chronicler and the journalist). It concentrates instead on all-but-permanent or slowly evolving structures and replaces elite biographies with the broader syntheses of prosopography. The crux of its idea is to examine extended periods of time and draw conclusions from historical trends and patterns.

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