History may be divided into three movements: what moves rapidly, what moves slowly and what appears not to move at all.
Interpretation
History can be understood through different paces of change and continuity.
Fernand Braudel's quote suggests that history is not simply a linear narrative of events; instead, it can be categorized by the speed at which changes occur. Some events or trends progress quickly, some take place gradually, and others seem static but hold deeper significance over time, highlighting the complexities of historical interpretation.
In practice
This quote can be used in a history class to explain different historical processes.
For the historian everything begins and ends with time, a mathematical, godlike_x000D_ _x000D_ time, a notion easily mocked, time external to men, 'exogenous,' as economists_x000D_ _x000D_ would say, pushing men, forcing them, and painting their own individual times_x000D_ _x000D_ the same color: it is, indeed, the imperious time of the world.
Events are the ephemera of history; they pass across its stage like fireflies, hardly glimpsed before they settle back into darkness and as often as not into oblivion. Every event, however brief, has to be sure a contribution to make, lights up some dark corner or even some wide vista of history. Nor is it only political history which benefits most, for every historical landscape - political, economic, social, even geographical - is illumined by the intermittent flare of the event.
Leadership of a world-economy is an experience of power which may blind the victor to the march of history.
My argument is that history is made by men and women, just as it can also be unmade and rewritten, always with various silence and elisions, always with shapes imposed and disfigurements tolerated.
History consists of a corpus ascertained facts. The facts are available to the historian in documents, inscriptions and so on, like fish in the fishmonger's slab. The historian collects them, takes them home, and cooks and serves them in whatever style appeals to him.
Like Israel, New York City's history has been defined by immigrants who come in search of freedom and the opportunity to build a better life. And like Israel, New York City has remained a target for terrorists who seek to destroy that freedom
In a typical history book, black Americans are mentioned in the context of slavery or civil rights. There's so much more to the story.
It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.
I was 10 years old when my father was assassinated in 1968. Then, I had some sense of the sacrifices and hardships required of the families of a leader who was constantly in the news.
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