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.
History is about great forces, yes, but also about contingency.
The history of the world - by which, of course, we mean Europe - is a record of intertribal lacerations, of ethnic cleansings.
When I was a girl, the idea that the British Empire could ever end was absolutely inconceivable. And it just disappeared, like all the other empires. You know, when people talk about the British Empire, they always forget that all the European countries had empires.
The histories of the poor and the powerless are as important as those of their conquerors, their colonizers, their kings and queens.
For 200 years, the dominant powers have also been the colonial powers: the European countries, the U.S. and Japan. They have never been required to pay their dues for what they did to those whom they possessed and treated with contempt.
By 1892, enlightenment had progressed to the point where the Salem trials were simply an embarrassing blot on the history of New England. They were a part of the past that was best forgotten: a reminder of how far the human race had come in two centuries.
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