On the 6th of July 1886, French Jewish historian Marc L. B. Bloch was born in Lyon, France. Known as the cofounder of the Annales School of French social history, Bloch is considered a quintessential modernist. Born into an academic Alsacian family, he studied in Berlin and Leipzig, fought in the trenches of the Western Front for four years and became a lecturer in medieval history at Strasbourg University in 1919. This was followed by a post as professor of economic history at the University of Paris in 1936. At the age of 58, he was captured and shot by the Gestapo during the German occupation of France for his activity in the Resistance.
Incidentally, Bloch is sometimes overlooked as being one of the first researchers into the realm of historical anthropology. In Les Rois Thaumaturges or The Royal Touch (1924), he looked at the long-standing folk belief…
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