REVIEW ARTICLE 59 It seems inconceivable that such a group identity alone would have enabled the scholars to come together in a seminar and discuss *the impact of the Annales school on the social sciences*.28 We believe that there was an Annales school, the identity of which underwent important changes in the post-1945 phase and that this identity was formed in relation to the practice of other contemporary historians. Initially, the insistence on interdisciplinary approach and the campaign against event-based political history led to the formation of the Annales school. After 1945, serial history, quantitative methods, history of mentalities, etc., entitle one to speak of an Annales school. We need go no farther than the Introductions by the editors to see the commonalty of approach to the past, in subject matter as well as in methodology, shared by the Annales historians. This commonalty of approach is not negated by the role of the journal as the forum for international and interdisciplinary discussions. The Annales school is a school of historiography, 'school of historical study' as Le Roy Ladurie describes it in his essay on quantitative methods in Vol. I; without conceding the Annales historians any monopoly of quantitative techniques, he demonstrates how 'they have put them to particularly systematic and productive uses' (Vol.1, p. 123). The school had its identity always in relation to the contemporary historians, and it was in relation to them that it lost its identity in the recent past.29 NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. However it includes one article by Alexander Koyre, whose relationship with the Annales was negligible; the article is his only publication in the journal. R. Chartier, 'Intellectual History or Sodoculture History? The French Trajectories' in Dominick LaCapra and Steven L. Kaplan (eds) Modem European Intellectual History: Reappraisals and New Perspectives, Ithaca, 1982, p. 31. 2. An error has apparently crept in the note to the section on 'the conjunctural sphere* in Vol. I. It introduce us to a thesis of Meuvret, its questioning by Dupaquier, and the subsequent controversy being settled by Goubert (p. 261). This does not hold for the articles in the section, for Dupaquier's article was written after Goubert's piece, as is suggested by the former's footnotes (I am grateful to Dr. Monica Juneja, who confirmed the late publication of Dupaquier's book from which the present essay is taken). 3. The process has started. See V. Jha, 'Ancient Indian Political History: Possibilities and Pitfalls', paper presented at the Gorakhpur session of the Indian History Congress, December, 1989, fns. 4,10,20; reprinted with changes in the Social Scientist, Nos. 200-201, vol. 18, Nos. 1-2, January-February 1990. 4. Placing it in the French academic context, they discuss the influence of sociologists, geographers, etc. (Durkheim, Simiand, Vidal de la Blache) on Bloch and Febvre. One looks in vain for the discussion of the inspiring influence of the philosopher Henri Berr. 5. For another statement of the origins of new history only in France, see Monica Juneja and Harbans Mukhia, 'Seminar on New History', Economic And Political Weekly, No. 23,4 June 1988, p. 1155. 6. Peter Burke, Sociology and History, George Alien and Unwin, London, 1980, pp. 24-25; R. Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians, New York, 1968. 7. 'From Social History jto the History of Society', in M.W. Flinn and T.C. Smout (eds) Essays in Social History, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1974, p3. 8. R. Chartier, op.dt, p. 13.