Editing Marc Bloch (section)

===Areas of interest===
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| quote = If we embark upon our reexamination of Bloch by viewing him as a novel and restless synthesizer of traditions that had previously seemed incommensurable, a more nuanced image than the traditionally held one emerges. Examined through this lens as a quixotic idealist, Bloch is revealed as the undogmatic creator of a powerful – and perhaps ultimately unstable – method of historical innovation that can most accurately be described as quintessentially modern.{{sfn|Stirling|2007|p=527}}
| source = Katherine Stirling
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Bloch was not only interested in periods or aspects of history but in the importance of history as a subject, regardless of the period, of intellectual exercise. Davies writes, "he was certainly not afraid of repeating himself; and, unlike most English historians, he felt it his duty to reflect on the aims and purposes of history".{{Sfn|Davies|1967|p=270}} Bloch considered it a mistake for the historian to confine himself overly rigidly to his own discipline. Much of his editorialising in ''Annales'' emphasised the importance of parallel evidence to be found in neighbouring fields of study, especially [[archaeology]], [[ethnography]], [[geography]], literature, [[psychology]], sociology, technology,{{Sfn|Davies|1967|p=272}}  [[air photography]], ecology, [[Pollen analyses|pollen analysis]] and statistics.{{Sfn|Loyn|1999|pp=165–166}} In Bloch's view, this allowed not just a broader field of study, but a far more comprehensive understanding of the past than would be possible from relying solely on historical sources.{{Sfn|Davies|1967|p=272}} Bloch's favourite example of how technology impacts society was the [[watermill]]. This can be summed up as illustrating how it was known of but little used in the classical period; it became an economic necessity in the early medieval period; and finally, in the later Middle Ages, it represented a scarce resource increasingly concentrated in the nobility's hands.{{Sfn|Hughes|2002|p=127}}{{Refn|*''More on watermill''*|group=note}}

Bloch also emphasised the importance of geography in the study of history, and particularly in the study of rural history.{{Sfn|Davies|1967|p=274}} He suggested that, fundamentally, they were the same subjects, although he criticised geographers for failing to take historical chronology{{Sfn|Davies|1967|p=275}} or [[human agency]] into account. Using a farmer's field as an example, he described it as "fundamentally, a human work, built from generation to generation".{{Sfn|Baulig|1945|p=8}} Bloch also condemned the view that rural life was immobile. He believed that the Gallic farmer of the Roman period was inherently different from his 18th-century descendants, cultivating different plants, in a different way.{{Sfn|Baulig|1945|p=9}} He saw England and France's agricultural history as developing similarly, and, indeed, discovered an [[Enclosure Movement]] in France throughout the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries on the basis that it had been occurring in England in similar circumstances.{{Sfn|Sewell|1967|p=211}} Bloch also took a deep interest in the field of linguistics and their use of the [[comparative method]]. He believed that using the method in historical research could prevent the historian from ignoring the broader context in the course of his detailed local researches:{{Sfn|Davies|1967|p=279}} "a simple application of the comparative method exploded the ethnic theories of historical institutions, beloved of so many German historians".{{Sfn|Davies|1967|p=280}}

Block was multilingual, and impressed contemporaries with the breadth of his knowledge and erudition and his facility in both ancient and modern languages. His clear prose and his methodology of formulating historical issues in social terms left a strong impact on the discipline of history. Bloch dreamed of a borderless world, where the constraints of geography, time, and academic discipline could be dismantled and history could be addressed from a global perspective.{{sfn|Michaud|2010|p=38}}