Editing Marc Bloch (section)

=== Early career ===
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| quote = "Must I say historical or indeed sociological? Let us more simply say, in order to avoid any discussion of method, human studies. Durkheim was no longer there, but the team he had grouped around him survived him...and the spirit which animates it remains the same".{{sfn|Bloch|1927|p=176}}
| source = Marc Bloch, review of ''[[L'Année Sociologique]]'', 1923–1925
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}}The war was fundamental in re-arranging Bloch's approach to history, although he never acknowledged it as a turning point.{{Sfn|Lyon|1985|p=183}} In the years following the war, a disillusioned Bloch rejected the ideas and the traditions that had formed his scholarly training. He rejected the political and biographical history which up until that point was the norm,{{Sfn|Lyon|1985|p=181}} along with what the historian George Huppert has described as a "laborious cult of facts" that accompanied it.{{Sfn|Huppert|1982|p=510}} In 1920, with the opening of the [[University of Strasbourg]],{{Sfn|Stirling|2007|p=529}} Bloch was appointed ''chargé de cours''{{Sfn|Friedman|1996|p=10}} ([[assistant lecturer]]){{sfn|Fink|1989|p=84}} of medieval history.{{Sfn|Davies|1967|p=267}} [[Alsace-Lorraine]] had been returned to France with the [[Treaty of Versailles]]; the status of the region was a [[November 1918 in Alsace-Lorraine|contentious political issue]] in Strasbourg, its capital, which had a large German population.{{Sfn|Stirling|2007|p=529}} Bloch, however, refused to take either side in the debate; indeed, he appears to have avoided politics entirely.{{Sfn|Friedman|1996|p=10}} Under [[Wilhelmine Germany]], Strasbourg had rivalled Berlin as a centre for intellectual advancement, and the University of Strasbourg possessed the largest academic library in the world. Thus, says [[Stephan R. Epstein]] of the [[London School of Economics]], "Bloch's unrivalled knowledge of the European Middle Ages was ... built on and around the French University of Strasbourg's inherited German treasures".{{Sfn|Epstein|1993|p=279}}{{Refn|The transfer of Strasbourg University from German to French ownership provided the opportunity to recruit, as [[H. Stuart Hughes]] put it, "''de novo'' a faculty of distinction".{{sfn|Hughes|2002|p=121}} Colleagues of Bloch at Strasbourg included archaeologists, psychologists, and sociologists such as [[Maurice Halbwachs]], [[Charles Blondel]], [[Gabriel le Bras]] and [[Albert Grenier]]; together they took part in a "remarkable interdisciplinary seminar".{{sfn|Epstein|1993|p=279}} Bloch himself was a believer in the [[Assimilation (French colonialism)|assimilation of Alsace]] and the encouragement of "anti-German cultural revanchism".{{sfn|Epstein|1993|p=280}}|group=note}} Bloch also taught French to the few German students who were still at the Centre d'Études Germaniques at the [[University of Mainz]] during the [[Occupation of the Rhineland]].{{Sfn|Friedman|1996|p=10}} He refrained from taking a public position when France [[occupation of the Ruhr|occupied the Ruhr]] in 1923 over Germany's perceived failure to pay [[war reparations]].{{Sfn|Friedman|1996|p=11}}

Bloch began working energetically,{{Sfn|Stirling|2007|p=529}} and later said that the most productive years of his life were spent at Strasbourg.{{Sfn|Friedman|1996|p=10}} In his teaching, his delivery was halting. His approach sometimes appeared cold and distant—caustic enough to be upsetting{{Sfn|Friedman|1996|p=10}}—but conversely, he could be also both charismatic and forceful.{{Sfn|Stirling|2007|p=529}} Durkheim died in 1917, but the movement he began against the "smugness" that pervaded French intellectual thinking continued.{{Sfn|Epstein|1993|p=278}} Bloch had been greatly influenced by him, as Durkheim also considered the connections between historians and sociologists to be greater than their differences. Not only did he openly acknowledge Durkheim's influence, but Bloch "repeatedly seized any opportunity to reiterate" it, according to R. C. Rhodes.{{Sfn|Rhodes|1999|p=111}}

At Strasbourg, he again met Febvre, who was now a leading historian{{Sfn|Friedman|1996|p=10}} of the 16th century.{{Sfn|Fink|1995|p=207}} Modern and medieval seminars were adjacent to each other at Strasbourg, and attendance often overlapped.{{Sfn|Friedman|1996|p=10}} Their meeting has been called a "germinal event for 20th-century historiography",{{Sfn|Sreedharan|2004|p=258}} and they were to work closely together for the rest of Bloch's life. Febvre was some years older than Bloch and was probably a great influence on him.{{Sfn|Lyon|1987|p=201}} They lived in the same area of Strasbourg{{Sfn|Friedman|1996|p=10}} and became kindred spirits,{{Sfn|Lyon|1985|p=182}} often going on walking trips across the [[Vosges]] and other excursions.{{Sfn|Hughes|2002|p=127}}

Bloch's fundamental views on the nature and purpose of the study of history were established by 1920.{{Sfn|Davies|1967|p=270}} That same year he defended,{{Sfn|Friedman|1996|p=4}} and subsequently published, his thesis.{{Sfn|Davies|1967|p=267}} It was not as extensive a work as had been intended due to the war.{{Sfn|Fink|1995|p=209}} There was a provision in French [[further education]] for doctoral candidates for whom the war had interrupted their research to submit only a small portion of the full-length thesis usually required.{{Sfn|Hughes|2002|p=127}} It sufficed, however, to demonstrate his credentials as a medievalist in the eyes of his contemporaries.{{Sfn|Hughes|2002|p=127}} He began publishing articles in [[Henri Berr]]'s [[Revue de synthèse|''Revue de Synthèse Historique'']].{{Sfn|Lyon|1985|pp=181–182}} Bloch also published his first major work, ''[[Les Rois thaumaturges]]'', which he later described as "''ce gros enfant''" (this big child).{{Sfn|Davies|1967|p=265}} In 1928, Bloch was invited to lecture at the Institute for the Comparative Study of Civilizations in Oslo. Here he first expounded publicly his theories on total, comparative history:{{Sfn|Lyon|1987|p=200}}{{refn|Bloch's ideas on comparative history were particularly popular in Scandinavia, and he regularly returned to them in his subsequent lectures there.{{sfn|Raftis|1999|p=73 n.4}}|group=note}} "it was a compelling plea for breaking out of national barriers that circumscribed historical research, for jumping out of geographical frameworks, for escaping from a world of artificiality, for making both horizontal and vertical comparisons of societies, and for enlisting the assistance of other disciplines".{{sfn|Lyon|1987|p=200}}