Fernand Braudel liked to say that historians ought to take a'global'approach to their work, in other words to see the historical problems on which they were working as part of a larger whole." La globalite, ce n'est pas la prevention d'ecrire une histoire totale du monde [...] C'est simplement le desir, quand on a aborde un probleme, d'en depasser systematiquement les limites." 1 Braudel himself gave one of the most remarkable examples of this global approach by refusing to limit himself even to the Mediterranean and by placing the history of that sea between the Atlantic and the Sahara. 2 Today, sixty years after the foundation of Annales, it is time to see the historical movement-if not" school"-centred on the journal as itself a part of history. In that case we might do well to follow Braudel's example and try to place this movement in a global context. In recent years, it has become customary-in some circles at least-to describe the Annales approach as" the new history". 3

In this article I should like to ask the question'How new is the new history?'and to try to define the contribution of the journal and the movement (which has lasted three generations now) by means of comparison and contrast. The area chosen for comparison will be Europe and America.