The second reason I do not want to deal immediately with the perspective of Annales is a personal one. It is too tempting for the latest comer to a team that is so personalized to merge himself into the group by exaggerating the extent of memories and identity. The temptatiou is all the greater since, like most historians of my generation in France, I grew up in touch with the living tradition of the Annales. I would therefore prefer to resist this double temptation. It seems to me that I might do better if I were to discuss the degree to which this tradition still governs iesearch. In this regard, I wish to emphasize the provisional nature and the inadequacy of these reflections. This is not a rhetorical statement, but a statement of simple fact. We know, more or less, from texts or from persoral testimony, the main currents which converged around the Annales. But these only offer a history of ideas and hence one that is abstract. As to the rest, despite the basic elements put together by J. H. Hexter or by Traian Stoianovich, nearly all of the social history of the movement escapes us: the composition and the constitution of successive and cumulative networks which became identified with the journal, the structure of the field of social sciences as it was defined for a half-century by the university, the scientific boundaries and concrete rapports de force existing among the various groups. it will take a systematic scientific study to locate the role unquestionably primordial of the Annales movement in the development of the social sciences in France; to under stand the progress, the delays, the barriers the social conditions of its reception, its production and reproduction; and finally, to evaluate the truly new contribution and its adaptive ability. This study, which is obviously urgent, has not been done. Once undertaken, it will be long and difficult, because of the many forms which the intervention of the Annales have taken over a period of 50 years. In the absence of such a study, we must make do with very general hypotheses, and with empirical propositions. This should be kept in mind.