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History vocabulary · Historiography and Historical Thinking

Longue durée

Meaning in history, with examples

nounAdvanced term

In history, longue durée means: A scale of historical analysis emphasizing slow-changing structures over long spans of time.

In Turkish: uzun süre, uzun dönemli tarihsel zaman

How it is used

Use for the explanatory timescale, not merely as an elegant phrase for a long book.

Example sentences

  1. The study places coastal settlement patterns within the longue durée.

    The explanation follows durable patterns beyond individual events.

  2. A change of ruler mattered less in this longue durée account than the river's course.

    Structural conditions receive more explanatory weight than short-term politics.

Common collocations

  • a longue durée perspective
  • history in the longue durée
  • historiographyThe writing of history, and especially the study of how historians have written about a subject over time, which sources they used and how their views changed.
  • periodizationThe dividing of the past into named periods, such as antiquity and the Middle Ages, and the debate about where the boundaries between them should fall.

More terms: Historiography and Historical Thinking

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