Pierre Chaunu
| Pierre Chaunu | |
|---|---|
| Born |
17 August 1923 Belleville-sur-Meuse, France |
| Died | 22 October 2009 (aged 86) Caen, France |
| Occupation | Historian |
Pierre Chaunu (17 August 1923 – 22 October 2009) was a French historian. His specialty was Latin American history; he also studied French social and religious history of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. A leading figure in French quantitative history as the founder of "serial history", he was professor emeritus at Paris IV-Sorbonne, a member of the Institut de France, and a commander of the Légion d'Honneur. A convert to Protestantism from Roman Catholicism, he defended his Gaullist views most notably in a longtime column in Le Figaro and on Radio Courtoisie.
A native of Belleville-sur-Meuse, “on the outskirts of the battle of Verdun” in his own words, and raised by his uncle and aunt, Pierre René Chaunu was deeply scarred by his own family tragedies, which explained the reasons for his conservatism. He was however a Republican and a Democrat, rejecting totally the far-right ideologies that were widespread during his youth. He became a strong supporter of general Charles de Gaulle and of Gaullism in the aftermath of World War II.
Pierre Chaunu taught in the lycée of Bar-le-Duc in 1947, where he was a professor of history. He was admitted to the École des hautes études hispaniques in 1948 and stayed in Madrid and Seville until 1951. Strongly influenced by Fernand Braudel, who was his mentor, and the Annales School (where he was secretary to Lucien Febvre), Chaunu defended his dissertation on Séville et l’Atlantique in 1954. Nonetheless, Braudel denied him entry into the sixth section of the École practique des hautes études.
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