Horizons of the Mediterranean, this sea so often crossed and so loved, in the native terroir; open spaces of economies; world in the French hexagon: the work of Fernand Braudel, one of the greatest historians of this century, has not followed a common path. In the autumn of his life, in a book that was to be the last, he set out for what, for many, was a starting point: the discovery of the roots, the characterization of the nation, the account of its own history.

If Braudel's function is different from all the others who tell the "stories of France", classic or recent, the explanation must be sought in the original gaze of a historian who lived long away from it. Hence, in this work in the form of a triptych, the unique example of a search for identity that, from one end to another, is nourished by the knowledge of other places, by the long frequentation of the other.

Braudel returns to the country like sailors after a long journey: unused to overly familiar stories, all too obvious references, the bird eye upon which others... who didn't leave..., they don't know, they can't see.

Seen from the world, inscribed in the world, Braudel's France is not closed in itself. In the relationship with others, welcomed or fought, feared or imitated, forges, in the thread of the centuries, a personality of his own Who better than Ferdinand Braudel, historian of the long durations and the great spaces, could make us understand. Roger Chartier.