History may be divided into three movements: what moves rapidly, what moves slowly and what appears not to move at all.
Interpretation
History can be understood through different paces of change and continuity.
Fernand Braudel's quote suggests that history is not simply a linear narrative of events; instead, it can be categorized by the speed at which changes occur. Some events or trends progress quickly, some take place gradually, and others seem static but hold deeper significance over time, highlighting the complexities of historical interpretation.
In practice
This quote can be used in a history class to explain different historical processes.
For the historian everything begins and ends with time, a mathematical, godlike_x000D_ _x000D_ time, a notion easily mocked, time external to men, 'exogenous,' as economists_x000D_ _x000D_ would say, pushing men, forcing them, and painting their own individual times_x000D_ _x000D_ the same color: it is, indeed, the imperious time of the world.
Events are the ephemera of history; they pass across its stage like fireflies, hardly glimpsed before they settle back into darkness and as often as not into oblivion. Every event, however brief, has to be sure a contribution to make, lights up some dark corner or even some wide vista of history. Nor is it only political history which benefits most, for every historical landscape - political, economic, social, even geographical - is illumined by the intermittent flare of the event.
Leadership of a world-economy is an experience of power which may blind the victor to the march of history.
If you seek Hamilton's monument, look around. You are living in it. We honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton's country, a mighty industrial nation with a strong central government.
The source known as Deep Throat provided a kind of road map through the scandal. His one consistent message was that the Watergate burglary was just the tip of the iceberg.
All black Americans have slave names. They have white names; names that the slave master has given to them.
The people and the cultures of what is known as Africa are older than the word 'Africa.' According to most records, old and new, Africans are the oldest people on the face of the earth. The people now called Africans not only influenced the Greeks and the Romans, they influenced the early world before there was a place called Europe.
This above all makes history useful and desirable; it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.
The practical value of history is to throw the film of the past through the material projector of the present on to the screen of the future.
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