Özet:

University departments of international relations and other social sciences usually feature courses on Political History as part of their curriculum. These courses focus mainly on the history of inter-state relations. Additionally, they try to address to the extent allowed by their schedule the history of internal developments within countries. As a branch of the history discipline, political history is not exempt from those problems related to methodology and teaching in history. In these courses, the history of inter-state relations is usually studied only in reference to wars and agreements. As course hours are limited, internal state developments are often insufficiently covered. This study will attempt to explore how the French Annales School, which has been a subject of debate since the 1920s and still bears considerable influence in the social sciences, can contribute to developing an approach to political history courses. This school may offer new possibilities for an alternative approach to political history, which has so far been treated as a history of wars and proven to be insufficient in addressing the history of internal developments within a state. The school suggests that history can be better studied through a multi-layered approach and comparative method based on the analysis of not only political but also sociocultural and geographical dimensions. The application and spread of the school’s method in undergraduate education may allow for more powerful and efficient teaching in political history courses. In this study, we will attempt to elaborate upon the possible contributions of such a method to political history teaching with a special emphasis on the studies of representatives of the school in Turkey.

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