Oh dear.  Barkley Rosser, yet again, criticises a misrepresentation.

I never claimed  <somehow Braudel achieved this recognition through fiddling
around with Lazarsfeld or anybody else after WW II, or insinuating that
perhaps he had something to do with lying about military.>

I did claim  <A further one million dollar grant came his way from the Ford
Foundation, awarded for his political influence rather than his academic
achievement>

I am pleased to have the opportunity to clarify and corroborate that claim,
which derives from:

Francis X. Sutton, "The Ford Foundation's Transatlantic Role and Purposes,
1951–81

http://www.jstor.org/pss/40237256

Abstract
The author, then an officer of the Behavioural Science Program at the Ford
Foundation, describes his mission to Paris in 1957 to assess the plans of
Fernand Braudel and Gaston Berger for a Maison des Sciences de l'Homme. His
Harvard background and acquaintance with French social science of the time
provided no clear intellectual agenda for the Ford Foundation on the social
sciences in France. The Ford Foundation's purposes in Europe at that time
were more broadly political than intellectual. Its grant of $1 million for
the Maison, made in 1960, was intended to strengthen the social sciences in
France, not in particular fields or methods, but because such strengthening
was thought to contribute to the development of France as a part of western
Europe and the Atlantic community. Braudel, as academic statesman, rightly
saw that the Ford Foundation was chiefly useful as a catalyst for action by
the French government. Later, after 1966, in the Ford Foundation presidency
of McGeorge Bundy, there appeared possibilities for more focussed agendas in
the social sciences in Europe. These were lost in choices forced on the Ford
Foundation by the constriction of its budgets during the stagflation of the
1970's; but the author has observed and abetted in far places the
intellectual influence of Braudel and the Maison to the present time.

A mix of careless reading and ignorance of the facts runs right through
Barkley Rosser’s mail as it stands.  I would not wish to tire readers by
addressing additional points at this juncture.  If he, or anyone, still
seeks clarification or corroboration of any point I made, I would be pleased
to assist, on or off list.  

Readers should perhaps bear in mind that Febvre got the job of editor of the
in-house UNESCO journal out of the 1948 switch to Paris, and that Braudel
was not only a member of Febvre’s staff, he was also thought of as Febvre’s
adoptive son, living at the Febvre residence.  As best I recall, Febvre
first met Rockefeller to discuss funding in 1927.

Rob Tye, York, UK

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On Tue, 23 Dec 2014 22:18:06 +0000, Rosser, John Barkley - rosserjb
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Oh dear.  Rob Tye has decided to go after Fernand Braudel, charging him
with getting money from the Ford Foundation for his political influence, not
his academic achievements, while also supposedly attempting to clear the
table so that economics and politics (or ideology) will be freed from each
other, although the quote provided from his _Mediterranean_ did not
obviously imply that to me.  Nor do I  offhand see how he  is some major
influence on Foucault or how it is that the move of UNESCO to Paris was
somehow terribly important for his international reputation, or how he is
linked to Wittgenstein, whom Rob considers to be a great font of evil.

Let us be clear.  Braudel's _Mediterranean_ was in the works for over 20
years.  UNESCO and the Ford Foundation and all the other postwar stuff  had
nothing to do with it.  Furthermore, it is not a history of capitalism,
contrary to Rob's assertion, although Braudel did write an influential three
volume history of capitalism.  As it is, Braudel's _Mediterranean_, or (in
English), _The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of
Philip I(I_,in two long volumes, is considered by many historians simply to
be the single greatest work of historical scholarship by anybody in any
language in the entire 20th century.  Attempting to claim that somehow
Braudel achieved this recognition through fiddling around with Lazarsfeld or
anybody else afterWW II, or insinuating that perhaps he had something to do
with lying about military, is really off base.

Barkley Rosser
________________________________________
From: Societies for the History of Economics [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of
Rob Tye [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2014 6:23 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [SHOE] Early 20th Century Principles of Economics Texts

Robert Leeson asks for a history of external pressures and unscrupulous
methods. A broader picture of the matter yields interesting results imo.

Samuelson published in 1948, I turn to another giant created at that time -
Fernand Braudel - who published on the history of capitalism in his
‘Mediterranean’ in 1949

In the 1966 edition of Mediterranean (p. 902) he seems to give his own view
of the mid century change here:

FB  <Nowadays we have two fairly well established 'chains' to choose from,
one built up by the research of the last twenty or thirty years – the chain
of economic events and their short-term conjunctures; the other catalogued
over the ages – the chain of political events in the wide sense.   For us,
there will always be two chains – not one..... we should beware of falling
into the trap of naively assuming that one can explain the other>

Thus the Braudel aim is not to disguise ideology behind a technical
presentation.  Much more fundamentally, he lays the ground for an
intellectual canvas cleaning in which traditional ideological concerns are
no longer relevant at all, and can be banished from the scene.  A modern
Macbeth, he fractures reality itself in pursuit of his goal.

Braudel’s Post-Modern/Post-Rational position surely derives primarily from
Febvre, but parallels moves were also under way in the UK by Wittgenstein,
promoted by Keynes.

The major event I would point up in 1948 was the abrupt shunting of UNESCO
from London to Paris – after Julian Huxley’s unexplained mid term
resignation.  Huxley was closely associated with the prominent British
ideological group Hayek dismissed as intellectuals – Wells, Russell, Bernal,
Haldane, Needham etc.  All these people had interests in science and
socialism, and acted to weld leftist economic ideology to scientific
objectivity in the public mind, promoting socialism as the rational path.
Keynes, clearly and undeniably, saw Russell’s reliance on rationality in
political life as ‘ludicrous’, thus was apparently an intellectual enemy of
this Wells grouping, alongside Hayek.

Braudel was a great beneficiary of the UNESCO move to Paris.  For me the
bottom line is that rather than (legitimately) seeking to dissolve the link
between scientific objectivity and socialism, Braudel and Keynes
(illegitimately) acted to undermine rationality itself – setting us on the
road to Foucault etc.

Lazarsfeld came up only peripherally in the textbook discussion – but he
also worked on propaganda for the Ford Foundation, and on the efficacy of
lying for the US military.  Braudel seems to have won what Lazarsfeld calls
<a machine> out of these events (PFL: you need a machine to advance an
intellectual agenda .... the money of government and commerce)  Braudel got
French government money, and international prestige, via UNESCO.  A further
one million dollar grant came his way from the Ford Foundation, awarded for
his political influence rather than his academic achievement, and on
condition, it seems, that he wrote the syllabus for his new institute in
collaboration with Lazarsfeld.

This is just a small part of the web – that Needham, apart form his interest
in science and the political economy, was also a controversial weapons
inspector, is another interesting aspect of this mid century transformation.

Corroborations available - please ask

Rob Tye