The very names we use to describe ancient ideas or vanished forms of social organization would be quite meaningless if we had not known living men.

Bloch was trying to reinvent history as a social science but he departed significantly from Durkheim in his refusal to exclude psychology from history; Bloch maintained that the individual actor should be considered along with social forces. [citation needed]
Bloch's most important work centered on the study of feudalism.

Bloch was a quintessential modernist. Marc Léopold Benjamin Bloch (French: [maʁk blɔk]; 6 July 1886 – 16 June 1944) was a French historian who cofounded the highly influential Annales School of French social history.