Braudel is still quite frankly a towering figure in the historical field today, although he cuts a somewhat more quiet figure than other more.... uhhh.... ostentatious figures of 20th century historiography like say Hobsbawm, Porter or Trevor-Roper. Nevertheless, so many historians in my own discipline (world/global history) are very open about the debt that they owe to him.

Other people on this sub can, I'm sure, make further comments on his thought on French identity, capitalism as well as the many justified criticisms of him. However, I want to talk about his work on the Mediterranean. Braudel's vision of the sea as a "vast, complex expanse" upon which people traded, moved, made their livings and made war and as a system was nothing short of transformational for the way that historians envisiage oceans and oceanic interactions. The idea of the "Atlantic World" which emerged in about the 90s owes a huge amount to Braudel's concept of the longue duree in the Mediterranean. Other approaches to looking at the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal and the Pacific, all of which are some of the newest and most interesting areas of historical research right now similarly owe a great debt to him.