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From the so-called clash of civilizations to the very real social crisis, from existential anguish to identity-driven withdrawal, everything urges us to revisit the efforts of historians to gain a better understanding of the evolution of human beings and societies. In recent decades, relativism in history has often kept pace with political consensus. It is time, on the contrary, to “rebuild a front of reason” in order to promote a new conception of history, as proposed by one of the greatest contemporary historians, Eric Hobsbawm, whose concluding speech at the British Academy’s colloquium on Marxist historiography, delivered on November 13, 2004, is published here.