Since its heyday in the 1970s and 80s, cresting the waves of Ginzburg’s breakthrough tale of cheese and worms, micro history has remained both a popular and yet controversial methodology. However, in a field such as global history, micro history is indispensible, and in my opinion, an essential component of any worthwhile study. In a field defined by sweeping global trends engulfing billions, the individual experiences of singular actors, however seemingly detached from the grand theatres of global diplomacy, provide evidence, balance and counter point to the grander global arguments of the historian. Micro history anchors global history to reality; it provides the proof that global trends are indeed affecting global populations – or indeed the counter-argument to suggest that supposed global trends are not, after all, all-encompassing.

Last semester I was challenged with an 8,000 word honours project whose focus fell broadly upon the rise of the Scottish Nationalist Party following the Second World War. Typically, this phenomenon is largely recounted as a fairly positivist rise, explained in terms of national party politics and economics on a macro-level. Instead, I chose to focus my project on the election of a single MP in a by-election in the relatively small mining town of Motherwell. Through this more locally focused lens, one begins to see a tale where the most significant actors are local actors – GPs, ministers, eccentric members of the local CPGB branch or Orange Order, far removed from Churchill or Atlee in Whitehall. At the most local, individual range, many were more concerned with which church the candidate attended, rather than what side of the Commons he sat on. With this balance of perspective, we can begin to re-assess the previously ubiquitous macro explanations of high-level national politics – and, indeed of higher-level global politics.

It is in this vein that Andrade calls for balance in the field of global history, to underpin the macro with the micro to develop a fuller picture – in his case of cross-cultural relations in Dutch ruled Taiwan. Indeed, Streets-Salter heeds this call for balance in her global study of colonial reactions to mutiny in the early twentieth century, anchoring her argument in the micro study of Singapore in 1915 – indeed, the title ‘the local was global’ succinctly sums up her methodology.

It is important, however, that we tend away from too heavy a focus on the narrative of micro history. Micro histories have traditionally leant on a more substantial narrative component than other methodologies. We, as historians, must be vigilant that micro history is represented honestly and that false narrative is not inserted for its own sake. Micro history need not necessarily make a page-turning thriller if it holds a degree of wider significance to the study in question.

So what of the transnational perspective? Critics of transnational history have often branded the field as merely a trendy fad – comprised of fashionable, yet ultimately empty buzzwords. Yet micro history provides the very worth and essence of transnational history, the inherent proof that the subject is not just a flash-in-the-pan word-of-the-day. Individual examples at the very smallest of micro levels provide us with the substantiation that transnational influences and actors have fulfilled important and interesting roles in the past, making the study of transnational history on a larger macro scale worthwhile.

 

Readings:

Andrade, Tonio. “A Chinese Farmer, Two African Boys; and a Warlord: Toward a Global Microhistory.” Journal of World History 21, no. 4 (December 2010): 573.

Peltonen, Matti, ‘Clues, Margins, and Monads: The Micro-Macro Link in Historical Research’, History and Theory, 40(3) 2001, 347-359.

Struck, Bernhard, Kate Ferris, Jacques Revel, ‘Introduction. Space and Scale in Transnational History’, in International History Review Dec 2011 33.4 573-584.

Streets-Salter, Heather. “The Local Was Global: The Singapore Mutiny of 1915.” Journal of World History 24, no. 3 (2013): 539–76.

Micro History, Global History, Narrative and the Transnational Perspective