After all, what is of essence here in a discussion of microhistory, transnational history and global history is the matter of scale. A change of scale brings in a change of perspective, which results in new questions and the development of new modes of narrative, explanation, analysis – that is, a new methodology.
New methodologies bring with them their problems as well, and also new questions that demand satisfactory answers. Microhistory and transnational history overlap in their concerns with “micro-process perspective” and “individuals or the local” which will aid understanding on the macro-scale. (“Introduction”, B. Struck et. al.) Yet, this necessarily entails a need to bridge the “broad range from local and individual to global,” and to choose carefully the “units of analysis”.
A good way to start thinking about these issues is to look at ways that the practise of microhistory and transnational history differs – here I shall refer to Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms and Heather Streets-Salter’s discussion of the Singapore Mutiny in 1915. It will be difficult (and perhaps inaccurate) to say in a clear-cut way, that microhistory is methodological, whereas transnational history is a perspective – ultimately because both kinds of historical writings demonstrate methodological innovation and a change of perspective. But my first attempt at differentiation is to posit that microhistory is indebted to cultural history, whilst transnational history emerges out of the study of international politics.
Ginzburg’s cross-section of 16th century Italy centres on the figure of a miller commonly known as Menocchio. What Ginzburg is refuting here is that the relationship between the dominant (I’m thinking priests, landlords etc.) and subordinating classes (peasants) is unilateral, of a top-down kind. Ginzburg shows in his book that Menocchio was also influenced by the peasant oral tradition. What is being dealt with here is how ideas transmit, and in particular, how someone belonging to the otherwise faceless group of the “peasantry” is not only open to influences from both highbrow and lowbrow, but also mixes them together in such an explosive way that authorities had to deem him as a heretic and be sent to being burnt at the stake. The important discovery here, with recourse to an “exceptional case”, is that the story of an elite culture dominating an agricultural society has its surprising twists and anomalies. That is to say that the dominance of elite culture is not absolute, the nature of the elite-peasant relationship is more fluid and porous than it used to be portrayed, and there might have been a radical peasant culture that had existed autonomously.
Now consider Streets-Salter’s history of the Singapore Mutiny. It has less to do with challenging assumptions related to cultural transmission than to suggest that framing the event in the context of Singaporean national history/Indian nationalist movement is painfully circumscribed. It deals here with the political intercolonial and global connections and ideologies that informed and influenced the actions of individuals involved in the mutiny. The author is arguing for its significance to regional, imperial and world history alongside other political events which happened in the same year but have been accorded more importance.
I liked what Ginzburg said about the distinguishing feature of historical study being “its concrete nature” and “attention to specific or singular phenomena”. Practitioners of both microhistory and transnational history would very likely agree to that. If the umbrella term is “historical micro”, and its contribution lies with providing “new ways of describing and analysing” micro-macro links (as Matti Peltonen cogently argues), then microhistory and transnational history each represent an original way to conceptualise the linkage.
The “Introduction” piece (by B. Struck et. al.) provides another useful angle on this, using the metaphor of the “pendulum swing”. From “large-scale questions and analysis in classic social history in 1960s and 80s to small-scale analysis in cultural history during the 80s and 90s,” we go back to the preference for “large-scale questions related to globalisation, global, world and transnational history.” My analysis above has largely focused on microhistory as a cultural history and transnational history as a political history, but here we can see that another differentiating aspect has to do with the scale.
As last week, another superb analytical and thought-provoking post that comments on various readings simultaneously and in conversation and connection nice. I love how you weave things together – you are clearly heading in the right direction here.
From my perspective, two thoughts. I do not see micro history à la Ginzburg so much “indebted to cultural history” rather than triggering cultural history with its critique of quantitative social history of the 1960s and 1970s. On transnational history as “emerging out of international politics”, I see that as too narrow. That is certainly one key trend from the early 1990s US discussion around Tyrrell et al, but only one of the trends.