The Importance of Scale

When studying history, it is common to think in terms of time; when an event happened and the events that preceded and succeeded it. But to throw in the idea of scale can allow a certain event to be viewed differently. Scale creates a different perspective that is often not thought about when it comes to a chronological national history. By breaking things down, into smaller pieces, a larger connection can become apparent.

This is an idea that is linked to that of microhistory, and the notion of focusing on a singular event that is out of place to draw conclusions about the larger theme of events. Microhistory was initially used as an overall label for a set of historical studies with the main characteristic of these studies being the “method of clues”.[1] This is an aspect of microhistory that was advocated by Carlo Ginzburg and Giovanni Levi in which the historians find something that does not fit, a ‘clue’, that therefore needs to be explained and begin an investigation from there. The ‘clue’ is something that seems odd, out of place, and in some cases discontinuous from its environment and it is only from studying this ‘clue’ that connections are revealed, to create a continuity and flow between events.[2] Microhistory reveals a need for scale to be classed as important as it is only through the breakdown of themes into smaller scales, a case study of various events so to speak, that connections between these can be formed, a connection that may have been lost by only viewing the larger picture of the nation state.

For transnational history, the idea of scale can also be seen as important to understanding events and larger themes. In particular, social processes, and how they overlap, cannot be comprehended within boundaries of the likes of states, nations, empires and regions. To really grasp the importance of interaction and the circulation of ideas, peoples, institutions or technologies across state or national boundaries, it is the circulation that needs to be studied and not the various nations themselves.[3] Often it is only by doing this that interactions between the people themselves can be highlighted, which can give a different perspective to a particular time period than the study of the nation state itself would have highlighted. It can be seen that the nation state is no longer the only perspective to take when analysing history and that historians are branching out to look for alternative narratives.

Changing the perspective that is used to analyse history creates a change of scale which in turn allows for new questions to arise and with that new explanations for the connection of events. This links to microhistory and the idea of studying the small scale to get a better understanding of the bigger picture and how everything is interconnected. A transnational and microhistorical perspective, to look to the smaller scale and to break events down, allows people, events, objects to become interconnected in a way that can get lost when simply analysing the history of a nation state.

[1] Peltonen, Matti, ‘Clues, Margins, and Monads: The Micro-Macro Link in Historical Research’, History and Theory, 40(3) 2001, p.349

[2] Ibid., p.357

[3] Struck, Bernhard, Kate Ferris, Jacques Revel, ‘Introduction. Space and Scale in Transnational History’, in International History Review Dec 2011 33.4 p.574