A discussion on narrative

In my mind, a key purpose of these blogs is to engage with the historiographical debates which have relevance to transnational methodologies, even tangential relevance. It is for this reason which I have decided to focus my contribution for week four on the development of ‘narrative’ and ‘narrative voice’ within micro-historical literature.

From my understanding, narrative is not essential to microhistory. However, that does not stop talented academics, such as Natalie Zemon Davis or Tonio Andrade, from dabbling in it. I can see why. Having not left my room for the last week, stories of Chinese spies and prickly French scientists make macro trends such as transnational movements of labour and capital, or narratives of racial/cultural intersectionality and cooperation (read Chinese and Dutch emigration to Taiwan and the shifting allegiance of native Taiwanese groups) come alive. They impart excitement and make a normally cynical and recalcitrant reader (me) hungry to devour more of the fascinating historical details within.

However, upon closing my laptop and reaching across to pick up Sarah Dunant’s ‘Blood and Beauty’ (a well-researched, but entirely fictional, novel on the Borgia family) a feeling of unease began to creep through me… this story, if one were to pretend it were historically accurate, could very easily be used to highlight phenomena such as the transnational reach of syphilis and it’s stereotyping in Italy as a French phenomenon, or the importance of mercenary flows across the European continent.  

Worried, I returned to Andrade’s work to seek out the individual level history within it. Instead, I found a story. Extrapolated from several primary documents to be sure, but then again… so was Dunant’s book. Andrade’s use of Braudel (who was, to my [admittedly very fallible] memory a critic of the term microhistory) to make an impassioned plea to “imagination” is very good and all. But when you use this ‘imagination’ to buttress an argument about how the disparate treatment of defectors led to a German helping Koxinga to end the Fort Zeelandia siege, you had better have a source to back that up.

As a matter of fact, Andrade doesn’t have a citation for that. Perhaps that is because Hans Jurgen Radis, the ‘defector’, appears in the defeated governor Frederick Coyett’s account of the siege? An account, notably, written by Coyett to absolve himself of accusations from the VOC, which held him responsible for the loss of Taiwan. Wikipedia suggested that a Swiss soldier who was present during the siege also mentioned this betrayal. However, it provided no reference and none of the articles I engaged with mentioned this text, let alone corroborated its existence.  Other accounts of the battle and Taiwan at the time (notably Vittorio Ricci’s, a Dominican friar who acted as an emissary and advisor for Koxinga, but who despised him enough to write upon his death that: he cheered “the merciful Lord” for “properly killing, with his sovereign hand, that wicked tyrant in the prime of his life”) do not mention Hans Jurgen Radis or any defector at all, despite having little reason not to.

This is the problem I have with narrative depictions of history, and why Braudel can keep his imagination to himself. Whilst bringing stories to life is essential to engage with audiences, especially those who are not historically trained, that does not give us license to become fiction writers, especially if what we write appears ahistorical when put to scrutiny. Whilst using the individual level or a narrative voice to vivify macro level trends is undoubtably beneficial, we cannot sacrifice the rigor of our historical methods on the altar of a good story.

I fear many of those who engage with narrative histories forget this in the satisfying rush that comes with writing a great story. I suppose you can probably tell, I’m not planning on ‘imagining’ the history of any individuals in my essays.