{"id":1625,"date":"2020-02-17T00:53:52","date_gmt":"2020-02-17T00:53:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/?p=1625"},"modified":"2020-02-17T00:54:37","modified_gmt":"2020-02-17T00:54:37","slug":"putting-humanity-back-into-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/2020\/02\/17\/putting-humanity-back-into-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Putting Humanity Back into History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It is too easy to forget that history is essentially the study of people who once lived. I use the term \u201cpeople\u201d instead of \u201cactor\u201d or \u201csubject\u201d or \u201cfigure\u201d because that\u2019s who they were: people. As important as thinking about our subject is in terms of its theory, its approaches, its varying scales of practice, etc., I find that it\u2019s important to remind ourselves that when we study history, we need to remember that historical people were people.<\/em> Just like us, they had their own loves, fears, desires, ambitions, and possessed all the other myriad qualities that made them, and make us, human.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Microhistory, and as I\u2019ve\nlearned of this past week, global microhistory, are highly valuable approaches\nto our subject. When written properly, such histories are able to write from\nthe perspective of the \u201clocal\u201d to answer big historical questions, answer the \u201cso\nwhat\u201d question, and perhaps most importantly, engage with the essential\nhumanity of the peoples of the past they address. In past seminars, I\u2019ve voiced\nmy concern with how history runs the risk of becoming too detached from a\npublic readership, as well as how the subject needs to be able to relate its studies\non more personal, intimate levels. Microhistory and its global counterpart do\njust that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Charmaine, I was\nvery much taken by the Andrade piece; it\u2019s been quite a while since I was so\nengaged with a piece of historical writing. Unlike much of the academic writing\nI read, it was written in the form of a narrative, one written with a stylized\nprose that made its text feel exciting and fresh. Take for example this passage,\nwhich I feel really showcased the \u201chuman factor\u201d of Koxinga\u2019s war with the\nDutch:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A secretary dipped pen in ink. Who was he, they asked, and why had he come? He said his name was Sait and he’d come because he couldn’t stand it any more, the way Koxinga and his soldiers mistreated him and the other Chinese farmers. Koxinga’s soldiers pressed them constantly for money. They forced them to chop bamboo and bring it to his headquarters. They demanded all the stockpiles of rice and sugar without paying anything and even made them bring it themselves and load it on Koxinga’s ships. He and the other farmers had given up working their fields, knowing that whatever they harvested this year would be stolen from them. Now the worms ate through the rice stalks even as Koxinga’s soldiers and the poorer Chinese were dying from hunger. This year’s harvest would be terrible, he said, the worst he’d ever seen. <\/p>Tonio Andrade, “A Chinese Farmer, Two African Boys, and a Warlord: Toward a Global Microhistory,” Journal of World History<\/em> 21, No. 4 (December 2010), 578-579.<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is an exciting history: one that is both narratively engaging whilst also able to answer academic questions and open up new lines of inquiry. I must admit that I am rather biased in my admiration of this approach: my ideal historical work is one that combines the best aspects of academic and popular history. In my view, the best historical works are those that can both appeal to a general public and push the field forward. The works of Jill Lepore, H.W. Brands, and Gerard DeGroot are some of my favorite historians because they take such an approach to their work. (Lepore herself wrote a very nice article on microhistory that I will link here<\/a>.) The very methodology and writing of microhistory seem like they are uniquely geared to produce the type of history I love and admire most. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pieces authored by\nour very own Bernhard Struck et al. and Ghobrial are also worth mention; if the\nAndrade article demonstrated the ambitions and end result of transnational\nhistorical practice, Struck and Ghobrial provide the framework and methodology\nnecessary for the writing of such works. I\u2019m particularly intrigued by the\nfusion of microhistorical method with transnational history\u2019s scale and perspective,\nand what kinds of history may be produced by such a union. As noted by Ghobrial,\nglobal microhistory allows the historian to engage with detail and root their\nwork in the local and personal in order to better conceptualize the global. If\nsuch an approach doesn\u2019t provide new, ambitious insights unto already\nwell-known pasts, I don\u2019t know what will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, I was very\nhappy to have been able to read histories over the past two weeks that\nemphasize humanity <\/em>in their approaches (I very much enjoyed last week\u2019s\nreadings on Transnational Lives<\/em>). I myself often forget that the\nhistorical forces we study had tangible, serious impacts on the peoples of the\npast. We must honor them by writing histories that better understand them and\ntheir times, that realize connections and concepts they may have never conceived\nof. We must write history that is meaningful to the past and our present. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is too easy to forget that history is essentially the study of people who once lived. I use the term \u201cpeople\u201d instead of \u201cactor\u201d or \u201csubject\u201d or \u201cfigure\u201d because that\u2019s who they were: people. As important as thinking about<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5wNtZ-qd","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1629,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625\/revisions\/1629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}