Micro, macro, global, transnational, and spatial. All of these terms relate to our approaches to regions and scale in history. Up to this week, I rarely considered that micro-history, centered in small-scale stories of individuals, could be applied to the seemingly broad scope of global and transnational history. Boy was I wrong!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From the reading list, I really enjoyed the micro-approaches and story-telling aspect of Andrade\u2019s and Kreuder-Sonnen\u2019s articles. While it felt like a series of personal stories, both historians were connecting to a broader theme of wide global interactions and transnational connections amidst their micro-stories. The recovery of these historical actors\u2019 relations, actions, and often disastrous demise brings to life the complexity of human interaction in contested spaces, as in seventeenth-century Taiwan or among late-nineteenth-century \u2018Polish\u2019 medical experts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From Kreuder-Sonnen\u2019s article, I was intrigued by the differing outcomes of transnational and cross-cultural interactions depending on the period. In the late-nineteenth century, an individual without strong national identities, namely Odo Bujwid, was able to navigate between two nationalized medical styles and transcended both by combining them. The same cannot be said of Polish bacteriologists in the interwar year, demonstrating the growing importance of nationalized identities into the twentieth century. Still, as we have mentioned in previous classes, it was because of the cross-border interactions and comparisons that nationalistic categorizations and pride developed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Andrade, I found his push to recover these individual stories in an interconnected world extremely compelling. Just from the title, I began asking myself, why are these people here, what are they doing, and what are their presence and actions indicative of? For the Chinese farmer, two African boys, and a warlord in Dutch-controlled Taiwan, the answer is responding to a hostile globally interconnected situation utilizing their unique background and skills. From here I began contemplating how I could highlight the experiences of individuals within my research and connect them to wider transnational themes. Looking at shipping records from nineteenth-century R\u00edo de la Plata, there is a wealth of knowledge and stories to glean from the sources. From privateers (pirates with papers), enslaved Africans, wealthy merchants, and enlightenment thinkers, the possibilities are plentiful. The only problem I have now is where to start\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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