I found the Andrade article \u2018Toward a Global Microhistory\u2019 particularly thought-provoking. His narratival and biographical approach to recounting the Dutch-Chinese conflict of 1661 in Taiwan made this article a very enjoyable and casual read. Andrade begins with introducing a major international conflict or event and then shifts to the perspective of a seemingly small or insignificant actor, such as Sait.
Through my studies thus far, I feel as though I have been encouraged to stray from this type of historiographic approach – therefore I am a bit skeptical of Andrade\u2019s confidence in portraying the inner thoughts of major actors like Coyet and Cauw. Primary sources such as letters and personal diaries inform Andrade\u2019s characterization of these actors. While these types of sources are likely the most ideal for creating these personalities, I am still suspicious of the author\u2019s ability to accurately convey the personal opinions and sentiments of Dutchmen in such a detailed manner. The issues associated with translating primary Chinese and Dutch sources into English along with the dynamic of creating a narrative claiming to have insight of what these characters are thinking, together, is a bit troubling. Not to be a pessimistic postmodernist, but the instability of language and reception poses the largest threat to this work in my opinion.
Although, by prefacing his introduction of Sait, the two African boys, Koxinga, and others within their respective historical context, Andrade was able to justify some of the gaps in the information available regarding these actors. Through this entry point, these diaries and letters piece together a narrative that has a much higher degree of historical relevance. The story of Sait and the two African boys do not appear to be very useful or relevant in isolation, but together, add colour to the dynamic between the Chinese, Dutch and African slaves during this historical period. While this narratival style has its limits, Andrade\u2019s approach provokes new questions and subsequently, produces new hypotheses in examining the dynamics of seemingly unambiguous events in history. I am left with this question: How do we exploit the benefits of this narratival\/biographical style of writing a more personal global history without incorporating too much \u2018imagination\u2019?
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I found the Andrade article \u2018Toward a Global Microhistory\u2019 particularly thought-provoking. His narratival and biographical approach to recounting the Dutch-Chinese conflict of 1661 in Taiwan made this article a very enjoyable and casual read. Andrade begins with introducing a major<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"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-2490","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-Ea","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2490","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\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2490"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2493,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2490\/revisions\/2493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}