The first thing that came to mind when doing this week\u2019s readings was the idea of scale. When thinking about microhistory versus global history, they seemed to me like opposite ends of a scale \u2013 one put a magnifying glass over the reading of history, the other aimed to capture the vastness of the field, the interconnectedness of expanses of time and space. However, the readings provided a refreshing take on how global history and microhistory can join forces and as De Vito and Gerrisen postulated: \u201cCombin[e] the global historical perspective with micro-analysis.\u201d I do think that this concept holds a lot of merit \u2013 by putting global history on a human scale, we can counteract this reputation of global history as being focused on grand-narratives and structural forces and \u2018breathe the life\u2019 back into historical writing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Andrade\u2019s nail-biting tale about the Chinese farmer \u2013 how such a seemingly insignificant player in history could have been connected to a series of important decisions was an incredibly interesting perspective. However, I did find that a lot of Andrade\u2019s commentary seemed to me incredibly speculative: what if <\/em>the Dutch had listened to Sait, what if <\/em>Sait had waited rather than (presumably) killing himself… <\/em>And I can\u2019t help but wonder if perhaps this is the biggest set-back of combining micro-history with global history and attempting to draw broader conclusions \u2013 can we ever really know <\/em>what someone was thinking? <\/p>\n\n\n\n On the other hand, I did think that Kreuder-Sonnen was more successful in her attempt to tie together one individual\u2019s story with the concept of the transnational and national. Through her analysis of one man\u2019s memoirs and his attitude towards bacteriology and the \u2018use\u2019 of scientific discovery I was provided insight into how the national was conceived by Polish scientists. However, here again I thought there was limitations to how useful this narrative was in explaining a larger phenomenon \u2013 the growth of national sentiment in Poland. Bujwid was certainly an anomaly in his attitude and treatment of scientific exchange \u2013 he disregarded any sense of patriotism and used imperial structures to gain what he needed to advance his own scientific agenda. However, Kreuder-Sonnen makes clear that this was unusual \u2013 it was possible to forego the national cause as Bujwid however this did not mean that many others felt the way he did \u2013 therefore how useful is his narrative to us really? However, I am stuck again with whether we can see this as a limitation \u2013 is microhistory meant to explain wider phenomenon? I assume that is its purpose for global history, but if we are simply using examples to prove a bigger point then are we reducing these personal stories of human courage and struggling to mere case studies? Beyond this, who gets to decide if a story is exceptional enough to be included as such an example? <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m not sure if microhistory is meant to be aggregated to macro-level analysis \u2013 however I think that it can provide extremely interesting viewpoints and add depth to our understanding of attitudes and behaviours at a given time \u2013 without Bujwid\u2019s story we would never have known that \u2018pure\u2019 science free of national impetus was indeed the intent of some scientists. Microhistory is an extremely compelling if not temperamental perspective to use when attempting global and transnational historical writing, and I think used wisely it could give back some human agency to a seemingly limitless field. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The first thing that came to mind when doing this week\u2019s readings was the idea of scale. When thinking about microhistory versus global history, they seemed to me like opposite ends of a scale \u2013 one put a magnifying glass<\/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-2502","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-Em","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2502","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=2502"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2503,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2502\/revisions\/2503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}