Global History and Micro History: A GlobalMicro Pathway

Two areas and approaches to historical writing which captured imaginations during the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries were microhistory and global history. Both have generated wide interest among historians and the general public. Microhistory connected with cultural history became a popular historical methodology from the later 1970s, especially in France and Italy. Inspired by anthropological approaches, microhistorians reduced the scale of their analyses as a way of testing the large-scale paradigms that had come to influence the study of the past, for example Marxism, modernization theory, and the quantitative focus of certain approaches derived from the social sciences. It gained a wide public reception around the film 'The Return of Martin Guerre' and Natalie Zemon Davis's historical contribution to this.

Global history, by contrast, developed from the late 1990s out of comparative economic history, especially of China, South Asia and Europe in a debate on 'divergent' paths of economic development. It looked for broad frameworks in which to situate events, peoples and movements. It also sought to move beyond the specialism of area studies and the political and cultural boundaries of 'the nation'. It sought to make this comparative and connective history across the great regions of the world central to the subjects and methods of historians and museums. Global history has become the focus of new research centres as well as journals and MA programmes in several parts of the world.

A number of microhistorians now seek to engage in the histories of places, events and individuals in a way that also captures the history of global connections as brought to life by a new generation of global historians. Some global history recently has gone the way of 'big data' collection, wide structures and geographies; the people and the events are getting lost in more general macro narratives. There are many scholars who see themselves as global historians whose work is rooted in archivally-based research into the histories of places, events and individuals.

The AHRC GlobalMicrohistory network will bring these groups together to discuss the question, 'Can there be a global micro history?' This timely network will address major problems and opportunities arising in our writing about our past and in its display in museums

What are the questions, methodologies and writing challenges that will bring these traditions of historical writing together? These questions include the following:
Can the written and printed evidence gathered in archives and texts be connected with the evidence of material culture that we find in museum collections and archaeological remains so as to give life to a new initiative in globalmicro history?
What is the role of locality and how do we write about it within a global history framework?
What are the key social-cultural and economic-political questions connecting individual microhistories?
How do we connect the large histories of empires and courts with those of individual families and political events?
Is information and communication as conveyed in correspondence, ambassadorial, mission and mercantile reports and travel writing a key connector of archival microanalysis and the wider themes of global history?
What new perspectives on locality, empire, and information can we bring through the histories and analysis of objects in our museum collections?


This network will be led by PI, Maxine Berg (Global History and Culture Centre, University of Warwick) and Co-I, John-Paul Ghobrial (History Faculty, Oxford). The network will also involve Jorge Flores (Dept. of History and Civilization, European University Institute) and the Research Dept. and the Early Modern European History Gallery of the Victoria and Albert Museum to investigate and debate these issues. The result will be a pathway to a new field of Global Microhistory.

A Network about concepts and ways of writing history can have wide impact on society and culture by reconfiguring the way public and policymakers engage with their past.

Archivally-based histories of individuals and events are at the core of historical writing. The network discussions will broaden the social constituencies and parts of the world considered by historians.

The network will engage a wider public and museum practitioners in accessible histories and narratives that connect with new concepts of our current global condition.

Salon discussion will be non-hierarchical discussion in a museum space, and open to the general public, outside the formal academic structures of the University and Conference venues.

Academic researchers and museum practitioners will have the opportunity of dialogue and debate in opening pathways to new methodologies and concepts in historical writing and presentation.

Salon events held during opening hours of the Museum will provide a forum open to both observation and participation by the general public.

This public access to historical debate within a Museum space will engage the public in the ideas, critiques, methods and practices of historians and curators as these develop.

A functioning Salon discussion set within the object displays of the Early Modern Gallery will engage public audiences and participants in the dynamic of newly developing historical discourses connected with the types of objects in the Gallery.

Mixing audiences and participants will provide opportunities for new perspectives and questions for both groups.

The Salon provides a forum where the public can take part in the making of those historical discourses.

A website will provide a full written summary and blog of each Salon event. There will be opportunities for continued responses on the website.

There will be podcasts of each event on the website to allow for continued on-line debates.