Playing with Scales: The Global and the Micro, the Macro and the Nano*

The focus of this Past and Present Supplement on microhistory and global history invites a contemplation of historical scale: from the micro to the global and back again. It does so in the hope of reconciling these two modes of research and connecting the space in between so as to demonstrate that they are not rivals but can be part of the same enterprise — indeed, that the common historical enterprise can be enhanced by their fruitful alliance. Why is this of importance? Perhaps it is because of the great investment historians have made from the 1980s onward in microhistory, broadly defined. Before proceeding, I must pause briefly to address what I understand by microhistory and by a ‘broad’ microhistory. As an outsider to this historical genre, perhaps I can be forgiven for observing that its practitioners do not make this an easy question to answer. All can agree that its methodology is to reduce the focus of analysis, often to an individual or small group, a place or locality and, usually, a brief time period. This move allows for a meticulous reconstruction of events and relationships, and a juxtaposition of conflicting sources concerning the same event. Indeed, in Giovanni Levi’s view a ‘reduction of scale’ is akin to a historian’s microscope, permitting us ‘to observe aspects of large historical processes that would remain invisible under the homogenous categories of macrohistory’.1 Microhistorians seek to contextualize the object of their interest as fully as possible, and often demonstrate a praiseworthy archive-based virtuosity in this respect. But there is more. A broad definition links microhistory to the larger ‘cultural turn’. To be sure, cultural history is a methodologically more varied category than microhistory. Nor is all microhistory focused on cultural themes. But what John-Paul Ghobrial calls microhistory’s characteristic subversion of the triumphalism of grand narratives surely lies at the heart of both.2 Most microhistorians claim that on the basis of their meticulous, craftsmanlike work certain things then emerge from the sources themselves. If I may cite here from the vigorously argued essays by Christian De Vito and Filippo de Vivo in this volume, the exceptional events revealed by microhistorical methods ‘reveal broader phenomena’ (de Vivo); microhistorians ‘derive the categories, spatial units and periodizations of their research from … the social practices revealed by the sources’ (De Vito). As a result, the specific sites of microhistorical focus serve as ‘fragments through which universal processes can be observed’ (De Vito). By examining ‘historical processes from the bottom up and as entangled constructions … “the rules that action gives itself in its development” [reveal themselves and should be] the primary tool to generalize historical knowledge’ (De Vito).3 Finally, to cite Giovanni Levi on the means by which understanding emerges from the sources, ‘The unifying principle of all microhistorical research is the belief that microscopic observation will reveal factors previously unobserved … phenomena previously considered to be sufficiently described and understood assume completely new meanings by altering the scale of observation’.4 These are grand claims and they are not shared, unqualified, by all. Indeed, many microhistorians deny outright that any universal processes or generalized claims are either possible or desired. Here is where the problems emerge. I believe it useful to speak of two broad strands of microhistory. That which remains true to the original Italian microstoria understands site, place or locality to be socially constructed and to serve as a historical laboratory at the crossroads of multiple connections. Such a laboratory invites the investigation of connections among sites. Thus, Giovanni Levi insists that ‘history [remains] a science of general questions and their specific answers, generated by what one finds [within the sources], not by mechanical [models]’. John-Paul Ghobrial echoes the spirit of the pioneers when he restates the essence of microhistory as reducing the focus of analysis in order to revise large-scale paradigms.5 This interaction between microhistorical methods and social theory informed the original Italian practitioners of microstoria. Forced to reconsider what Levi called the ‘great Marxist or functionalist systems’ in which they had lost faith, they sought to examine social behaviour at the microlevel, where one might observe individuals negotiating with normative reality. These observations might then form the basis of a new understanding of social freedom and social constraint.6 This remains in certain respects an appealing agenda, but it is today far from the dominant form of microhistory. In a fateful historiographical conjuncture historians beyond Italy appropriated the term as a solution to a different problem. Their microhistories came to be enlisted in a larger project that has been variously labelled the cultural or linguistic turn and the new cultural history. For some, microhistory became a vehicle to advance postmodernism in historical writing. By essentializing the uniqueness of place and person they denied altogether the possibility of narratives of exchange and connection, let alone the testing of grand theory.7 However, the soup is rarely eaten as hot as it is served. The historians who invoked these claims rarely acted on them. A far more common form, the dominant form, of microhistory proceeded to water down the stern strictures of the theorists by focusing on archival virtuosity and empathetic storytelling, thereby ‘populating’, as Tonio Andrade recommends, ‘our models with real people’.8 By this strategy one could re-embrace historical narrative while seeming to honour the postmodern theorists’ posture of ‘incredulity toward master narratives of all types’.9 John Brewer has called this broad strand of microhistory ‘refuge’ history, echoing the forthright and succinct account of its appeal offered by one of microhistory’s warmest supporters, Jacques Revel: Progress, the rallying cry in a time of rapid transformation, no longer seemed assured. The present was uncertain, the future opaque; the past became a safe place in which to invest … What people now wanted from history was no longer lessons, precedents, or ways of understanding the present but, rather a refuge against the uncertainties of the moment.10 Revel goes too far in stating that this form of microhistory had no interest in providing lessons for the present, but the focus of political interest had certainly shifted. Microhistory commonly, though not exclusively, took the form of an empathetic telling of the story of hitherto marginalized or otherwise historically obscure individuals and small groups. At its heart is the appropriation of microhistorical methods to uncover the stories of subaltern historical actors with a view to empowering contemporary subaltern groups.11 Microhistory of this type is well known to all historians today for it lies at the heart of the strong bond between microhistory and cultural history. As noted above, it is not a necessary bond, but in practice, the affinity between the two has been strong for over a generation now, the more so as many social historians long ago, especially in the United States, confessed their materialist sins and social theoretical errors and took cover under the umbrella of cultural history.12 The cultural turn is sometimes referred to as a revival of narrative, but it was an embrace of a special form of narrative, petite narrative at a human scale. It was a rejection of grand- or mega-narrative history (national, political history) and, even more, of social science history.13 These historical approaches were at odds with each other, of course, but they both usually operated at a large scale, both spatial and temporal. They were concerned to explain change over time of large human aggregates, more often than not the nation state. Microhistory broadly defined now confronts the return of large-scale historical work in a form that presents itself with a more sympathetic face. Global history cannot be so easily dismissed as old-fashioned, or deplored as a form of apologetics for capitalists, odious political regimes, or even dead white men. Lynn Hunt sees the threat clearly and recently felt moved to awaken her fellow historians and, especially, impressionable students from their complacent slumbers. ‘Is globalization a new paradigm for historical explanation that replaces those criticized by cultural theories? Or is it a Trojan horse that threatens to bring back old paradigms rather than offering a truly new one?’ Her answer is quick in coming: ‘The globalization paradigm reinstates the very suppositions that cultural theories had criticized, and thus potentially threatens to wash away the gains of the last decades of cultural history’.14 Hunt speaks of global history and globalization interchangeably, conflates globalization with modernization, and elevates globalization to the status of a paradigm. These moves are all questionable. If there is a guiding spirit to global historical research, it is to treat the concept of globalization critically and sceptically — to push back against old accounts of the diffusion of and convergence toward western norms. Indeed, the most influential narrative structure so far produced by global history is the ‘great divergence’ and if anything unites its exponents it is the rejection of the notion that a single path, originating in the British Industrial Revolution, leads to modern economic growth. That is, they reject the key assumption of modernization theory and seek to undermine the Eurocentric canon of social theory that has hitherto served to explain ‘the rise of the West’.15 Global history, far from harbouring within it the dreaded globalization paradigm, can better be regarded as an aspirational history, lacking an agreed methodology to achieve its goals, or even a master narrative with which to arrange its provisional achievements. Global history’s future form remains an unsettled question.16 But it is understandable that historians raised in the milieu of cultural studies feel some unease: the large scale of global history has a natural affinity with prospective theories and with structuralism of one sort or another; it has the potential to be technical and in need of conceptual definitions: neither accessible and congenial, nor agency-affirming and empowering. Can historians avoid this fate by developing new research strategies for global history while its form is still malleable — strategies that connect global themes to microhistorical methodologies? That question has recently engaged the attention of prominent historians, and a critical evaluation of the chief arguments in support of such an engagement now follows.17 The most compelling and deeply felt urge to join microhistory with global history derives from a belief that this is the only way to honour and recover human agency and to leave room for contingency and subjectivity in the construction of historical accounts with a global reach. The problem is usually expressed as follows: the larger the scale of historical analysis, the more human agency is obscured from view, replaced by a focus on large social groups and categories that are animated by structural forces. Microhistory is therefore essential to serve as an antidote to this malady, allowing us to observe the individual in action, even on a global stage. But, is this ‘recovery of agency’ not simply an illusion of small scale? If a global scale is faulted for lending credibility to a false structuralism, should we not also be concerned with the misleading signals given off by a microhistorical focus, no matter how congenial its illusion might be to us? The issue of agency and structure is not so easily evaded; it deserves a direct confrontation, to which I return below. The study of ‘unusually cosmopolitan individuals’ (UCIs) who led global lives is recommended to us as an accessible and entertaining way to reveal global through the of individual It is, certainly the most form of history. These not only reveal the global at a human scale, but they usually do so in a sympathetic as they and of these to the that regarded as the object of study in the of Italian Perhaps some but a focus on cosmopolitan individuals on the of it to be with microhistory’s of and for the lives of people of account in their those who are to this problem must with problem with If microhistory is to serve as a offering a view the then the lives of who have are to a view, one that is but also lives will have all too well to and It as Ghobrial to us back to the to history, rather than to the the who were at the or to their will not be to this The of global with microhistory is also as a the can in and change the scale of study at in order to analysis with archive-based This appealing and a very that the can multiple on one and the same by altering the scale of observation from the the and to the the individual — and back again. The is but I believe it is a is that one is the same at different of invisible on a larger scale reveal themselves on a scale, as Giovanni Levi we through a what was not on the They had been there and they remain when one moves to a The for a better understanding of the — and it is entertaining as But history is not even has its have different from the more of historical The because microhistories do and are not to and global is no path, no no theoretical in the of the to make this move if there were a theoretical for this microhistories would be studies as with microhistory, many who this term do not up their are of a with given to the so that it might be to in which the Thus, a study of behaviour in may be studies of to the same or a study of the global of could on studies of its diffusion in each with studies need not be in but they do on a theoretical and a research to the of That is, the study is by to a historical But all of this the spirit and of microhistorical certainly can address theoretical but they do so by the of a and that to as John Brewer from ‘the historian’s and with actors in the an that and the between the past and the This ‘refuge’ history derives its from an view, a to the matter that on principle to to its The is to Lynn from the bottom on the basis of rather than from a to as Giovanni Levi recommends, the of the But, what is it that historians who are of a categories and of social theory — as De Vito have to all categories — as they beyond the of the are not to to global but they are methodologically They in and social scale but they often the same scale: they both themselves to a time often a in in order to focus on this as an essential of microhistory, which a by and by — it is more in more the between multiple phenomena than processes of change over Global history may not be to the of any but as a matter global history has usually the form of history, history or entangled history This move global history that is, it allows for global studies on archival sources, which are or in In this from micro to global is not a of scale at it is the same scale, with the same and the of historical explanation that can be Andrade sees the possible of this in form through which to view the in which individuals Such studies could he to form a history of as so many of a This rather to The that can be for from the of microhistories is a of in a of At this scale of study the to have agency because the and to which they are are and the historian’s from her is replaced by a sympathetic at the microlevel, the of agency cannot the fate of the in as many of the to this at a in most of the their agency to Indeed, human on this the of microhistories would be to the such microhistories are rarely The the and of and and But such they the have their only some of are and many do not a narrative, at empathetic and reconstruction of what might have A global history with microhistorical can and the illusion of human but it will not be by to the problem historians must of change over which a to — For study must be to both microhistory and global history need to be to the study of change over this connection, global microhistory remains and have recently this of global history of over It is to that move … over of those who But the real problem is not in the of in which to with the historian’s but in the of a basis for This or that is, some appeal to social I global history as an of those to it are that human history is a The of micro and global history but it In this it is not to on its have many ways of this and I do not to here that one should be over all let alone to the theory of modernization that the of so many But, some of the place of historical work that the social that theory to history and to — in a history that explanation of change and its in of rejection — called for at this It because of the interest in microhistory, the but with the of is by an against social science history and especially economic history. Such historical work is criticized, among for not on archival research it is not real history) and for theories that the to human agency it is not sympathetic The is simply not as is while the is a long as one ‘refuge’ in microhistory and historical social science history may to the individual in theoretical do the most microhistories not seek to present us with a of their If one can that with should as well as and social then the of microhistory is not only to connect with the but to connect with of longer These of course, not all social in but they to for their on conceptual and, in the of some, on and us If global history has an affinity with microhistory in its with relationships, is concerned with change over If the can for a this at we can to a problem that is common to both microhistory and is on the of and of larger For most history with observations of historical that are on archival of and the of the of and many brief the archival it a real historical in which real people even if only for a to exchange a a a or a of these events leave us with a a a a or a in a the of the actors are but even when known they can rarely be to anything This sort of history — we can it — is on real historical events and archival research, it leads us not to microhistory but to that on and But, as I microhistory and a common the — the exceptional the or the event. are observations that by some from most and can have They may reveal that the from which the observations are a of That is, they useful and to the even that the theory with which the are is the they may be the of or In these as an to to such is a They should be are more to make this move than are most social A historical or it is truly an can be of interest to historians even as it and while for the testing a it is more to from It is the that far must an from the of the larger in order to be from is no single definition of what an but to that are to be form, as the a on the of one is to But these can be even when to that are not For are by many observations at at are many small but large and only one that and the The same is true of the of and the of These what is known as a long with a These those of are often of of They are at if the of interest are factors in such as the of among If the term can be given a it would to to that in the long of a the observation is and but it is not an its very the theory to explain the under what does this all for historians their If the social to and the is to the study of the to of to and the lives of those to a They do not Or do Microhistorians certainly do not all aspects of As I have noted above, some events attention and more than some we can understand we while or there is a problem of the of the exceptional does not by itself to that beyond the at the can be in some If microhistorical work is a matter of or of the between the and the then it is essential to have some basis on which to the it the same as the unobserved or it an of the Or is it an In there is no easy from the need to with the or that and The of historical analysis do not by themselves in or That on the question the has to answer. this to a that one might should have been The to the exceptional and the and the social historian’s to the are of a history that with the sources rather than with the problem. A microhistory that with a may reveal the historian’s virtuosity in a lost place and time and it can the to over the of certain hitherto obscure historical But a and potentially microhistory to address a or a This the exceptional with some or theory in the of the To connect with global history microhistory to be more — not only critical of the and models and and the and theories of — an — but also critical of the of its