A Chinese Farmer, Two African Boys, and a Warlord: Toward a Global Microhistory

This article urges world historians to experiment boldly with narrative history and microhistory as a corrective to the field's heavy emphasis on models and structures. Global microhistory as the author conceives it focuses on human dramas that shed light on intercultural connections and global transformations, and the article offers an example of the genre: a story of a Chinese man, two African boys, two feuding Dutch merchants, and a Chinese warlord, characters thrown together by the great waves of international trade and cross-cultural interaction that swept the world in the seventeenth century. The author hopes that narrative approaches will draw more students and general readers into the field of global history and help make its insights and approaches resonate with a wider public.