Microhistory
(Powerpoint is on the website)
Dr Jonathan Davies
j.d.davies@warwick.ac.uk
The development of
microhistory
• Einaudi “microstorie” and Quaderni
Storici
• Ginzburg, Giovanni Levi, Edoardo
Grendi, Carlo Poni et al
• history from below
• history of mentalities
• Alltagsgeschichte - history of everyday
life
The development of
microhistory
• dissatisfaction with large-scale analysis
• quantitative analysis (Annales)
• disillusion with grand narratives
• “…struggling to eliminate the distortions produced by
the gigantification of historical scale, which has
crushed all individuals to insignificance under the
weight of vast impersonal structures and forces”
[Edward Muir]
Carlo Ginzburg
• born 1939 in
Turin
• son of Leone
and Natalia
Ginzburg
• use of court records
• The Cheese and the Worms (Il
formaggio e i vermi; Einaudi, 1976;
English trans. 1980)
• Night Battles (I Benandanti; 1966)
• Domenico Scandella aka
Menocchio
• Inquisition trials 1582-6 and 1599
The cheese and the
worms
• “in my opinion, all was chaos, that is,
earth, air, water, and fire were mixed
together; and out of that bulk a mass
formed – just as cheese is made out of
milk – and worms appeared in it, and
these were the angels...”
• “Microhistory as a practice is essentially based on the
reduction of the scale of observation, on a microscopic
analysis and an intensive study of the documentary
material”
• “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. It is then possible to use these results to
draw far wider generalizations ...” [Giovanni Levi, “On Microhistory”, pp.
101-2]
Scale
• individuals or small groups eg.
Montaillou, Carnival at Romans,
Return of Martin Guerre
• primary sources
• tiny details eg. Pickett’s Charge
• jeux d’echelles (Jacques Revel)
Evidence
• The “evidential paradigm”
(Ginzburg)
• anomalies
• the “exceptional normal”
(E. Grendi)
• clues, traces, hints
The Return of Martin Guerre
by Natalie Zemon Davis (1983)
•
“That it is an unusual case serves me well, for a remarkable
dispute can sometimes uncover motivations and values that
are lost in the welter of the everyday. My hope is to show
that the adventures of three young villagers are not too
many steps beyond the more common experience of their
neighbours, that an imposter’s fabrication has links with
more ordinary ways of creating personal identity” [p. 4]
• anthropology/
ethnography
• “thick description”
(Clifford Geertz)
Sources
• trials as sources
• highlighting the gaps
• distortion, partiality, process of
research
• the historian as hunter
• truth, not relativism
Criticisms
• (too?) compelling stories
• relationship of margins to centre?
• relationship of micro to macro?
• causes of historical change?