Micro-History: A Little Closer to the Story

This past fall I was introduced to a genre of history that I had not come into contact before or if I had I did not realizes it.  Micro-history! Micro-history is usually an account of a person, a small group of people or a small event from the past.  The key word is small, it’s like looking at history through a microscope, examining how one community lived amidst of a larger event.  For an example looking at how a slave in Lynchburg survived the civil war.  I was given to read two micro-histories during my first semester at grad-school, The Worms and the Cheese by Carlo Ginzburg, a story of a 16^th century heretic who was burned at the stack for heresy against the orthodox teachings of the Catholic Church.  The other book was A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary 1785-1812 (a better book than the title might imply) by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, an account of a New England community based on a Midwife’s diary.

I found that I enjoyed this genre of history a great deal, it reminded me of why I love history so much.  It’s all in the story.  What micro-history does very well, is that it takes a large concept like the Reformation, American Civil War or World War Two and looks at a small piece of it.  Showing that these larger concepts are not as monolithic as a survey class may imply. Micro-history also brings history down to an eye level, it makes history more human.  Reminding readers that history is little more than the memories of people.  It looks at ordinary people who lived through extraordinary times and tries to examine their thoughts.

Micro-history offers an alternate perspective that history often glazes over.  It allows a peek at people like Mennochio from The Cheese and the Worms who would not otherwise get a spot in a history book and yet were significant to a larger story.  A historian may use a piece of evidence such as court transcripts as a source to make a larger point and miss the cultural, social, and political significance of the particular event.  I decided after reading The Cheese and the Worms that I would use it if I ever taught a Reformation or Church history.  It is easy skim over everyday people during The Reformation.  Typically when a student is introduced to The Reformation they are shown Luther, Calvin, Protestant Martyrs, and the Religious wars.  People who are larger than life and events that were huge in scope.  “Microhistory acknowledges different perspectives in the larger narrative.” [1]

As interesting a discipline as micro-history is there are some drawbacks to the historian, “such as lack of debate from other historians, making a smaller point and then projecting it on a larger issue.” [1] A problem with microhistory is that typically there is not a lot of scholars that study the same single life or small event, so it is harder to find challenges and debates about the micro-historian’s points.  “Debating and questioning one’s understanding of the facts is essential to maintain a high level of historical excellence.”  Another problem with micro-history is that often it lacks the context that larger scoped histories have.  It also may be tempting for someone who reads a micro-history like A Midwife’s Tale and then assume that every village in colonial America is exactly the same. “One needs an understanding of the culture around the narrative to understand the significance of the situation.”[1]

Despite these drawbacks to micro-histories, I greatly enjoy them and believe they are very helpful to the larger picture as well as the small.  In every history class the question always plagues history teachers, “what should I keep and would should I leave out?” Micro-history allows historians to look a little bit closer and keep a little more of the story.

 

[1] Keating, Christopher. "Reaction Paper Week 10." JMU Class Hist 671 (November 2015): 1-2.

Bibliography for works mentioned:

Ginzburg, Carlo. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller. Trans. John and Anne Tedeschi. Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1985.

Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary 1785-1812. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.