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18 - Microhistory and world history

from Part Four - Questions of Method

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2015

By
Carlo Ginzburg
Edited by
Jerry H. Bentley ,
Sanjay Subrahmanyam  and
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Jerry H. Bentley
Affiliation:
University of Hawaii, Manoa
Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
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Summary

Microhistory, conceived as an analytical approach to history, far from being opposed to world history, may in fact be regarded as an indispensable tool of it. Two related phenomena shape our approach to world history today: the enormous expansion of the human species and the growing fragility of the natural environment. History as a process, Antonio Labriola argued, implies discovery through experimentation, but historical knowledge implies experiment as well. On both sides men act in an artificial environment, produced by themselves, in which experiments can take place. The historian may re-enact the past relying upon a more or less successful thought experiment. In the case of experimental archaeology, this re-enactment may be supplemented by a material reconstruction of some aspects of the past. The relationship between an experiment and its potential implications is always asymmetrical. La Crequinieres tendency to speak, alternatively, on behalf of the colonizers and the colonized can be inscribed in a much larger phenomenon.

Keywords

New WorldColumbian Exchangecircum-CaribbeanAmerican animal worldAmerican plantsOld World
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge World History , pp. 446 - 473
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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References

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