The book that convinced/inspired me to be a historian was Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms, which teased out the cosmology of a sixteenth-century northern Italian miller named Menocchio through his encounters with the Venetian Inquisition. Ginzburg’s ability to get inside the head of a sixteenth-century, semi-literate person was awe-inspiring to me when I first read this book as an undergraduate, and it still is: I regularly assign it to my own undergraduates. Ginzburg was perhaps not the first, but certainly the most famous pioneer, of a historical methodology called microhistory, in which the scope and scale of inquiry is so narrowed that the impact of historical events and forces is revealed through an almost-intimate perspective. Microhistories have the added benefit of giving agency–and presence– to people who might not otherwise appear in history books: Menocchio, the peasants of a medieval Pyrenean village who also come under the scrutiny of the Inquisition in Emmanuel de Le Roy’s Montaillou: the Promised Land of Error, a litigious Italian couple in Gene Brucker’s Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in the Renaissance, a London lathe-worker in Paul Seaver’s Wallington’s World: a Puritan Artisan in Seventeenth-century London, a Maine midwife working just after the American Revolution in Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard based on her diary, 1785–1812.
I could go on and on listing classic microhistories, but as I was putting together my syllabi for this semester one macrohistorical trend became blatantly clear to me: while the first examples of this genre were all about people, the latest (and most popular) are all about things. Rather than examining a precise place in time through the prism of one person’s life, we are now invited to partake of the history of the world from the perspective of beverages (Tom Standage’s History of the World in 6 Glasses), sugar (several books, beginning with Sidney Mintz’s Sweetness and Power: the place of Sugar in Modern History), salt (Mark Kurlansky, Salt: a World History), pretty much every other spice including NUTMEG (Giles Morton, Nathaniel‘s Nutmeg: Or the True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History–actually this book focuses on the man as much as the spice), drugs (David Courtwright, Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World), and stuff (Neil MacGregor’s History of the World in 100 Objects). It seems to me that consumerism is definitely defeating humanism in historical studies: we are now what we seek and eat.
Sarah Tyson Rorer, ed., Cereal Foods and How to Cook Them (1899); Duke University Digital Collections
September 12th, 2014 at 8:58 am
This post reminded me of James Michener. His books, “Caribbean” “Chesapeake” and “The Source” are accurate histories with ficticious characters fitting in. This post also reminded me of “Corelli’s Mandolin”
September 12th, 2014 at 9:15 am
So true! Microhistory changed the field by putting an individual human experience front and center, bringing vivid life to large trends and events. Another great read is The Faithful Executioner by Joel F. Harrington, tracing the saga of a sixteenth century Nuremberg man dragooned into a dishonorable and brutal profession, who strives to better his situation throughout a long and eventful career. For a summary of this 2013 history, here’s a link to the Washington Post review http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-faithful-executioner-life-and-death-honor-and-shame-in-the-turbulent-sixteenth-century-by-joel-f-harrington/2013/05/24/2ff58418-b1da-11e2-9a98-4be1688d7d84_story.html
September 12th, 2014 at 9:38 am
Thanks Nina, that is a great inclusion to this list.
September 12th, 2014 at 7:06 pm
I have a warm spot in my cerebellum for Patricia Cline Cohen’s book on “The Murder of Helen Jewett,” which I originally picked up as my summer fluff read. Hey, isn’t that what all true crime books are? Turns out, not quite.
I’ve noticed this odd macrohistorical trend extends beyond consumer goods to just about ANYTHING that’s been around for 3,000 years, including abstract qualities. The good ones have something interesting to say about their subjects. The bad ones just offer examples of the item under discussion strewn across time. I’m waiting for “Schaudenfreude: From the Dawn of Time to the Present (When I Laugh at How You Feel After Reading This Book).”
September 12th, 2014 at 8:35 pm
I know; I didn’t get into the professional historians vs. non-professional historians thing here but I do think it is the subtext. The amazing daring of just taking on this big history with no training!
September 13th, 2014 at 7:44 am
Yes, speaking of abstract qualities, there’s a new book on 3000 years of Green that actually looks quite interesting.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/sep/25/deep-green/
On the topic of microhistories, I argued a while back that microhistories are about more than just a close focus on a particular person or place. They are closely tied up with a specific political and methological angle that goes beyond merely ‘small histories’.
http://manyheadedmonster.wordpress.com/2012/12/01/microhistory-size-matters/
http://manyheadedmonster.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/microhistory-subjects-sources-anti-fascists-and-adam/
September 13th, 2014 at 7:57 am
Thanks for the links, Brodie–your post is great–I should have referenced it myself.
September 13th, 2014 at 8:36 am
Nice discussions about not just what microhistory is, but why certain books get that label. 🙂
September 13th, 2014 at 9:06 am
I think that’s because microhistory has never been well-defined. I looked around for a succinct and “official” explanation and never a usable one–even in Ginzburg’s own historiographical article.
September 14th, 2014 at 6:47 am
Exactly, the pioneers of microhistory seem to have intentionally avoided giving it a strict definition. Instead, they seem to treat it as more of a way of thinking and writing rather than a specific method.
October 11th, 2014 at 4:02 pm
Somehow got here by a strange, associative, Beatles’-twisting road–the Ginzburg book, a familiar name, vague memories of Erasmus, a passionate professor obsessed with the printing press, an impossible thought (maybe the awesome Elia is on Twitter, and he respected and walked through halls with . . .). My favorite thing about cyber-life is accessing familiar voices, in blog form, after so many years–so many, in fact, all of this might seem a riddle . . . Historians like riddles, right?
October 12th, 2014 at 8:18 am
Hey John–I remember you! So glad to hear from you.