What is Microhistory?: Theory and Practice

Microhistory has not, traditionally, been presented as a school of history in the strict sense of the term, rather as a methodological innovation or an approach that is based on the conviction that the especially detailed, thorough historical investigation of a relatively circumscribed unit of analysis, most often a single event, a small community, a family or even a person, can give the historians answers to some of their overall questions. Rather than following the traditional line of investigation for historians, studying how a major event affected people. Microhistory looks from within out, what a person, place or single event can teach us about the wider historical picture. What is Microhistoryoffers an introduction to the origins, development, methodology and position of microhistory, since its first emergence in the 1970s. Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon and István M. Szijártó survey the significant characteristics shared by large groups of microhistorians, and how these have now established an acknowledged place within any general discussion of the theory and methodology of history as an academic discipline. This book will be essential reading for all those interested in the study of history.