Where Micro and Atlantic Histories Meet
The three readings for this week—Andrew Port’s “History from Below, the History of Everyday Life, and Microhistory (2015), Lara Putnam’s “To Study the Fragments/Whole: Microhistory and the Atlantic World” (2006), and Rebecca Scott’s “Small-Scale Dynamics and Large-Scale Processes” (2000)—shed light on the gaps that historians are seeking to fill in writing U.S., British, Africa, and colonial histories, and the methodologies that they have used to do so over the past twenty or so years (and in the case of History from Below, since the 1960s; Port, p. 112). In much the same way that a combination of large-scale (macro) and small-scale (micro) histories are necessary (as stated by these authors) to tell a full(er) history, together, these articles by Port, Putnam, and Scott tell a full(er) story of where microhistory and Atlantic history meet; who practices these types of history and why; what they help to accomplish; where and when microhistory and Atlantic history are frequently and best practiced; and how to effectively and ethically practice them.
Port’s article concisely summarizes and breaks down the concepts of People’s History, History from Below, and Microhistory, “all of which,” he writes, “involve a dramatic reduction of historical scale, focusing on a single individual, community, or spectacular event” (108). He describes historians’ attention paid to individuals’ “ability to withstand hegemonic forms of dominance and control” (108), how “actions by groups and individuals who are simultaneously both objects of history and its subjects” (109) and “the extent to which the individual, community, or event at the center of a given study are truly ‘representative’ of the trends” (111). [1]
With these definitions of the types and methodologies of microhistory to practice and how, moving to Putnam’s article, which defines “Atlantic history” as cohering “around a geographic claim, … from the sixteenth century to the present” or to the “mid-nineteenth century” in the “minimalist chronology” (615), it is evident that Atlantic history both broadens and narrows the scope of history in ways similar to, and that make use of, the methods that Port highlights: it widens the geographical scope (space) and collapses the chronological lens (time). In this way, readers of Atlantic history focus more closely on the continuities within a time period, and less intently on the geographical location. This is not to say that these types of histories are more valuable (though for some scholars, they are); it is to say, rather, that it opens up new ways of understanding, and writing about, historical events and situations from multiple positionalities.[2] Putnam memorably argues that, and epigraphs her essay with, Alexander Hamilton’s writing cannot be understood outside the context of his birth in the “British West Indian migratory world” (625). Similarly, “Serious scholars of the late eighteenth-century Atlantic system,” Scott writes, “now recognize the place of the Haitian Revolution—and thus the agency of the slaves of Saint Domingue—at or near the center of the story.” (473).[3] In this way, the articles by Port, Putnam, and Scott together tell the story of why it is important to decenter history as it has “historically” been told, at the macro level, and to integrate the perspectives and stories of those individuals who have “historically” resided on the margins, while simultaneously decentering the nation in favor of the individual or micro-community. When micro and Atlantic histories meet, (to quote a statement made in class today) history becomes personal.
Works Cited
Port, Andrew. “History from Below, the History of Everyday Life, and Microhistory.” International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd ed., vol. 11, 2015, pp. 108-113.
Putnam, Lara. “To Study the Fragments/Whole: Microhistory and the Atlantic World.” Journal of Social History, vol. 39, no. 3, 2006, pp. 615-630.
Scott, Rebecca. “Small-Scale Dynamics of Large-Scale Processes.” American Historical Review, April 2000, pp. 472-479.
[1] This reminds me of New York Times “trend” stories, that appear frequently in the Sunday Styles section and that critical readers frequently make fun of for their taking a couple examples/people in say, Brooklyn, and making them out to be large, nationwide trends. This also reminds me of an eighteenth-century English author I study, Frances Burney, who frequently is referred to as extremely shy and due to her status as one of the most prolific female authors of the time period, especially for her nonfiction writing, is used to paint the picture that all or most female authors had to be wary of publishing writing. This is true, but it is complex, and different for multiple women authors, and not everyone was as shy as Burney, some scholars argue, for instance.
[2] Putnam writes that “We should perhaps move toward being more open with our readers (and more honest with ourselves) about how this process [of deciding on a “case-by-case basis which places should be part of their frame of reference”] works” (621). In class today, such transparency was mentioned a few times, as a best practice for historians to practice ethically.
[3] I really enjoy that Scott points out that “serious scholars” are the ones who center the slaves of Saint Domingue; it calls to mind that (1) that some scholars might not and (2) those that do not are not serious.
