Microhistory

Question 1

Microhistory’s style

Answer 1

Concentrates on mirco, hidden social group, previously left out written history.
Late 19th c
Total history - anything can have history
Didn’t want to join Marxism but is interest in emergence of class
Helped make way for gender history as women weren’t in military history etc
Agency - individuals affect on world
shows individual experiences, what meanings people gave to things = then linking this to wider world
normal exception - looking at those outside social/society norms

Question 2

Criticism from Post Modernism

Answer 2

Identity can change over time, so can it be truly studied?
Social history can’t have fixed meanings and on small groups - can’t generalise for wider groups
Disagreements on how politics is ignored - politics affected ordinary person as they had no say.
Can you truly understand what someone went through?

Question 3

Pamela Cox’s style

Answer 3

Empathy central, understanding what shaped ‘their’ world - what mattered to the people and why?

Question 4

Marc Bloch’s style

Answer 4

Wanted to expand topics looked at

Question 5

Criticism of micro history

Answer 5

Hard to escape metahistory, unrepresented history of the entire world due to only looking at ‘outsiders’, assumption that class/nation/gender is weak and impossible to ignore the restrictions they faced