microhistory
Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- noun The study of the past on a small scale, such as an individual neighborhood or town, as a
case study for general trends
Examples
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Stern contended that "details are everything in this kind of microhistory, in which an inaccurate word or phrase can distort our perception of the historical record."
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The book I wrote just prior to this one constituted, perhaps, a step toward biography: By telling a story of events that happened in a small town in just a few days, what historians call a "microhistory," I used a tiny fragment of history to illuminate large themes and problems.
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In his magnificent and humane microhistory, Christopher Browning has drawn on the "written, transcribed, and/or taped accounts of 292" Jewish survivors, most of them from Wierzbnik, who shared a similar experience of the war.
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A telling example of microhistory writ large, The Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah narrates the story of the trial and execution of Thomas Jeremiah, one of the few free well-to-do black men in colonial South Carolina (and himself the owner of slaves), who was accused of treacherously aiding the British by fomenting a slave revolt.
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Beyond microhistory, Turkel declines to name this kind of focused story, but I’d like to call it nanohistory, which both indicates the difference of magnitude from microhistory but also includes a trendy prefix.
Note
The word 'microhistory' comes from 'micro-' and 'history'.
