In my previous work I have established a theoretical framework called ‘the Singularization of History’by criticizing the way social, cultural and microhistorians have practiced their scholarship in the last two or three decades. I have paid particular attention to one element common to the theoretical orientations of all microhistorians, viz. the connections between micro and macro. Microhistorians of all persuasions emphasize the importance of placing small units of research within larger contexts. I refute this principle and demonstrate its inherent contradictions. I encourage historians to cut the umbilical cord that ties them to what has been called ‘a great historical question’. The challenge of my paper will be to consider whether this research focus excludes the global perspective from historical inquiry. If that is not the case, what is the best possible approach to gain that vision?

Debates around microhistory tend to result in offering solutions to the representativity issue, that is, to the question of the micro-marco relationship. Although he respective offers of Sigurdur Gylfi Magnusson and Istvan Szijarto – the authors of What is Microhistory? – are as different as you can get, they seem to share a deep agreement over what constitutes microhistory: its cognitive claim. Regardless of whether it is close to or far from their intentions, in arguing for microhistory they both argue for a method understood in epistemological terms, and their ultimate answer to the question that their book bears as a title is that microhistory is the method, and probably the right one, to gain reliable knowledge of the past. In this review essay, after introducing and discussing the general views of the authors, I go on to outline an even more general view of microhistory. This view, I think, is the shared perspective that underlies all the particular methodological views. What unites different versions of microhistory, what gives birth to the pluralism of methods and the layers of microhistory, is what it presupposes of human behavior, human capabilities, or human existence in general. And this might be the view that can be retained even in a new era of long term historical thinking.

The following short notes argue that a comprehensive history of microhistory can address the critiques that have been levelled at it (pendulum of critiques) over the last five decades but can also showcase the achievements of microhistory during the same period. It points at an under-researched prescientific history of microhistory (compass of direction) that is worthy of intensive scholarly attention. It also argues 'against the charge of anecdotal antiquarianism…' (Orser 2016: 179).

Despite multitudinous efforts from historians, an agreed-upon definition of microhistory has remained elusive. Indeed, since the field’s inception in Italy in the 1970s, microhistory has evolved and meant different things to different constituencies within and beyond the academy

Thomas Robisheaux and I brought out) “Microhistory and the Historical Imagination: New Frontiers,” a special issue of Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Vol 47, No. 1 (Jan 2017) My own essay there is “The Macrohistory of Microhistory”): 53-73. Note that, if you go see the issue, that it contains a very lively round-table featuring all the authors and their audience at the original Duke workshop. I cannot post the round-table without the permission of the participants, so I recommend that, if possible, you go find it. By agreement with Robisheaux, our organizer, this essay, circulated in advance, aimed to provoke discussion. That is why it makes strong, even rash, claims for the utility of microhistory.

Archaeology has always kept an inconsistent relationship with history. For decades, archaeology has either largely rejected what history could offer, such as among certain processual archaeologists, or it has cherry-picked certain elements of historical methods. The closest that archaeologists have ever come to establishing a complete historical method to be applied in archaeology was through the adoption of the idea of the Annales School of history. Part of what made the Annales School so attractive to archaeologists of all backgrounds was that it tackled the past in a way that was very practical and useful for archaeology: it engaged with the past in the form of total histories, which could then be segmented in three separate durations and could be studied in an interdisciplinary manner. Additionally, the way the Annales School envisaged the past allowed for the study of the past in a very scientific way (e.g. quantitative, statistical), but also allowed the qualitative study of mentalities of the past people under analysis. However, one of the greatest problems of the Annales School is that it suppressed the human agent. Whether they were hidden behind structural economic forces or long-term symbolic structures, the individual remained always buried under the large-scale — history, according to annalistes, could not be the result of individual action. This, in turn, is what eventually led to the demise of the Annales School, in favour of the Italian microhistory. Does this mean that the AnnalesSchool of History must be complete scraped? No, the aim of this paper is to demonstrate that archaeology can in fact have a fruitful historical paradigm based on some ideas of the Annales School, and at the same time, some ideas of Italian microhistory. This would require understanding microhistory as the reconstruction of the life of agents, small-scale case-studies that serve as exemplars of large-scale phenomena.