Question

What do you understand by microhistory describe the historians and their works related to this tradition of history writing?

Answer 1

Answer:

Microhistory is the intensive historical investigation of a well-defined smaller unit of research, most often a single event, and the community of a village, a family or a person. In its ambition, however, micro history can be distinguished from a simple case study as micro history aspires to “search for answers to large questions in small places” (in the words of Charles Joyner). Microhistory thus, has links with local history and oral history. It resembles local history as its subject-matter is often confined to a community or a locality. The oral sources, folk tales and legends, are also used extensively by the microhistorians. The original idea of writing microhistory came from Italy in the 1970s. Microstoria had a social history and a cultural history wing. Carlo Ginzburg, a famous historian associated with microhistory, traces the first use of the

term to an American scholar, George R. Stewart. In his book, Pickett’s Charge: A Microhistory of the Final Charge at Gettysburg, July 3, 1863 (1959), Stewart has used the term. In 1968, Luis Gonzalez used the term ‘microhistory’ in the subtitle of his book which deals with the changes experienced over four centuries by a small village in Mexico.