Micro-historical Analysis Research Articles

Global Conquests, Global Infidels: The Junta of Burgos (1512) Seen Through Integrated Mediterranean and Atlantic Contexts

ABSTRACT Traditional scholarship has been marked by a sharp division between historians working on two apparently discrete maritime systems in the early modern era—the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. In recent years, though, scholars have begun to recognize the extent to which these spheres were in fact imbricated, in the movement of peoples and commodities as well as in the intangibles of ideology and legal doctrines, some of which had very concrete effects on the lives and status of millions of individuals. This article examines several legal questions pertaining to the status of recently conquered peoples by bringing together sources that address the legal status of new subjects of the Spanish monarchy, including the Laws of Burgos (1512), the Amendments of Valladolid (1513), along with several treatises by jurist Juan López de Palacios Rubios, theologian Matías de Paz, and Bartolomé de las Casas. This microhistorical analysis of the questions examined at the Junta of Burgos sheds light on the ways in which our understanding of the legal doctrines of empire is immensely enriched and clarified when we integrate the Mediterranean and Atlantic angles of early modern Spanish commitments.

Neighbourhood – close hostility. A microhistorical study againstthe macrohistorical background of Lviv in the 1930s

The article is a microhistorical analysis of neighbourly relations in Lviv in the interwar period,especially in its second decade, placed in a broader cultural, social and political context. Archivalresearch helps demonstrate the interference between the sphere of national communities and thatof local communities, and between public discourses and narratives refl ecting and shaping interpersonalrelations, such as neighbourly conversations, gossip and intrigues. Accounts created byLviv’s neighbourhoods representing different nationalities – Polish and Ukrainian – for example theirdenunciations, testimonies and accusations, shed light on the tension between the physical (territorial)proximity of neighbours and their socio-psychological distance, or rather politically motivated hostility.

Expanding Political Capital: Why Social Democratic Women Participated in Middle-Class Feminist Educational Organisations in Sweden c.1890–1910

ABSTRACT This article seeks to introduce a new historical explanation as to why left-wing working-class women engaged in liberal, middle-class organisations during the first wave of feminism. The article specifically deals with middle-class associations and clubs that had educational purposes. Instead of focusing on the larger explanatory scheme of the power of patriarchal societal structures or bourgeois feminisms as a hegemonic force, the account revolves around the political educational functions of liberal feminist engagement for some politically active social democratic women in Sweden. The case of social democratic women who entered the liberal middle class educational organisation Tolfterna (the Dozen) is the point of departure for a micro-historical analysis of the political capital accumulation practices that class collaboration entailed. Finally, the article explores how working-class women’s choices and actions can be considered a group-specific strategy to expand their political resources to attain what is called feminist liberal political capital.

Siren’s song: the news of Tabarka and its impact on Spanish Mediterranean policy in the mid-sixteenth century

The island of Tabarka, off the northwestern coast of modern Tunisia, was an active coral-fishing factory during the mid-sixteenth century. Its political status was unclear, straddling Tunisian sovereignty and Spanish military control, while being economically exploited by the Genoa-based Lomellini company. It also operated as a privileged hub of information for Maghrebi affairs, supplying fresh news to the Spanish authorities during the critical phase of Ottoman Mediterranean expansion throughout the 1550s. Particularly, this information’s flow fed into a wider web, and competed with alternative sources of news to influence decision-making processes in the Spanish monarchy. This article presents a micro-historical analysis of a place, a network, and specific political conditions to go beyond the mere reconstruction of information flows and reveal the real impact of the news coming from Tabarka on Spanish Mediterranean policy in the mid-sixteenth century.

Shaping contexts through entrepreneurship: a micro-historical analysis of Hongbang entrepreneurs in China (1896-1949)

Purpose The purpose of this study is to address a significant gap in the understanding of entrepreneurship at the microfoundation level. It focuses on how individual entrepreneurs, specifically Hongbang entrepreneurs in China from 1896 to 1949, shape and transform their contexts. The aim is to provide a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that facilitate entrepreneurial success. Design/methodology/approach The study adopts a microhistorical approach, investigating the case of Hongbang entrepreneurs in China during 1896-1949. It involves an in-depth examination of historical records to explore the strategic interactions between these entrepreneurs and core stakeholders such as consumers, financial intermediaries, government regulators, and human resources. The research methodology emphasizes a process-oriented view, examining the evolution of personalized networks into extensive connections. Findings The research reveals that Hongbang entrepreneurs successfully reshaped their unfavorable embedded contexts by strategically collaborating with key stakeholders. They influenced consumer tastes, allied with financial intermediaries, negotiated with governments on regulation policies, and developed human resource stocks. The transformation was facilitated by the evolution of their networks from personalized to extensive connections. These findings highlight the localized strategies such as cronyism in resource acquisition within China’s private property development industry. Originality/value This study contributes to the field by offering insights into entrepreneurial contextualization and networking. It sheds light on the complex interplay between entrepreneurs and their contexts, providing a nuanced understanding of localized strategies in the Chinese context. The findings add value to the discourse on entrepreneurship by elucidating the strategic and processual acts through which entrepreneurs engage with stakeholders and reshape their environments.

Recovering the neglected importance of Harry Hopkins’ role in the New Deal: insights for management and organization studies

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to revisit the potential of the New Deal as a research context in management and organization studies and, in doing so, forward the role one of its chief architects, Harry Hopkins, played in managing the economic crisis. The exploration takes us to multiple layers that work together to form context around Hopkins including the Great Depression, the Roosevelt Administration, and ultimately, the New Deal. By raising Harry Hopkins as an exemplar of historical-narrative exclusion, the authors can advance the understanding of his role in the New Deal and how his actions produced early insights about management (e.g. modern crisis management).Design/methodology/approachThe paper experiments with the methodological assemblage of ANTi-History and microhistorical analysis that the authors call “ANTi-Microhistory” to examine the life narrative of Harry Hopkins, his early association with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and later, the New Deal. To accomplish this, the authors undertake a programme of archival research (e.g. the digital repository of The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum) and assess various materials (e.g. speeches, biographies and memoirs) from across multiple spaces.FindingsThe findings suggest Harry Hopkins to be a much more powerful actor in mobilizing New Deal policies and their effect on early management thought than what was previously accepted. In the process, the authors found that because of durable associations with Roosevelt, key policy architects of the same ilk as Harry Hopkins (e.g. Frances Perkins, Henry Wallace, Lewis Douglas, and others) and their contributions have been marginalized. This finding illustrates the significant potential of little-known historical figures and how they might shed new insight on the development of the field and management practice.Originality/valueThe aim is to demonstrate the potential of engaging historical research in management with the individual – Harry Hopkins – as a unit of analysis. By engaging historical research on the individual – be it well-known or obscure figures of the past – the authors are considering how they contribute to the understanding of phenomena (e.g. New Deal, Progressivism or Keynesian economics). The authors build on research that brings to focus forgotten people, communities and ideas in management studies but go further in advocating for space in the research to consider the scholarly potential of the individual.

Joseph Bouet in the Durham criminal court (c.1825–1856): picturing nineteenth century courtroom actors. Part 2: three case studies

ABSTRACT Between c.1825–1856, a French-born artist, Joseph Bouet, made approximately sixty pencil sketches in the criminal courtroom at Durham, of legal actors including judges, lawyers, and defendants. Our research is the first detailed analysis of these images by legal scholars. It is presented in two parts, which can be read as separate and independent pieces, but each gain from being read in conjunction with the other. In Part 1 of this series of two articles we discussed potential theoretical approaches to analysis of the images and their importance to socio-legal and legal historical scholarship (cross ref). In this Part 2, we explore Bouet’s courtroom sketches of legal actors as the rare and unusual starting point for a microhistorical analysis examining individual interaction(s) with the criminal justice process in the mid-nineteenth century. This article demonstrates that with detailed research these previously overlooked images can offer a unique window into aspects of nineteenth century legal history, with much to tell us about legal institutions, the people who worked within them and the ‘objects/subjects’ of the law. This study makes an important contribution to the growing body of scholarship on the interface between history, law and the visual.

From Cisr-i Mustafa Paşa to Svilengrad: The Ethnic Homogenization of a Thracian Town in the Balkan Wars

AbstractThe transformation of Ottoman Cisr-i Mustafa Paşa to Bulgarian Svilengrad was the outcome of a combination of both local violence and state-policy that took place throughout the Balkan Wars (1912-13) and within the framework of state-building efforts in both Ottoman imperial and Bulgarian post-imperial contexts. This sequence of mass violence stands at the core of this article. Based on Ottoman, Jewish, international, and translated Bulgarian sources, this article discusses the everyday dynamics and events that took place in the town by placing them in the contexts of the macro-historical transformations generated by the Balkan Wars. It likewise turns to micro-historical analysis to study the violence perpetrated by locals. While it is evident that much of the violence was state-sponsored or, at least, tacitly accepted by the state, and reflected top-down planning, non-state players also took part in the retribution against those they deemed alien to the national cause.

Contested Households: Lodgers, Labour, and the Law in Rural Iceland in the Early 19th Century

ABSTRACT The historiography of labour in pre-industrial Iceland has commonly portrayed it first and foremost as life-cycle service in rural households and has suggested that, in a European context, the Icelandic system of compulsory service – or vistarband – was exceptionally harsh due to its broad scope and inflexibility. This approach has been built primarily on demographics and a normative analysis of legal sources. Less attention has been paid to the everyday practices of workers and their employers (or the state) as they manoeuvred within and around the labour legislation to establish working relationships to make ends meet. Similarly, ambiguities within the legislation and discrepancies between law and practice have rarely been explored, nor has people’s understanding of the principal concepts of the labour laws, concepts such as ‘household’, ‘farm’ and ‘servant’, been scrutinized. This article invokes such questions and provides a microhistorical analysis of two court cases which illustrate the nuances and ambiguities of putting such a broad-reaching set of regulations into practice in a pre-industrial rural setting.

Quartering of the Disabled Team in Krasnoyarsk in the 1820s: Microhistorical Analysis

Quartering of the Disabled Team in Krasnoyarsk in the 1820s: Microhistorical Analysis

Opportunity beliefs in internationalization: A microhistorical approach

We propose the concept of opportunity belief as a means of understanding individuals as the interpreters of their contexts over the internationalization process of a firm. To illustrate the concept, we conducted a microhistorical analysis on one of the largest forest industry MNEs with an internationalization history of more than 150 years. Historical archival data and rich secondary material provided access to the reasonings of individuals over the firm’s internationalization. This allowed depiction of different types of opportunity beliefs as the drivers of internationalization actions within particular historical contexts. We portray opportunity belief as a complementary lens to current internationalization models focusing primarily on firm-level development.

In Search of the Unicorn’s Virtue in a Rhino Horn Cup: Consumption of Rhino Horns and the Production of Knowledge in Early Modern Lisbon

Abstract This article focuses on the analysis of a medical consilium about a rhino horn written around 1570 by the Portuguese royal physician Jorge Godines to the Spanish ambassador in Lisbon. It sheds light on the processes of knowledge production concerning rhino and unicorn horns in early modern Lisbon. Through micro-historical analysis, we will demonstrate how demand, supply, and the availability of specimens, experience, information, and intellectual networks contributed to the establishment of a specific geography of scientific knowledge around the city. The analysis hopes to contribute to the disclosure of a more heterogeneous scientific landscape in early modern Europe, where practices of knowledge production depended very much on local contacts and on the agents’ individual trajectories.

“Almost Soviet Father”: An Experience of Microhistorical Research of Rural Confessional History in 1940s—1970s

The problem of the possibility of a fruitful study of the rural parish history of the Soviet period through microhistorical analysis is raised. For discussion, the experience of researching the fate of a small Old Believer community is proposed. Both archival documents and interview materials are used. The purpose of the publication is to show some factors of the reproduction of traditional religious culture on the Soviet collective farm of the 1940s—1970s and at the same time demonstrate the heuristic potential of combined archival and field work. The author focuses on the figure of a priest who managed to restore and strengthen his parish, despite the previous dispossession and destruction of the prayer house. The cohesion of the community, outstanding personal qualities, as well as the ability of believers to practically harmonize Christian and Soviet values became the conditions for his success is shown in the article. The adoption of Soviet cultural norms, excluding atheism, is considered in the work as the most important factor in the survival of the Old Believer community. The expediency of verifying the data of official Soviet documentation by referring to oral history is demonstrated in the study. It is pointed out that in the materials of the USSR civil servants devoted to confessional phenomena, strict facts could be combined with false interpretations.

The Many Values of Night Soil in Wartime China

Abstract In March 1940, leaders of the Chongqing night-soil trade union sent a petition to the governor of China’s Sichuan province to contest health officials’ attempts to seize the night-soil industry. Cleanliness in Chongqing, the national capital during the War of Resistance against Japan (1937–45), held profound significance for China’s hygienic modernity, but Nationalist authorities failed to ensure it. On their part, the petitioners failed to recognize the centrality of odour in health officials’ agenda. These joint failures left the wartime capital mired in muck. This article employs microhistorical analysis of the 1940 petition to highlight a significant shift in olfactory sensibility. Comparison with a similar instance in nearby Hankou eleven years later, when Communist cadres succeeded in breaking the local night-soil gang, elucidates key distinctions between the Nationalist and Communist states. The conclusion considers what might be possible if we imagine using night soil to fertilize soils not as an anti-modern practice but as a sustainable means of processing waste and caring for our planet. To regain a portion of night soil’s many values, we must conquer the obstacles of disease transmission and disgust. The former is a technical problem for which solutions already exist; the latter is a formidable social problem.

Trans Liminality and the Nazi State

Abstract Weimar Berlin is considered a past haven of queer possibility, but for trans people its permissiveness had clear limits. A close reading of the life of trans woman Gerd R. undermines a simple idealization of Weimar Berlin and addresses continuities and breaks between the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. How the Nazi state policed trans people is yet to be acknowledged by historians. Thus far, trans people have been subsumed into histories of queer persecution. Yet, if they had ‘Aryan’ racial status and were not considered homosexual, some trans people could avoid the worst of Nazi violence. If they had significant utilitarian value in their ability to perform skilled work, they could even be considered for rehabilitation into the Volksgemeinschaft. R.’s treatment therefore demonstrates the heterogeneous nature of Nazi policy and persecution in practice. Her contradictory and complex position within the Nazi societal matrix serves to undermine the coherence of the racial state paradigm and reasserts the vagueness and malleability of the Volksgemeinschaft model. This microhistorical analysis offers a new perspective on gender and sexuality in Weimar and Third Reich historiography, and foregrounds unexpected ways that trans liminality highlights incoherencies in Nazi state practice.

The trial of Thomas Frogbrook: bestiality and the law in an early sixteenth-century English rural community

Abstract This article examines the gap between legal theory and practice regarding bestiality in late medieval England. It focuses on a microhistorical analysis of a 1520 trial heard in Chichester consistory court, integrating other archival documents, legislation and legal commentaries to illustrate local and national contexts. I argue first that personal enmity rather than a moralizing agenda was the primary motivating factor in this case, and second that this trial illustrates the broader limitations of English church courts and the system of canon law in affecting popular attitudes to ‘unnatural’ intercourse and in the suppression of such acts.

Global archaeology and microhistorical analysis. Connecting scales in the 1st-milennium B.C. Mediterranean

AbstractRecently, voices have been raised regarding the challenges of Big Data-driven global approaches, including the realization that exclusively tackling the global scale masks social and historical realities. While multi-scalar analyses have confronted this problem, the effects of global approaches are being felt. We highlight one of these effects: as classical scholarship struggles to decolonize itself, the ancient Mediterranean in global archaeology pivots around the Graeco-Roman world only, marginalizing the non-classical Mediterranean, thus foiling attempts at promoting post-colonial perspectives. In highlighting this, our aim is twofold: first, to invigorate the debate on multi-scalar approaches, proposing to incorporate microhistory into archaeological analysis; second, to use the non-classical Mediterranean to demonstrate that historical depth at a micro level is essential to augment that power in our interpretations.

Der ‚lange Atem‘ der bäuerlichen Empörung

The Persistence of Peasant Outrage. Conflicts over Forest Use, Poaching and Fraternity Revolts in the Zillertal from the 16th to the End of the 18th Century When I tried to follow the traces of Salzburg poachers in the 18th century more than twenty years ago, I was not aware of how deeply rooted their social protest was in earlier, less spectacular but much more widespread forest conflicts between peasants and the archepiscopal state. Of course, these were different conflicts fought by different opponents, but they aimed at the same goal: to resist increasing restrictions from a bureaucratic state whose existence brought the peasants no benefits. The inhabitants of this extreme mountain region wanted to remain autonomous in their traditional economical and social practices and resisted the introduction of a forest economy by a state that was unable and unwilling to support and compromise with them. Thus, the remote forests, whose economic use was in many ways legally unclear, became the centre of social conflict. The article reconstructs two protest traditions – that of illegal forest use and that of poaching – in a micro-historical analysis of the situation in the Zillertal. It argues that the intermingling of these traditions ultimately created an Alpine protest culture in the minds and memories of the peasantry that was stable and persistent enough to undermine the episcopal state during the Napoleonic wars.

Der ‚lange Atem‘ der bäuerlichen Empörung

The Persistence of Peasant Outrage. Conflicts over Forest Use, Poaching and Fraternity Revolts in the Zillertal from the 16th to the End of the 18th Century When I tried to follow the traces of Salzburg poachers in the 18th century more than twenty years ago, I was not aware of how deeply rooted their social protest was in earlier, less spectacular but much more widespread forest conflicts between peasants and the archepiscopal state. Of course, these were different conflicts fought by different opponents, but they aimed at the same goal: to resist increasing restrictions from a bureaucratic state whose existence brought the peasants no benefits. The inhabitants of this extreme mountain region wanted to remain autonomous in their traditional economical and social practices and resisted the introduction of a forest economy by a state that was unable and unwilling to support and compromise with them. Thus, the remote forests, whose economic use was in many ways legally unclear, became the centre of social conflict. The article reconstructs two protest traditions – that of illegal forest use and that of poaching – in a micro-historical analysis of the situation in the Zillertal. It argues that the intermingling of these traditions ultimately created an Alpine protest culture in the minds and memories of the peasantry that was stable and persistent enough to undermine the episcopal state during the Napoleonic wars.

Место сельского схода в регулировании питейной торговли после винной реформы 1863 года

Relevance. The place of the rural gathering in the regulation of the drinking trade after the wine reform of 1863 has not received a serious assessment in the scientific literature. The presented article is the first attempt to assess the impact of rural society on the size of the drinking trade The purpose − to determine the place of the rural gathering in the regulation of the drinking trade after the wine re-form of 1863. The objectives which follow from the goal set, are to: to name the normative acts establishing the place of the rural gathering in the opening of drinking establishments; to testify to the ways that wine merchants used to obtain con-sent; to determine the degree of independence of peasants in decision-making. Methodology. The study was conducted on the basis of macro- and micro-historical analysis, problem-chronological, historical-typological and historical-genetic methods were used. Results. The new legislation made the opening of drinking establishments on the lands belonging to rural societies dependent on rural gatherings. Peasants willingly went to a village meeting about a drinking establishment, behaved importantly, which was explained neither by adherence to morality, but by the desire to get money or booze for their vote. Rural societies reacted unfriendly to the Law of May 14, 1885, which prohibited receiving payment for a permissive sentence. The opposition was expressed in the growth of bans on the drinking trade. By law, on May 5, 1892, rural societies received official permission to open a drinking trade for a fee, but to spend it on paying arrears. Conclusions. The wine reform of 1863 included the village assembly in the system of regulation of the drinking trade. In the post-reform period, the limits of the influence of the rural gathering on the drinking industry changed, peasant consent largely depended on the rural authorities, world intermediaries, and the presence of drinking affairs. But the opportunity to open or prohibit the drinking trade strengthened the peasants' sense of self-importance. They gave preference to local merchants and the most generous petitioners. Wine merchants, wanting to get a permissive verdict, openly watered or distributed money to the peasants.