A prominent historiographic theme in the past decade has been a movement away from causal explanation of large-scale processes and outcomes and toward narrative interpretation of singular historical processes. This article argues for the continued vitality of large-scale historical inquiry and surveys the historiographic issues that arise in large-scale historical explanation. The article proceeds through an examination of several important recent examples of large-scale history: comparative history of Europe and China, the history of alternative forms of industrial organization, and the history of technology. These three cases provide the basis for a conception of what may be called “conjunctural contingent meso-level” explanations: explanations that identify intermediate-level structures and processes and highlight both the structural factors that govern change and the multiple pathways that change can take.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Bloch, Marc. 1966. French rural history. Berkeley: University of California Press.
2.
Boserup, Ester. 1981. Population and technological change: A study of long-term trends. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
3.
Braudel, Fernand. 1984. The perspective of the world. New York: Harper & Row.
4.
Brenner, Robert. 1976. Agrarian class structure and economic development in pre-industrial Europe. Past and Present70:30-75.
5.
Cohen, Paul. 1984. Discovering history in China. New York: Columbia University Press.
6.
Crafts, N.F.R.1985. British economic growth during the Industrial Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
7.
Cronon, William. 1991. Nature’s metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: W. W. Norton.
8.
Darnton, Robert. 1984. The great cat massacre and other episodes in French cultural history. New York: Basic Books.
9.
Deane, Phyllis. 1979. The first Industrial Revolution. 2d ed.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
10.
Deane, Phyllis, and W. A. Cole. 1967. British economic growth, 1688-1959: Trends and structure. 2d ed.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
11.
Elvin, Mark. 1973. The pattern of the Chinese past. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
12.
Fairbank, John King. 1992. China: A new history. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
13.
Feinstein, C. H.1981. Capital accumulation and the Industrial Revolution. In The economic history of Britain since 1700. Vol. 1, 1700-1860, edited by R. Floud and D. McCloskey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 128-142.
14.
Ferguson, Niall. 1999. The pity of war: Explaining World War I. New York: Basic Books.
15.
Floud, Roderick, and Donald McCloskey, eds. 1981. The economic history of Britain since 1700. Vol. 1, 1700-1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
16.
Geertz, Clifford. 1971. Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture. In The interpretation of cultures, edited by C. Geertz. New York: Basic Books, pp. 3-30.
17.
Geertz, Clifford. 1983. Local knowledge. New York: Basic Books.
18.
Hughes, Thomas Parker. 1983. Networks of power: Electrification in Western society, 1880-1930. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
19.
Jones, E. L. [1981] 1987. The European miracle: Environments, economies and geopolitics in the history of Europe and Asia. 2d ed. Reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
20.
Jones, E. L.1988. Growth recurring: Economic change in world history. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
21.
Kammen, Michael G.1991. Mystic chords of memory: The transformation of tradition in American culture. New York: Knopf.
22.
Kuhn, Philip A.1980. Rebellion and its enemies in late imperial China: Militarization and social structure, 1796-1864. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
23.
Ladurie, Emmanuel Le Roy. 1974. The peasants of Languedoc. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
24.
Little, Daniel. 1998. Microfoundations, method and causation: On the philosophy of the social sciences. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. 1970. The German ideology. New York: International.
27.
McGee, David. 1999. From craftsmanship to draftsmanship: Naval architecture and the three traditions of early modern design. Technology and Culture40:209-236.
28.
Mendels, Franklin F.1981. Agriculture and peasant industry in eighteenth-century Flanders. In Industrialization before industrialization: Rural industry in the genesis of capitalism, edited by P. Kriedte, H. Medick, and J. Schlumbohm. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 161-177.
29.
Netting, Robert M.1993. Smallholders, householders: Farm families and the ecology of intensive, sustainable agriculture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
30.
Nickles, David. 1999. Telegraph diplomats: The United States’ relations with France in 1948 and 1870. Technology and Culture40 (1): 1-25.
31.
North, Douglass C.1990. Institutions, institutional change and economic performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
32.
O’Brien, P. K., and C. Keyder. 1978. Economic growth in Britain and France, 1780-1914. London: Allen & Unwin.
33.
Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
34.
Postan, M. M.1975. The medieval economy and society: An economic history of Britain in the Middle Ages. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
35.
Reynard, Pierre Claude. 1999. Maintenance practices in early modern papermaking. Technology and Culture40:237-262.
36.
Rudolph, Susanne Hoeber. 1987. State formation in Asia. Journal of Asian Studies46:731-746.
37.
Sabel, Charles F., and Jonathan Zeitlin. 1985. Historical alternatives to mass production: Politics, markets and technology in 19th century industrialization. Past and Present108:133-176.
38.
Sabel, Charles F., and Jonathan Zeitlin. 1997. Worlds of possibility: Flexibility and mass production in Western industrialization. New York: Cambridge University Press.
39.
Schama, Simon. 1989. Citizens: A chronicle of the French Revolution. New York: Knopf.
40.
Skinner, G. William. 1964-65. Marketing and social structure in rural China. Journal of Asian Studies24 (1-3): 3-43, 195-228, 363-399.
41.
Skocpol, Theda. 1979. States and social revolutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
42.
Smith, Meritt Roe, and Leo Marx, eds. 1994. Does technology drive history? The dilemma of technological determinism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
43.
Soboul, Albert. 1975. The French Revolution 1787-1799: From the storming of the Bastille to Napoleon. New York: Vintage.
44.
Tilly, Charles. 1986. The contentious French: Four centuries of popular struggle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
45.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The modern world-system I: Capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century. New York: Academic Press.
46.
Warner, Sam Bass, Jr. [1962] 1978. Streetcar suburbs: The process of growth in Boston (1870-1900). 2d ed. Reprint, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
47.
White, Lynn. 1962. Medieval technology and social change. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
48.
Wittfogel, Karl. 1957. Oriental despotism: A comparative study of total power. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
49.
Wong, Roy Bin. 1997. China transformed: Historical change and the limits of European experience. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
