Micro History Essay

Micro histories have become more popular in recent years because they allow readers to understand the common people’s perspective during that piece of history. The counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s paved the way for micro histories. Both refuted the traditional systems that they came from and allowed for new perspectives to be created. Micro histories try to orient history to focus on the lay people; they refute the traditional system of a textbook that focuses on the key individuals of the time period. Micro histories focus on small regions in order to recover the opinion of the peasants in that time period. Montaillou is a great example of a micro history due to its primary focus on a village in Southern France in the early 1300s.

Micro historians become so involved in their research that they sometimes lose sight of reality. These historians start to romanticize the individuals they are studying and become biased. This connection between the historian and the individual they are studying might be because of the lack of documentation. The historian is only able to analyze a small group of documents and does not use outside factors. Tormented Voices is an excellent example of this restriction because the micro historian could only analyze sixteen parchments comprising of the villager’s

A Poisoned Past, Giovanni and Lusanna, and Montaigne all undermine modern conceptions of certain subjects. Montaigne undermines the preconceived conception of cannibals. The micro history allows the reader to believe that savages are more civil than European society because the savages mimicked the European’s cruelty. Additionally, the savages are described as pure, where they do no alter human nature like Europeans. A Poisoned Past and Giovanni and Lusanna highlights how much power a woman actually had in the court of law during medieval times. The power women held was actually more than the modern conception that is relayed in textbooks. Although these two micro histories exemplified women had power in justice systems, women’s lives were not easy. Montaillou highlights how women did not have a lot of freedom, Bednarski writes a successful micro history, A Poisoned Past, because he understands and highlights the downfalls of a micro history. Bednarski understands that no singular truth about the past exists. Instead, several competing reconstructions exist and Bednarski tries to choose the most logical reconstruction of the history. This logical reconstruction allows Bednarski to create an accurate micro history. Additionally, Bednarski shows his readers that a successful narrative crafts a story while filling the gaps of