Twelve authors, involved in a research seminar, here offer us their views on microhistory. They come from backgrounds in history, archaeology, anthropology, sociology, and anthropology. Two things unite them: a common geohistorical frame – the Atlantic world from fifteenth-century West Africa to twenty-first-century Yucatán – and a desire to emphasize social history from below, relying on a broadly defined concept of resistance (to domination, traditional interpretations, and so forth). In this sense, writing microhistory ‘can be a political act’, according to the editors (p. 9).

That apart, the contributions are truly diverse, partly because of their focus and the particular examples from which they derive, but also because of the ways chosen to approach what the authors call microhistory. Three examples of this diversity will suffice. Michael Harkin (Chapter 7) focuses on the lost sixteenth-century colony of Roanoke Island, North Carolina. He puts the emphasis on landscapes, perceived as the result of communities’ actions and representations, and argues for wide-ranging comparisons, for instance with 9/11 or pre-war Paris. Should we talk here about microhistory or comparative history? Meanwhile, Richard Maddox (Chapter 2) studies the Spanish transition from dictatorship to democracy, thanks to the individual itinerary of ‘Juan Vargas’ (a pseudonym), who was born in 1918 and lived in the small town of Aracena. Describing Vargas’ experiences as a combination of conservative and radical elements, but without criticizing Vargas’ discourse or telling us why it might or might not be representative, Maddox questions the idea that, during the period 1975 to 1985, ‘liberal democratic institutions were firmly enough established that the country could turn decisively toward building the future’ (p. 16). But should we confuse ‘macrohistory’ with ‘conventional wisdom’, or use macrohistory as a synonym for ‘prevailing interpretations’? The last example relates to Christopher DeCorce’s examination of the history of El Mina castle and settlement, in what is today coastal Ghana. Oral traditions, historical sources, and archaeological remains are mobilized, to describe a specific ‘multi-layered perspective’. The chapter is very interesting, but is the use of multiple sources really specific to microhistory?

In their introduction, the editors write that they wish to respect the diversity of contributions, so as to illustrate that of their seminar. This intention is good in itself but it really complicates matters for the reader. The book is divided into two unequal parts: ‘Interdisciplinary perspectives and concerns’ (four chapters), and ‘Shifting lenses, embedded scales, event, biography, and landscape’ (eight chapters). These section titles, like that of the book, give the impression of a work dedicated to theory and methodology, which is not exactly the case. The collection of essays does not offer a really original approach. Although microhistory dates back to Carlo Ginzburg’s work in the 1970s, the editors nevertheless present it as something relatively new. Some chapters borrow from various scientific disciplines, which is helpful but is not really new. Some of the editors’ a priori views are also questionable: for example, the statement that ‘a historical phenomenon can become comprehensible only by reconstructing the activities of all the people who participated in it’ (p. 4, citing Ginzburg). In reality, an entity cannot be understood solely by adding its different components.

In fact, what is relatively new about this book is neither the project nor the method but the contribution to the defence and illustration of microhistory, through the subtle mixture of the words ‘small’ and ‘worlds’. This introduces the idea that microhistory opens up real and specific worlds. The editors are right that the classical opposition between small and large, or micro and macro, leads to an ambiguity, since a village is micro if analysed in relation to a state but macro in comparison to a household. Moreover, interesting phenomena often lie at the intersection of scales, between micro and macro. However, the examples developed in the chapters do not really intersect with macrohistory. To talk about worlds is perhaps a way for microhistorians to answer the challenges introduced by global and world history, but the authors seem to ignore current studies in global and world history, and to play with words is insufficient to resolve this tension.

This should not imply that the book is of secondary interest. On the contrary, each of the contributions offers interesting insights, thanks in particular to the combining of various sources. Kathleen Blee (Chapter 3) studies an incipient social movement in 2004 Pittsburgh, and notes that social movements, which are often seen in retrospect as structurally determined, are also shaped and reshaped by the contingent action of ordinary people. Dale Tomich (Chapter 11) enlightens our knowledge of nineteenth-century Cuban planters. Mary C. Beaudry (Chapter 9) reconstitutes the lives of two New England merchants at the end of the eighteenth century, and convincingly demonstrates the importance of archaeological sources for historians, who too often neglect them. In a similar manner, Linda Gordon (Chapter 8) reveals how photography, as well as the microhistorical itinerary of a photographer, can refine our vision of New Deal political culture and of the era of the Great Depression. John Walton (Chapter 6) focuses on two cases drawn from nineteenth-century California, so as to understand the social significance of arson. Thanks to an impressive processual, quantitative, and comparative analysis, borrowing at least as much from good classical social history as from microanalysis, he stresses that arson could express a method of social control and protest in frontier communities characterized by a quasi-absence of law. A similar combination of ‘qualitative’ and quantitative data enables Rebecca Jean Emigh (Chapter 10) to suggest that fifteenth-century Tuscan peasants could work with figures and possessed numeracy skills.

Emigh further recommends that historians should aggregate and compare microhistories. I can only agree with her, but that raises a question that brings me back to the beginning of this review: is the aggregation of multiple cases, analysed through the confrontation of various sources and quantitative data, really specific to microhistory? Reading this book, one gets the curious impression that it is now difficult for microhistory to renew itself without transforming itself radically, and even abandoning its founding concepts.