F1413 Comparative History
Krom Mikhail
Although often recommended as a powerful tool of historical research, comparison still remains somewhat on the margin of national historiographies. In the recent decades, however, globalization has given a new impetus to comparative studies in history inspiring a revision of some established truths.
The proposed course covers a wide range of issues related to comparative history. It aims at encouraging students to use this important method of research, combining discussions of complex methodological problems with highlighting case studies where comparison was fruitfully applied.
Learning outcomes: at the end of the course students are expected to be well aware of heuristic potential of comparison in historical research and to show abilities of using it properly in their own research work.
The course consists of three parts.
Part I summarizes the rich experience of comparative historical research accumulated in the twentieth century, from Marc Bloch and Otto Hintze in the 1920s and 1930s to such contemporary proponents of comparative method in history as Hartmut Kaelble, Jürgen Kocka and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt in Germany, George M. Frederickson, Nancy L. Green and Peter Baldwin in the USA, and many others. But the scope of the course is not limited to the work of historians alone: adopting an interdisciplinary approach, it will draw the students’ attention to the important contribution that historical sociologists like Barrington Moor, Theda Skocpol or Charles Tilly made to comparative analysis of the past. Part I ends with the description of the new challenges comparative history is facing now on the part of such emerging trends in historical writing as histoire croisée, history of transfers, entangled and transnational history. Criticism, which comparative history is now subjected to, naturally raises the question of its potential: it is discussed in part II of the course.
Part II focuses upon methodological issues and starts with an analysis of the logic of comparison. Special attention will be paid to John Stuart Mill’s “Method of Agreement” and
“Method of Difference” and their applicability to historical research. Other issues to be discussed in the class include functions and types of comparison in historical studies, pitfalls and shortcomings, which are widespread in historical comparative studies, and recommended ways how to escape them. General recommendations are followed by examples borrowed from
contemporary scholarship as well as from the lecturer’s own work.
The last part of the course aims at demonstrating the variety of comparative history and its
relation to influential transnational trends in contemporary historical writing. The examples
chosen represent economic history (from classics like Alexander Gerschenkron and Walt Rostow to the present day), social history (and in particular different forms of inequality, slavery in different regions of the world, etc.), political and institutional history (with special focus upon comparative state building and representative institutions in different countries), comparative histories of colonialism and empires, urban studies, etc. The cases to be discussed show unity and variety of historical processes and cultural forms in different epochs and parts of the world, e.g., slavery in the USA and serfdom in Russia before 1861 (Peter Kolchin), patronage and clientele in early modern Europe, from Italy in the West to Russia in the East (Wolfgang Reinhard, Sharon Kettering, Antoni Mączak, Renata Ago, a.o.), or pragmatism of the city management in Gilded Age Chicago, Silver Age Moscow and Meiji Osaka (Blaire A. Ruble).
Evaluation
For participation in seminars and discussions of the recommended literature students will get 30% of the overall grade. Passing mid-term colloquium will give them another 30% and final term paper (5 pages min.) the last 40% of the grade.
Readings
1. Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: New Left Books, 1974).
2. Marc Bloch, “Toward a Comparative History of European Societies”, in: M. Aymard and N. Mikhia (eds.), French Studies in History. Vol. 1: Inheritance (New Delhi, 1988), pp. 35 – 68.
3. Deborah Cohen and Maura O’Connor (eds.), Comparison and History: Europe in Cross-National Perspective (New York; London: Routledge, 2004).
4. Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1962).
5. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, “Comparative History”, International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (Amsterdam and New York: Elsevier, 2001), vol. 4, pp. 2397 – 2403.
6. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Jürgen Kocka (eds.), Comparative and Transnational History: Central European Approaches and New Perspectives (New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2009).
7. Peter Kolchin, Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass. and London, England 1987).
8. William H. Sewell, Jr., “Marc Bloch and the Logic of Comparative History”, History and Theory, vol. 6, no. 2 (1967), pp. 208 – 218.
9. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions. A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
10. Charles Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1984).
11. Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann, “Beyond Comparison: Histoire Croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity”, History and Theory, vol. 45, no. 1 (2006), pp. 30 – 50.