Microhistories
About the Book Series
Microhistories is open to books employing different microhistorical approaches: global microhistories aimed at grasping world-wide connections in local research, social history trying to find determining historical structures through a micro-analysis and cultural history in the form of microhistories that relate directly to large or small scale historical contexts are equally welcome. We will also publish interesting stories, bringing the everyday life and culture of common people of the past close to the readers, without the aspiration of finding answers to general "big questions" or relating them to the grand narratives of history. The series is open to publishing both theoretical and empirical works. It is, indeed, often hard to separate the two, especially in microhistory. However, our main focus will be on empirical monographs which are likely to communicate stories from the past which will capture the imagination of our readers. The geographical scope of the series is global and so non- European works or those which cross territorial boundaries are welcome. Any scholar who wishes to contribute to the series will be asked to make sure that they address important issues that can be researched with the methods of microhistory.
For more information about the series and the proposal process, please contact the series editors, Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon ([email protected]) and István M. Szijártó ([email protected]).
Editorial Board: Andrew Bergerson, Simona Cerutti, Chuanfei Chin, Dagmar Freist, Carlo Ginzburg, Binne de Haan, Karl Jacoby, Giovanni Levi, Edward Muir, Matti Peltonen, Hans Renders, Jacques Revel, and Dana Sajdi.
The Sky Poured Down Candy: Microhistorical Reflections on the Life and Times of a Petty Mughal Official, c. 1700–1730
1st Edition
By Riya Gupta
September 18, 2025
Bringing together archival research and literary analysis, this microhistorical study explores the decline of the Mughal empire through the life of a petty Mughal official Abdul Jalil Bilgrami as he navigated uncertainty amid the shifting currents of imperial power. Illuminating the everyday ...
A Microhistory of Early Modern Transatlantic Migration: The Frigate Agata (1747)
1st Edition
By Alejandro Salamanca Rodríguez
March 25, 2025
This microhistory of early modern transatlantic migration follows the journey of the Agata, a Dutch frigate hired by Spanish merchants in 1747 to travel between Cádiz and Veracruz. Manned by migrants from across Europe, the Agata was intercepted by British privateers on its return trip, an event ...
Uniform Prejudice: Military Masculinity and the Queer Case of Private Laurence Moon, Troop F, First U.S. Cavalry, 1912
1st Edition
By Thomas C. Rust
March 25, 2025
This book examines the historical experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals facing discrimination in the early 20th-century military before same-sex acts were explicitly illegal. Centered on the court-martial of Private Laurence Edgar Moon in 1912, the book sheds light on the broader landscape of prejudice...
Factionalism and Dissent in an English City: Chichester, 1678-1685
1st Edition
By Danae Tankard
February 25, 2025
This book is about the political and religious controversies that beset the small English city of Chichester between 1678 and 1685, which intersected with wider political turbulence at the heart of government and in the nation at large. This period of seventeenth-century English history has been ...
Patronage, Power, and Masculinity in Medieval England: A Microhistory of a Bishop's and Knight's Contest over the Church of Thame
1st Edition
By Andrew Miller
November 28, 2024
The book investigates a riveting, richly documented conflict from thirteenth-century England over church property and ecclesiastical patronage. Oliver Sutton, the bishop of Lincoln, and John St. John, a royal household knight, both used coveted papal provisions to bestow the valuable church of ...
The Musician and the Senator: The Microhistory of a Friendship
1st Edition
By Vincenzo Barra
November 28, 2024
This book was conceived as a laboratory on microhistory, an attempt to illustrate its main processes and advantages. Through the microhistorical approach the reader is off on an adventurous journey to discover an individual’s perspective, that of maestro Luigi Prisco who emigrated to the USA from ...
Deciphering Carlo Ginzburg: Form and Time
1st Edition
By Deivy F. Carneiro, Daniel R. B. Dias
October 30, 2024
This book offers an original reading of Carlo Ginzburg’s work, tracing his trajectory in the context of Italian micro-history, his debates on the objectivity of historical knowledge, and the connection of his work to the expanded perspectives constructed in recent decades by global history. ...
A Criminal Hero: Justice, Politics and Media Culture in Eighteenth-Century Naples
1st Edition
By Pasquale Palmieri
August 19, 2024
In the spring of 1757, the Augustinian friar Leopoldo di San Pasquale was tried in Naples by the hierarchies of his own religious order on charges of financial fraud, heresy, and sexual immorality. He responded by accusing the heads of the convent of subjecting him to a series of inhuman cruelties,...
El Terrible: Life and Labor in Pueblonuevo, 1887-1939
1st Edition
By Patricia A. Schechter
July 12, 2024
This book is a biography of Pueblonuevo del Terrible, a mining town located in Andalusia, Spain. Based on previously unexamined sources, the study paints a fresh portrait of industrial workers and their families in Córdoba province, enriching our understanding of this mostly agricultural region. ...
Neighbours of Passage: A Microhistory of Migrants in a Paris Tenement, 1882–1932
1st Edition
By Fabrice Langrognet
September 25, 2023
The French edition of Neighbours of Passage has been awarded Le Grand Prix des Rendez-vous de l'histoire 2024. The book is a sociocultural microhistory of migrants. From the 1880s to the 1930s, it traces the lives of the occupants of a housing complex located just north of the French capital, in ...
The Rise of National Socialism in the Bavarian Highlands: A Microhistory of Murnau, 1919-1933
1st Edition
By Edith Raim
September 25, 2023
The Rise of National Socialism in the Bavarian Highlands offers a microhistory of the town of Murnau between 1919 and 1933, a period which witnessed the rise of national socialism in Germany. National socialism had its roots in Bavaria, where the Weimar Republic found it difficult to secure ...
A Humanist on the Frontier: The Life Story of a Sixteenth-Century Central European Pastor
1st Edition
By Marcell Sebők
May 31, 2023
A Humanist on the Frontier explores the remarkable life of Sebastian Ambrosius, a sixteenth-century Lutheran minister and intellectual from Késmárk (now Kežmarok) in present-day Slovakia, formerly on the borderland of the Kingdom of Hungary. Through an examination of Ambrosius’ publications and ...