Macrohistory seeks out large, long-term trends in

world history Human history or world history is the record of humankind from prehistory to the present. Early modern human, Modern humans evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago and initially lived as hunter-gatherers. They Early expansions of hominin ...

in search of ultimate patterns by a comparison of proximate details. It favors a comparative or world-historical perspective to determine the roots of changes as well as the developmental paths of society or a historical process. A macrohistorical study might examine Japanese

feudalism Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political customs that flourished in Middle Ages, medieval Europe from the 9th to 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of struc ...

and European feudalism to decide whether feudal structures are an inevitable outcome because of certain conditions. Macrohistorical studies often "assume that macro-historical processes repeat themselves in explainable and understandable ways." The approach can identify stages in the development of humanity as a whole such as the large-scale direction towards greater

rationality Rationality is the quality of being guided by or based on reason. In this regard, a person acts rationally if they have a good reason for what they do, or a belief is rational if it is based on strong evidence. This quality can apply to an ab ...

, greater

liberty Liberty is the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views. The concept of liberty can vary depending on perspective and context. In the Constitutional ...

or the development of

productive forces Productive forces, productive powers, or forces of production ( German: ''Produktivkräfte'') is a central idea in Marxism and historical materialism. In Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' own critique of political economy, it refers to the combin ...

and

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

society, among others.

Description

Macrohistory is distinguished from microhistory, which involves the rigorous and in-depth study of a single event in history. However, these two can be combined such as the case of studying the larger trends of post-

slavery Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...

societies, which include the examination of individual cases and smaller groups. Macrohistory is also distinguished from metahistory with the way the latter recognizes historical works as "a verbal structure in the form of a narrative prose discourse." According to Garry Trompf, macrohistory encompasses but is not limited by metahistory by taking in broad prospectus of change, including those that are imaginal or speculative. Macrohistory has four "idea frames" – that past events can show: 1) we are progressing; 2) affairs have worsened; 3) everything is repetitive; and, 4) nothing can be understood without an '' eschaton'' (end time) or ''

apocatastasis In theology, apokatastasis (, also spelled apocatastasis) is the restoration of creation to a condition of perfection. In Christianity, the term refers to a form of Christian universalism, often associated with Origen, that includes the ultimate s ...

'' (restoration of all things, or reconstitution).

Examples

Examples of macrohistorical analysis include

Oswald Spengler Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (29 May 1880 – 8 May 1936) was a German polymath whose areas of interest included history, philosophy, mathematics, science, and art, as well as their relation to his organic theory of history. He is best know ...

's assertion that the lifespan of

civilizations A civilization (also spelled civilisation in British English) is any complex society characterized by the development of the state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond signed or spoken languag ...

is limited and ultimately they decay. There is also

Arnold J. Toynbee Arnold Joseph Toynbee (; 14 April 1889 – 22 October 1975) was an English historian, a philosopher of history, an author of numerous books and a research professor of international history at the London School of Economics and King's Coll ...

's historical synthesis in explaining the rise and fall of civilizations, which also included those by other historians (e.g. William H. McNeill's '' The Rise of the West'') inspired by his works. The

Battle of Ain Jalut The Battle of Ain Jalut (), also spelled Ayn Jalut, was fought between the Bahri Mamluks of Egypt and the Ilkhanate on 3 September 1260 (25 Ramadan 658 AH) near the spring of Ain Jalut in southeastern Galilee in the Jezreel Valley. It marks ...

and the early

Mongol conquests The Mongol invasions and conquests took place during the 13th and 14th centuries, creating history's largest contiguous empire, the Mongol Empire (1206–1368), which by 1260 covered large parts of Eurasia. Historians regard the Mongol devastati ...

are considered by many historians to be of great macrohistorical importance. The former marked the high water point of Mongol conquests, and the first time they had ever been decisively defeated. The early conquests, on the other hand, were pursued for the purpose of long-distance trade but disrupted trade networks until the emergence of the so-called

Pax Mongolica The Pax Mongolica (Latin for "Mongol Peace"), less often known as Pax Tatarica ("Tatar Peace"), is a historiographical term modeled after the original phrase '' Pax Romana'' which describes the stabilizing effects of the conquests of the Mongol ...

when trade relations in Eurasia stabilized.

Reception

According to economists

Robert Solow Robert Merton Solow, GCIH (; August 23, 1924 – December 21, 2023) was an American economist who received the 1987 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, and whose work on the theory of economic growth culminated in the exogenous growth ...

, Brian Snowdon, Jason Collins, and to an article in the "Break Through & Mind Changing Idea" section of ''Wired'' (Japan),

Oded Galor Oded Galor (; born 1953) is an Israeli-American economist who is currently Herbert H. Goldberger Professor of Economics at Brown University. He is the founder of unified growth theory. Galor has contributed to the understanding of development o ...

's unified growth theory is a macro-historical analysis that has significantly contributed to the understanding of process of development over the entire course of human history and the role of deep-rooted factors in the transition from stagnation to growth and in the emergence of the vast inequality across the globe. ''Wired'' (Japan) has described Galor's theory as a global theory comparable to Newton's "law of gravitation", Darwin's "evolution theory" or Einstein's "general relativity".

Macrohistorical publications

* * * * * (2013 edition co-authored by

Odd Arne Westad Odd Arne Westad FBA (born 5 January 1960) is a Norwegian historian specializing in the Cold War and contemporary East Asian history. He is the Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale University, where he teaches in the Yale History ...

) * * * * * * *

References

{{Theories of History

External links