John Tosh “The Pursuit of History”
summary: Tosh talks about the di erent methods of writing history, gives examples on the
di erent methods & writes about their advantages and disadvantages;
1. Josh Tosh is a British historian; a historiographer, updates the way we look at the study of
history and how we construct our knowledge of the past
2. he does not agree that a historian ought to append primary sources into their historical
framework to make the studies most reliable; he thinks that an elaborate framework should
consist of a balance of primary and secondary sources to give a diverse idea and diverse
insights of the historical case
3. depending on which writing approach the author uses and the own interpretations of a
historical case, scholars might give di erent answers about the causes and consequences of
a historical event. There is neither one single cause nor one single consequence, it is an
interaction between di erent elements and a gradual development that leads to an event. The
signi cant questions in history do not turn on the conduct of individuals but concern major
events and collective transitions that cannot be explained by human intentions.
4. Narrative historical writing → assessing a historical event and their circumstances without
going into detail
5. Analysis historical writing → less creative way to convey information, it doest address the
imagination of reader
6. Connection narrative with analysis: → connecting analytic insights with a creative narrative to
catch the reader’s attention
7. Geographic scope → Looking at interconnections and developments between countries in a
vast territory for instance; looking at France and their neighboring states instead of France
alone.
8. Temporal scope → looking at how di erent developments led to causes and consequences →
the historian themselves decides how to put these developments in order
9. According to Tosh there are some disadvantages while working with Comparative History:
- Language: If you work with a lot of countries it would be preferable to know more languages.
- There can be a lot of sources (information and primary sources) when you make a
comparison. This can be di cult, as you need to choose what to use.
The advantages of the comparative method:
- By comparing you will get stronger research. You can nd di erences where you thought
there would be similarities and the other way.
- If you for example want to understand one society, you need to compare it with another
society to understand. Then you will know what is special for that one society.
10. Important historian: Leopold von Ranke “History only wants to show what actually happened”
→ Close descriptive what actually happened (Historism)
Stefan Berger “Comparative History”
summary: di erent kinds of comparisons, the promises of comparative history, problems and
pitfalls in comparative history, cultural transfer studies and comparison, the practice of
comparative history, explains “ideal-types” and typologies
1. Berger is a professor of social history; studied history, political science and German literature
2. Individualizing comparison - Set out to demonstrate the uniqueness of one particular case by
comparing it with others. They tend to be asymmetrical in that they use a variety of cases only
to shed light on the one case that the comparison seeks to understand better. They are more
common among historians, because they are concerned with questions of the uniqueness of a
particular time and place. They try to approach the evidence in an as unbiased manner as
possible, and tend to reconstruct the past from the evidence that remains.
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, 3. Universalizing comparison - highlights similarities, symmetrical, equal weight is given to all
compared subjects, greater level of abstraction, reduced historic complexity
4. Encompassing comparisons (related to individualizing comparisons) - concerned with
explaining di erences between cases that share an overarching commonality.
5. Variation- nding comparisons (related to universalizing comparisons) - di erent cases
understood as variations of one process
6. “reduce historical reality” - historical reality is very complex => reduction, reducing to
essential elements necessary for the comparison, focus rather on a typical matter among
many cases, based on theoretical view, quantity of cases instead of historical context, each
case is taken to explain a bigger “social context” => no need for a detailed analysis of the
greater historical background II Related to: Universalizing comparisons. It’s purpose is to
identify similarities between cases
7. typology - combination of di erent “ideal” types
8. Why do scholars turn to comparisons?
• comparisons can test existing models and explanations:
Example: They compare the rise of the Nazism in Germany with the United States, because
some people believed that the economic slump in the early 1930 in Germany caused the
rise of the Nazism.By comparing this with the United States (that also experienced an
economic crisis) we know that this can not be the only factor that led to Nazism (because
there was no nazism in America).
• questioning national theories and historic interpretations
• comparing cultural research traditions and learning from them
• understanding complex historic and societal contexts
• “developing new models”
• nding historical patterns
• di erentiate between causal explanations
9. In order to make an e ective comparison, 4 main preconditions need to be met.
1. close familiarity with more than one social context
2. re ect on spatial and time constraints
3. consider theoretical and conceptual frameworks
4. pay attention to linguistic pitfalls
1. The historian needs close familiarity with more than one social context. This forces us to
recognize the immense work involved in gaining knowledge of archival sources and secondary
literature in two or more social contexts. Problem with archival sources: It is rare to nd
comparable sources that exist in di erent societal contexts. The historians need to be aware
about their secondary sources: the historians who wrote it have asked di erent questions in
di erent societies. The di erent questions might produce di erent views of developments,
structures, organizations and mentalities.
2. Comparativists need to re ect on spatial and time constraints. We must be clear about
our geographical and time boundaries. We need to justify our choice of geographical
comparisons. Boarders must be treated with extreme caution: they do not de ne ‘natural’ units of
comparison. The historian also needs to re ect on the time: why are the beginning and end points
of our comparison chosen? Time can be tricky, because developments might happen at di erent
times in di erent social contexts. Possible time-lags need to be taken into account. We must
justify comparisons of similar (synchronic comparisons) or di erent (diachronic comparisons)
times for di erent social contexts.
3. They have to consider theoretical and conceptual frameworks for their comparison. We
must choose the cases that t the question(s) that we want to ask. The research question(s) might
well be modi ed in the light of our increasing knowledge about the units of comparison, but they
form the basis of the theoretical and conceptual framework that structures all comparative work.
Concepts, terminologies and theories must be used self-re exively. Historians need to consider
the origins and politics of their concepts.
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summary: Tosh talks about the di erent methods of writing history, gives examples on the
di erent methods & writes about their advantages and disadvantages;
1. Josh Tosh is a British historian; a historiographer, updates the way we look at the study of
history and how we construct our knowledge of the past
2. he does not agree that a historian ought to append primary sources into their historical
framework to make the studies most reliable; he thinks that an elaborate framework should
consist of a balance of primary and secondary sources to give a diverse idea and diverse
insights of the historical case
3. depending on which writing approach the author uses and the own interpretations of a
historical case, scholars might give di erent answers about the causes and consequences of
a historical event. There is neither one single cause nor one single consequence, it is an
interaction between di erent elements and a gradual development that leads to an event. The
signi cant questions in history do not turn on the conduct of individuals but concern major
events and collective transitions that cannot be explained by human intentions.
4. Narrative historical writing → assessing a historical event and their circumstances without
going into detail
5. Analysis historical writing → less creative way to convey information, it doest address the
imagination of reader
6. Connection narrative with analysis: → connecting analytic insights with a creative narrative to
catch the reader’s attention
7. Geographic scope → Looking at interconnections and developments between countries in a
vast territory for instance; looking at France and their neighboring states instead of France
alone.
8. Temporal scope → looking at how di erent developments led to causes and consequences →
the historian themselves decides how to put these developments in order
9. According to Tosh there are some disadvantages while working with Comparative History:
- Language: If you work with a lot of countries it would be preferable to know more languages.
- There can be a lot of sources (information and primary sources) when you make a
comparison. This can be di cult, as you need to choose what to use.
The advantages of the comparative method:
- By comparing you will get stronger research. You can nd di erences where you thought
there would be similarities and the other way.
- If you for example want to understand one society, you need to compare it with another
society to understand. Then you will know what is special for that one society.
10. Important historian: Leopold von Ranke “History only wants to show what actually happened”
→ Close descriptive what actually happened (Historism)
Stefan Berger “Comparative History”
summary: di erent kinds of comparisons, the promises of comparative history, problems and
pitfalls in comparative history, cultural transfer studies and comparison, the practice of
comparative history, explains “ideal-types” and typologies
1. Berger is a professor of social history; studied history, political science and German literature
2. Individualizing comparison - Set out to demonstrate the uniqueness of one particular case by
comparing it with others. They tend to be asymmetrical in that they use a variety of cases only
to shed light on the one case that the comparison seeks to understand better. They are more
common among historians, because they are concerned with questions of the uniqueness of a
particular time and place. They try to approach the evidence in an as unbiased manner as
possible, and tend to reconstruct the past from the evidence that remains.
1 of 15
ff fi ff ff ffi ff ffff fi ff
, 3. Universalizing comparison - highlights similarities, symmetrical, equal weight is given to all
compared subjects, greater level of abstraction, reduced historic complexity
4. Encompassing comparisons (related to individualizing comparisons) - concerned with
explaining di erences between cases that share an overarching commonality.
5. Variation- nding comparisons (related to universalizing comparisons) - di erent cases
understood as variations of one process
6. “reduce historical reality” - historical reality is very complex => reduction, reducing to
essential elements necessary for the comparison, focus rather on a typical matter among
many cases, based on theoretical view, quantity of cases instead of historical context, each
case is taken to explain a bigger “social context” => no need for a detailed analysis of the
greater historical background II Related to: Universalizing comparisons. It’s purpose is to
identify similarities between cases
7. typology - combination of di erent “ideal” types
8. Why do scholars turn to comparisons?
• comparisons can test existing models and explanations:
Example: They compare the rise of the Nazism in Germany with the United States, because
some people believed that the economic slump in the early 1930 in Germany caused the
rise of the Nazism.By comparing this with the United States (that also experienced an
economic crisis) we know that this can not be the only factor that led to Nazism (because
there was no nazism in America).
• questioning national theories and historic interpretations
• comparing cultural research traditions and learning from them
• understanding complex historic and societal contexts
• “developing new models”
• nding historical patterns
• di erentiate between causal explanations
9. In order to make an e ective comparison, 4 main preconditions need to be met.
1. close familiarity with more than one social context
2. re ect on spatial and time constraints
3. consider theoretical and conceptual frameworks
4. pay attention to linguistic pitfalls
1. The historian needs close familiarity with more than one social context. This forces us to
recognize the immense work involved in gaining knowledge of archival sources and secondary
literature in two or more social contexts. Problem with archival sources: It is rare to nd
comparable sources that exist in di erent societal contexts. The historians need to be aware
about their secondary sources: the historians who wrote it have asked di erent questions in
di erent societies. The di erent questions might produce di erent views of developments,
structures, organizations and mentalities.
2. Comparativists need to re ect on spatial and time constraints. We must be clear about
our geographical and time boundaries. We need to justify our choice of geographical
comparisons. Boarders must be treated with extreme caution: they do not de ne ‘natural’ units of
comparison. The historian also needs to re ect on the time: why are the beginning and end points
of our comparison chosen? Time can be tricky, because developments might happen at di erent
times in di erent social contexts. Possible time-lags need to be taken into account. We must
justify comparisons of similar (synchronic comparisons) or di erent (diachronic comparisons)
times for di erent social contexts.
3. They have to consider theoretical and conceptual frameworks for their comparison. We
must choose the cases that t the question(s) that we want to ask. The research question(s) might
well be modi ed in the light of our increasing knowledge about the units of comparison, but they
form the basis of the theoretical and conceptual framework that structures all comparative work.
Concepts, terminologies and theories must be used self-re exively. Historians need to consider
the origins and politics of their concepts.
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