An Introduction to Historical Comparison

169 Pages·2021·2.526 MB·English

by  Mikhail Krom, Elizabeth Guyatt

An Introduction to
Historical Comparison

An Introduction to
Historical Comparison
Mikhail Krom
Translated by Elizabeth Guyatt
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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First published in Great Britain 2021
Copyright © Mikhail Krom, 2021
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Krom, M. M. (Mikhail Markovich), author. | Guyatt, Elizabeth, translator.
Title: An introduction to historical comparison / Mikhail Krom; translated by Elizabeth Guyatt.
Other titles: Vvedenie v istoricheskui ͡u komparativistiku. English.
Description: London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, [2021] |
Translation of: Vvedenie v istoricheskui ͡u komparativistiku: uchebnoe posobie. |
Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020035939 (print) |
LCCN 2020035940 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350123328 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350202115
(paperback) | ISBN 9781350123335 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350123342 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: History–Methodology. | Historiography–Comparative method.
Classification: LCC D16 .K89413 2021 (print) | LCC D16 (ebook) | DDC 907.2–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020035939
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020035940
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Contents
List of table vi
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction: The paradoxes of historical comparison 1
Part I Key milestones in the development of historical comparison
1 Comparison in history: From antiquity to the Enlightenment 7
2 Historicism and the comparative method (nineteenth century to early
twentieth century) 13
3 The lessons of Max Weber and Marc Bloch 23
4 The rise of historical comparison in the later twentieth century 38
5 New challenges: Cultural transfers, histoire croiseé, transnational history
and criticism of traditional comparison 54
6 Comparative historical sociology 61
Part II Historical comparison in search of a method
7 Does method exist? 71
8 The functions of comparison and its specifics in historical research 80
9 Selection of objects for comparison and types of historical comparison 90
10 Recommendations for newcomers to historical comparison 97
Part III Themes of comparative historical research
11 Comparison in economic history 105
12 Comparison in political history 109
13 Comparison in social history 118
14 Comparative research on nationalism, empire and colonialism 128
Conclusion 135
Bibliography 137
Index 149
Table
1 Differences between Methods and Approaches Used in Historical Research 77
Acknowledgements
I have received help and support from many colleagues and institutions at every
stage of my work on this book. First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere
gratitude to the Rector’s Office and Academic Council of the European University at St.
Petersburg (EUSP), who supported my initiative for developing historical comparison
at EUSP and founded a professorship in this unusual discipline.
I am grateful to the master’s and PhD students at the EUSP Department of History
who attended my course on historical comparison: our lively discussions led to many
new insights and helped me hone the arguments on which this book is based.
Attending a summer school at the European University Institute in Florence in
September 2012 – and Jan de Vries and Miroslav Hroch’s lectures, in particular –
significantly shaped my original idea for an academic course and the subsequent book.
I am very grateful to my colleague Mikhail Sokolov of the EUSP Department of
Sociology, who introduced me to historical sociology, and also to Andrei Volodin,
associate professor at Moscow State University, who in turn acquainted me with
comparative economic and comparative labour history.
I am indebted to Wladimir Berelowitch of the School of Advanced Studies in
the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris, Vera Kaplan of Tel Aviv University, Aleksandr
Lavrov of the Sorbonne University and Matthias Middell of Leipzig University for
their invaluable bibliographical advice and generously helping me access the literature
I required.
It would have been impossible to write a book such as this without a modern and
well-equipped academic library: I wish to thank Ona Lapenayte, director of EUSP’s
library, and her wonderful colleagues for their constant help and support.
Preparing the English edition has extended the list of acknowledgements further
still. Jeroen Duindam of the University of Leiden encouraged me to publish the book
in English and guided my search for a publisher. Valerie A. Kivelson of the University
of Michigan kindly read the first draft of the translation of Part II and shared her
observations. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers at Bloomsbury whose
feedback helped me improve the manuscript.
Mollie Zuckermann prepared the first draft of the translation of Part II. The full
translation of the book is the result of substantial and painstaking work by Elizabeth
Guyatt, to whom I express my sincere gratitude.
Finally, I would like to thank Abigail Lane at Bloomsbury, with whom it was an
immense pleasure to work.

Introduction
The paradoxes of historical comparison
This book is an attempt to analyse the theory and practice of comparative historical
research, drawing on accumulated academic experience from around the world up to
the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Comparison is an intrinsic part of everyday life: when we arrive in a new country,
we cannot avoid comparing what we see with what we are used to at home and what
we remember from our previous travels. When we take an important decision, we
compare the options available.
Turning from everyday cognition to the academic level, we can see that comparison
is essential for both natural and social scientists: whether it be testing new medicines
or studying population migrations, the comparative method has a universal and very
important role in contemporary research.
In this context, historians’ attitude to comparison appears curious and even
paradoxical.
The first paradox is that comparison has been used in history since the time of
Herodotus: since comparison is a fundamental tool of human cognition, all historians
compare their subjects in some way. We are often told, however, that the comparative
study of history, or as it is more often called, ‘comparative history’, is very recent:
‘Comparative history is still in its infancy,’ as Carlo Ginzburg recently remarked.1
Heinz-Gerhard Haupt explained that although the ‘comparative perspective’ had
repeatedly featured in historiography, it was only in the 1930s that it started to become
established as an example of a ‘methodological instrument of explanatory theoretical
comparison’.2 What Haupt has in mind is conscious, focused comparison as opposed
to implicit and ad hoc comparison, which historians have used since ancient times. But
even if one takes this useful clarification into account, it remains unclear why scholars
who make broad use of historical comparison, by their own acknowledgement, form
a distinct minority among historians, despite the growth in comparative historical
research in the twentieth century, which has been particularly prominent in recent
decades.3
As Raymond Grew, the long-time editor of Comparative Studies in Society and
History noted, it is something of an enigma that admiration of comparison is far
1 Carlo Ginzburg’s comment made at the seminar organized by the Res Publica Research Center,
European University at St. Petersburg, 3 October 2013.
2 Haupt (2001): 2397.
3 See Cohen (2004): 57–8; Haupt and Kocka (2004): 25; etc.