Integrative History: Difference between revisions
(Created page with " '''* Chapter: Joseph Fletcher. Integrative History: Parallels and Interconnections in the Early Modern Period, 1500–1800.''' URL = =Contextual Quote= "'''Historians are alert to vertical continuities (the persistence of tradition, etc.) but blind to horizontal ones.''' … However beautiful the mosaic of specific studies that make up the “discipline” of history may be, without a macrohistory, a tentative general schema of the continuities, or, at the least, p...") |
(No difference)
|
Latest revision as of 02:56, 22 March 2025
* Chapter: Joseph Fletcher. Integrative History: Parallels and Interconnections in the Early Modern Period, 1500–1800.
URL =
Contextual Quote
"Historians are alert to vertical continuities (the persistence of tradition, etc.) but blind to horizontal ones. … However beautiful the mosaic of specific studies that make up the “discipline” of history may be, without a macrohistory, a tentative general schema of the continuities, or, at the least, parallelism in history, the full significance of the historical peculiarities of a given society cannot be seen. …Integrative history is the search for and description and explanation of such interrelated historical phenomena. Its methodology is conceptually simple, if not easy to put to practice: first one searches for historical parallelisms (roughly contemporaneous similar developments in the world’s various societies), and then one determines whether they are causally interrelated. … We see it as needlepoint. The horizontal continuities (the weft of the web) run from left to right. From top to bottom run the various vertical continuities of successive societies (the warp). … Finally to complicate the structure further and, more important, to create a pattern of the needlepoint itself, is the thicker and more brightly colored yarn of the historical interconnections running in all directions through the web. … The subtle translucent hues of the warp and the dazzling colors and patterns of the needlepoint yarn almost totally conceal the horizontal continuities of the weft. But without the weft we have no needlepoint at all. Only a bag of threads."
- Joseph Fletcher [1]