Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 May 2024
One of the important choices historians must make is to decide the time frame to apply to the event they are interpreting. They can narrow the lens through which they approach the subject and study factors in the immediate realm of the particular event. The advantage of a narrow focus or microhistory is that it allows the exploration of the event in great depth. One historian, for example, wrote on how the Chinese Revolution affected a village of a few hundred families. “By getting in very close, tightening your focus to a single person or tiny corner of the world, you can operate on a level, the nitty-gritty of social history, invisible to historians who work on a more general register.” Historians can widen the lens to see history in a broader time perspective. Choice of a broader time frame can shed light on larger historical developments conducive to explaining the event. It may demonstrate that the event being studied was shaped and influenced by longer-term processes than were first perceived.
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