1. Workshop 3: local and regional history
6HUM1126 Finding the Past
Workshop 3: local and regional history

2. Local history – what connotations does it have?
What J. D. Marshall termed the problem of ‘the tyranny of the discrete’
What are the difference between academic works, local history society publications and antiquarian studies?

3. Key works in local history
Victoria County History (from 1899) -
Counties as the main unit of study
Categorisation and objectivity –
creates false boundaries?

4. The Annales School
Annales journal, started in France by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre in
Interdisciplinary
Approaching ‘total’ history – all aspects of society and economy in a place & region
‘history should be about the past, not documents’
Influence - for example, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Les paysannes de Languedoc, 2 vols (Paris, 1966) – focus on mentalities of people
‘Mediterranean’ history – long duree and environmental
(more information -

5. English local history
W. G. Hoskins, Industry, Trade and People in Exeter, (Manchester, 1935)
‘Leicester school’ – department of English local history – for example, Margaret Spufford, Contrasting Communities: English Villagers in the Sixteeenth and Seventeeth Centuries (Cambridge, 1974)
‘Cambridge school’ of population studies
Asa Briggs - Victorian Cities, second edition (Harmondsworth, 1968)

6. From ‘total’ history to local history to microhistory
C. Phythian-Adams, ed., Societies, Cultures and Kinship, 1580–1850: Cultural Provinces in English Local History, ed. Phythain-Adams (Leicester, 1993)
J. D. Marshall, The Tyranny of the Discrete: A Discussion of the Problems of Local History in England (Aldershot, 1997)
- polemic on the insular nature of local history, and called for greater integration of local histories to present a bigger picture
Barry Reay, Microhistories: Demography, Society and Culture in Rural England, (Cambridge, 1996)
K.D.M. Snell, Parish and Belonging (Cambridge, 2006)