Introduction: Global Microhistory of the Local and the Global

This Special Issue addresses recent discussions of the potential historical approach of “global microhistory.” The six articles gathered here are based in the study of Africa, South Asia, the northwest Pacific coast of North America, and Europe, as well as in the recent methodologies of global history and microhistory. They focus on methodology and on the empirical study of ways of connecting local spaces and networks with global dynamics. All are set in social and economic formations that have too often been bypassed in the cultural and literary approaches of some microhistory and the political approaches of some global history.