An Introduction to Historical Comparison

Mikhail Krom is Professor of Comparative Studies in History at European University at St. Petersburg, Russia. He is the author of Historical Anthropology (2010) and The Widowed Tsardom: The Political Crisis in Russia in the 1530s and the 1540s (2010). He is also the editor of History and Anthropology: Interdisciplinary Studies at the Turn of the 21st Century (co-edited with David Sabean and Gadi Algazi, 2006) and The Routledge Handbook of Maritime Trade Around Europe 1300-1600 (co-edited with Wim Blockmans and Justyna Wubs-Mroziewicz, 2017). Elizabeth Guyatt has translated from Russian since living and working in Moscow in the 1990s. She chaired the Translating Division of the Chartered Institute of Linguists from 2016-2018.

Introduction: The Paradoxes of Historical Comparison

Part I: Historical Comparison from Herodotus to the Present
1. Historical Comparison: From Classical Antiquity to the Enlightenment
2. Historicism and Comparative Method in the 19th and early-20th Centuries
3. The Lessons of Max Weber and Marc Bloch
4. The Rise of Comparative Studies in History in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century
5. New Challenges: Cultural Transfers, Histoire Croisee, Transnational History, and Criticism of Traditional Comparative History
6. Comparative-Historical Sociology

Part II: Historical Comparison in the Search of Method
7. Does Method Exist?
8. The Functions of Comparison and its Specifics in Historical Research
9. The Choice of Objects for Comparison: Types of Historical Comparison
10. Recommendations for Newcomers to Historical Comparison

Part III: The Themes of Comparative Historical Research
11. Comparison in Economic History
12. Comparison in Political History
13. Comparison in Social History
14. Comparative Studies in the History of Nationalism, Empires, and Colonialism

Conclusion
Select Bibliography
Index