Comparative history

Comparative history is the comparison between different societies at a given time or sharing similar cultural conditions. Proponents of this approach include American historians Barrington Moore and Herbert E. Bolton; British historians Arnold Toynbee and Geoffrey Barraclough; and German historian Oswald Spengler. Several sociologists have tried their hand, including Max Weber, Pitirim Sorokin, S. N. Eisenstadt, Seymour Martin Lipset, and Michael Mann.

Historians generally accept the comparison of particular institutions (banking, women's rights, ethnic identities) in different societies, but since the hostile reaction to Toynbee in the 1950s, generally do not pay much attention to sweeping comparative studies.

References

• Geoffrey Barraclough; Main Trends in History, ; Holmes & Meier, 1979 online version
• Deborah Cohen and Maura O'Connor; Comparison and History: Europe in Cross-National Perspective. Routledge, 2004 online edition
• Cooper, Frederick. "Race, Ideology, and the Perils of Comparative History." American Historical Review, 101:4 (October 1996), 1122-1138. in JSTOR
• Michael W. Doyle; Empires. Cornell University Press. 1986. online edition
• S. N. Eisenstadt, The Political Systems of Empires (1968),
• Frederickson, George M. "From Exceptionalism to Variability: Recent Developments in Cross-National Comparative History." Journal of American History 82:2 (September 1995), 587-604. in JSTOR
• Halperin, Charles J. et al. " AHR Forum: Comparative History in Theory and Practice: A Discussion." American Historical Review, 87:1 (February 1982), 123-143. in JSTOR
• Hill, Alette Olin and Boyd H. Hill. "AHR Forum: Marc Bloch and Comparative History." The American Historical Review 85:4 (October 1980), 828-846. in JSTOR
• Mazlish, Bruce. Conceptualizing Global History. CO: Westview Press,1993.
• McGerr, Michael. "The Price of the 'New Transnational History.'" American Historical Review 96:4 (October 1991), 1056-1067. in jstor
• Russell M. Magnaghi; Herbert E. Bolton and the Historiography of the Americas Greenwood Press, 1998 online edition
• Michael Mann. The sources of social power 1993
• Meritt, Richard L. and Stein Rokkan, editors. Comparing Nations: The Use of Quantitative Data in Cross-National Research. Yale University Press, 1966.
• Rusen, Jorn. "Some Theoretical Approaches to Intercultural Comparative Historiography." History and Theory 35:4 (December 1996), 5-22.
• Pitirim A. Sorokin; Social Philosophies of an Age of Crisis. 1950 online edition
• Pitirim A. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics (4 vol 1932; one-vol. edn., 1959).
• Oswald Spengler; The decline of the West 2 vol (1918)
• Stoler, Ann L. "Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post) Colonial Studies." Journal of American History (Dec 2001), 831-864. in JSTOR
• Tilly, Charles. Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons. Russell Sage Foundation, 1984.
• Tipps, Dean. "Modernization Theory and the Comparative Study of Societies: A Critical Perspective." Comparative Studies in Society and History 15:2 (1973), 199-226.
• Arnold J. Toynbee. A Study Of History 12 vol (1934-61); (2 vol abridgment 1957) online abridged version v. 1-6
• Peter Turchin. History & Mathematics: Historical Dynamics and Development of Complex Societies. Moscow: KomKniga, 2006. ISBN 5484010020
• Eric Voegelin, Order and History, 5 vol (1956-75)
• Woodward, C. Vann, ed. The Comparative Approach to American History (1968)