People's history

Did You Know?

• Historian Guy Beiner wrote that Neo-Marxist flag-bearers of history from below have at times resorted to idealized notions of 'the people', unduly ascribing to them innate progressive values.
• In practice, democratic history is by no means egalitarian, according to Guy Beiner.

Origins

Georges Lefebvre first used the phrase "histoire vue d'en bas et non d'en haut" in 1932 while praising Albert Mathiez for seeking to tell the "histoire des masses et non de vedettes." The term "people's history" appeared in a title with A. L. Morton's 1938 book, A People's History of England. E. P. Thompson's 1966 essay "History from Below" in The Times Literary Supplement brought the concept to the forefront of historiography. Howard Zinn's 1980 book, A People's History of the United States, popularized the concept among non-historians in the U.S. and marked the rise of social history in American scholarship.

Description

A people's history focuses on mass movements and outsiders, centering individuals previously absent from historical writing, such as the disenfranchised, oppressed, poor, nonconformists, subaltern, and otherwise forgotten people. History from below examines events occurring over long periods or when many smaller events collectively drive developments. Unlike methods emphasizing single great figures, known as the Great Man theory, history-from-below theory argues that the daily life of ordinary people, their social status, and professions are the driving forces behind historical change.

These factors "push and pull" on opinions and allow trends to develop, rather than extraordinary individuals introducing ideas or initiating events. Howard Zinn wrote that presenting any country's history as a family history conceals fierce conflicts between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, and dominators and dominated in race and sex, and that thinking people should not side with the executioners.