Thoughts on narrative history and different scales of perspective

The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh, much like John Demos’ The Unredeemed Captive, is essentially narrative history; in other words, it is a story. In writing it, Linda Colley was not overly concerned with making an overarching argument. There is no thesis to The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh. As such, it can be somewhat difficult to critique, either positively or negatively. Certainly the questions about appropriate levels of conjecture that tend to be so common with this genre of history are applicable, but this does not necessarily make for bad history; Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms is perhaps one of the most conjectural historical works of recent memory, while it is simultaneously groundbreaking, fascinating, and remarkable in almost every way. Indeed, perhaps we can heap praise on these narrative sorts of works; are they really more conjectural than “regular” history? Or are they simply more honest about it? This is not a question to be decided here. Suffice it to say that, as a weakness, a significant level of conjecture is not particularly damning unto itself.

So the book is conjectural, yet viable. What else is it? Entertaining, to be sure. Popular history, perhaps (another not-so-damning complaint). But above all, it is quite enlightening. The advanced level of globalization that Colley shows to be in place by the mid-18th century probably comes as a surprise to many readers. Certainly those who are at least casually acquainted with historical trends and events know that extensive trade networks existed even centuries earlier than this. Yet the diverse ways in which this globalization exerted itself on the everyday lives of not only Marsh but her extended family, and on many of their friends and acquaintances (and, by extension, one must expect, a good portion of the British population as a whole) provide a significant alteration of perspective. In this way, Colley’s work is a perfect illustration of Richard White’s concern with finding the proper scales in which to locate historical stories, as well as the need to constantly shift between them, as events themselves reverberate differently from scale to scale. Colley seems to be consciously responding to this notion: “I seek to tack between the individual and world histories ‘in such a way as to bring them into simultaneous view’” (xxxi). It is Colley’s success at navigating these various scales that brings 18th-century globalization’s ability to impinge upon individual lives into stark focus, something more traditional histories of the period (with their focus on only the big picture) almost entirely fail to do.

Colley’s work speaks to White’s in another way as well, specifically to his The Middle Ground. In her discussion of British relations with Indians on the subcontinent (the dual use of “Indian” between the two works is both coincidental and not – Columbus’ nomenclatural gaffe is perfectly illustrative of the often unintended consequences of nascent globalization), Colley provides the following passage:

Historians disagree about the deeper significance of these kinds of cultural and material borrowings by invading Britons in India. For some, they are evidence of the fact that for much of the eighteenth century there was a greater willingness than would exist later to forge connections and understanding of different kinds across religious and racial lines. For others, it in axiomatic that ‘the appropriation of Indian habits or the use of Indian objects did not affect the identity of the British in India,’ and that everyday contact with difference only amplified the intruders’ self-consciousness. (179)

This “willingness,” usually brought on by necessity, to “forge connections” across cultures was one of the hallmarks of the middle ground; to find these processes in operation on the opposite side of the globe at approximately the same time adds credence to both authors’ works. White’s middle ground becomes not just a unique structure appearing at a certain time and place, but an effective blueprint for ways in which cultures with at least some equanimity of power interact. And Elizabeth Marsh, while certainly remaining unique is many ways, also becomes representative. Her world is not her world alone. It is the same world as that of Eunice Williams, Demos’ heroine. Both were caught up in global events that had powerful local repercussions. Perhaps – probably, even – these two women are special mostly in that they left behind some sort of documentary record that historians have been able to trace. It becomes not so difficult, then, to suggest that every history, however personal, has myriad global components, and every global history countless personal ones. Scales, and the ways they intertwine, are both effectively infinite and essentially one.

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