CHALLENGING ELITIST OVERVIEWS OF GLOBAL HISTORY
Alvin Finkel Since the 1970s the proliferation of social histories has challenged once-dominant historical paradigms focused narrowly on elites and ignoring or diminishing women, colonized peoples, workers, and farmers as unworthy of consideration as agents of social change.[1] A sole dependence on archival sources for historical research had favoured the literate few and dismissed pre-literate societies as “prehistoric.” Reliance on such… Read more »