History from below - Philosophical Concept | Alexandria
History from below, also known as social history or people's history, is a historical approach that shifts focus from traditional subjects like rulers, wars, and high politics to the experiences, perspectives, and agency of ordinary people, especially marginalized and underrepresented groups. This perspective implicitly challenges the notion that history is solely shaped by elites. Its roots can be traced to early socialist and labor movements, but its formal development largely coincides with the rise of the Annales School in 20th-century France.
While not explicitly labeled as “history from below,” proto-forms existed in earlier historical writings. Some nascent elements can be detected in the 19th century with socialist thinkers or chroniclers of everyday life in burgeoning urban settings. However, its more deliberate articulation emerged in the wake of the profound social and economic changes following World War I. Thinkers began questioning conventional narratives, seeking to understand history through the lens of collective mentalities and everyday practices.
The Annales School, with figures like Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre, and Fernand Braudel, championed this approach. They advocated for interdisciplinary methods, drawing on sociology, anthropology, and geography to reconstruct the lives of ordinary people. Braudel's The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (1949) exemplifies this, exploring the deep structures of everyday life and long-term social processes. E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class (1963) profoundly impacted English-language historiography, brilliantly illuminating the agency of ordinary individuals in shaping their own destinies amid industrialization. This reorientation allowed historians to uncover forgotten stories and analyze power dynamics in novel ways.
The legacy of history from below continues to inform historical scholarship and public understanding of the past. It significantly broadened the scope of historical inquiry, inspiring studies on gender, race, sexuality, and other dimensions of social experience. Modern social movements frequently draw on its insights, using historical narratives of resistance and struggle to inform contemporary activism. It invites us to reconsider whose stories are told and how, proving that history is not merely made by kings and generals, but by countless unsung individuals whose lives shape the world in profound ways by unveiling their experiences, aspirations, and acts of resistance. What stories of the unheard majority have yet to be uncovered?