The need to compare

The starting-point of comparative history is invariably the impression, realisation, or certainty that two (or more) societies have sufficient in common to invite – even demand – analysing them as a part of a single set of questions. Normally, it is a problem common to both societies or the historical interaction of those societies which prompts recourse to the comparative method.

Alongside the many exhortations to undertake comparative analysis are the many warnings of its pitfalls. A conventional theoretical objection to comparison is embodied in the claim that historical knowledge is derived from unique, non-repeatable events – in contrast to those fields of knowledge which relate to phenomena capable of repeating themselves, about which generalisations can be drawn and conceptual constructs erected. However, the dichotomy is a false one. The categories are not mutually exclusive. Each individual, for instance, has a unique personality. But we do not presume that the uniqueness of the individual prevents us from comparing individuals, using concepts like ‘humanity’, or generalising about ‘society’ and the ‘systems’ or ‘structures’ underpinning that society. For societies are not simply agglomerates of individuals. They could not exist, and could not have existed in the past, without creating and recreating discernible patterns allowing that modicum of predictability without which human activity would be impossible. For this to be so, individual ‘personality’, though unique, has also to be seen as a social product.