Kara Tabian: Comparative history is the comparison between different societies at a given time or sharing similar cultural conditions. Proponents of this approach include American historians Barrington Moore and Herbert E. Bolton; British historians Arnold Toynbee and Geoffrey Barraclough; and German historian Oswald Spengler. Several sociologists have tried their hand, including Max Weber, Pitirim Sorokin, S. N. Eisenstadt, Seymour Martin Lipset, and Michael Mann.Historians generally accept the comparison of particular institutions (banking, women's rights, ethnic identities) in different societies, but since the hostile reaction to Toynbee in the 1950s, generally do not pay much attention to sweeping comparative studies....Show more
Caleb Chapman: Best Answer: Comparative history has nothing to do with "comparing events in two or more places/times". Comparative history is an attempt to discover the natural laws that govern the course of history in the long-run. M! ost of professional historians find the idea of natural law being a driving force of history repulsive and thus consider comparative history a waste of time.
Jesse Pirieda: Comparative history has nothing to do with "comparing events in two or more places/times". Comparative history is an attempt to discover the natural laws that govern the course of history in the long-run. Most of professional historians find the idea of natural law being a driving force of history repulsive and thus consider comparative history a waste of time.The problem with most of comparative history is that scholars who do it are usually educated in the wrong discipline (history) and thus are unable to support their theories with any sort of verifiable formal model. Most of people who produce convincing comparative history are either mathematicians or life scientists (or, in case of Peter Turchin, whose "Historical Dynamics" I highly recommend, both)....Show more
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