Comparative history

Comparative history studies two or more societies, events, or processes side by side to explain similarities, differences, and historical patterns.

Comparative method: A research strategy that compares cases to identify patterns, causes, or differences. Comparative history uses this broader strategy to organize evidence across historical cases.
Enlightenment history: Historical writing of the eighteenth century that sought broad explanations of social development and human affairs. Its universal histories helped establish the ambition to compare societies across time and place.
Historical sociology: The study of how societies and institutions change over time using historical evidence and sociological questions. It shares comparative history's focus on large-scale change and causal explanation.
Historicism: An approach that interprets ideas and institutions in relation to their specific historical contexts and development. Comparative history must preserve context while seeking patterns across cases.
Historical causation: The study of how and why events, structures, and processes produce historical outcomes. Cross-case patterns raise questions about whether resemblance establishes a shared cause.
Historical comparison: The systematic comparison of historical cases to explain their similarities and differences. This is the central operation that distinguishes the approach.
Ibn Khaldun: A fourteenth-century North African historian and thinker known for analyzing social cohesion, state formation, and dynastic change. His cross-societal explanations of political cycles anticipate comparative historical analysis.
Comparative politics: The study of political systems and processes through systematic comparison across countries or cases. Historical comparisons help explain how political institutions emerge and vary.
Idiographic approach: An approach that seeks detailed understanding of particular cases rather than general laws. It prioritizes the uniqueness that broad comparisons can obscure.
Commensurability: The condition of being comparable through shared measures, categories, or standards. Historical categories may not mean the same thing across societies or periods.

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