Local History

Abstract

Local history is the history of place, but, though place is central to its meaning, it is much more than this. Local historical research, in the first place, teases out the interplay of landscape, economy, culture and population to explain the shaping of the local community over time. Secondly, by asking ‘big questions about small places’, it prompts the reassessment of assumptions about developments over a wider spatial canvas.¹ Thus, local history is about both people and place, and it provides a lens through which one can view the evolution of both the micro world of the locality and the wider world composed of many such localities. Modern Irish local history has been in the making since the mid-eighteenth century, the first significant landmark in its development being the work of the Physico-Historical Society. Established to investigate the roots of contemporary economic development and to combat Ireland’s image as a barbaric country, this society initiated a series of county studies, only four of which were published.² Though primarily economic in focus, these surveys into ‘the ancient and present state’ of the counties in question effectively linked past with present, and prefigured the interdisciplinary approach of two centuries later by combining elements of geographical, economic, historical and political enquiry.³