Microhistory is having a moment in Atlantic historiography. After two decades of debate about scale—whether historians should write broad, sweeping interpretations or smaller, more-focused narratives—an increasing number of historians of the early modern Atlantic have started producing microhistories. Ironically, as it turns out, historians have found that one of the best ways to examine the sheer scope and scale of a history that covers nearly four centuries, multiple European empires, dozens of companies and trading firms, thousands of African and Indigenous polities, and millions of people is through individual stories.

Historians’ renewed interest in microhistory is not just the product of debates about size, however. It has also been driven by better access to archival records. Through mass digitization and other access initiatives, historians have been able to interrogate sources and recover stories that help better understand Atlantic history’s core themes. This work has helped illuminate connection, exchange and circulation across political, geographic, and linguistic boundaries. And the records have brought into sharp focus key features such as slavery and helped to personalize otherwise abstract processes. In short, Atlantic historians have taken a deep dive into the archive and returned with individual case studies that help better assess the field—and better understand the people who inhabited the early modern Atlantic.

This roundtable takes stock of the embrace of microhistory in Atlantic historiography. Scott Berthelette argues for the viability of Indigenous Atlantic history through a microhistory approach, using the story of 36 Haudenosaunee captives to illuminate connections to the transatlantic slave trade, cultural exchange, mobility, and the circulation of knowledge across political, geographic, and linguistic boundaries. Through close examination of pirate testimonies that were collected in 1680s Veracruz, Pablo Sierra de Silva shows how these microhistorical narratives can be deployed against the "communal biography" of piracy. Considering archival research and digital humanities practices, Sophie White discusses her work of uncovering and interpreting voices of the enslaved in the French Atlantic as well as the crucial role that microhistory can play in the digital humanities. Andrea Mosterman reflects on her efforts to write a microhistory of the seventeenth-century Dutch slave trade with North America while also considering more generally why microhistories have proven an especially powerful tool to teach Atlantic history in the classroom. Finally, through his research on smuggling and piracy, Jared Ross Hardesty reveals how microhistory and access to non-English digitized sources allows historians to challenge historiographical practices. Taken together, these diverse approaches to studying the Atlantic world through microhistory allow for wide-ranging conversations and will encourage audience participation in an important discussion of the future of Atlantic History.