ABSTRACT
Faced with the intricacies of the past and its manifold sources of evidence, the historian is forced to tread a treacherous path between reductionism on the one hand and incoherence on the other, between homogenization and fragmentation. We complain when students or fellow scholars fail to ‘see the wood for the trees’. But often we wish that a few more species were allowed to stand out visible and discrete amid the thicket. 1
