The author analyses the book Ein Bürger unter Bauern? by an Austrian historian Michael Span, devoted to microhistory reconstruction of the daily life in Stubaital, a Tyrol province, through the biography of its distinguished resident Michael Pfurtscheller who lived in the second half of the 18th – the first half of the 19th century. Analyzing his biography, the author attempts to portray in detail the development of the province in the Napoleon’s era, in particular events of the Tyrolean Rebellion of 1809. M. Span focuses on processes of social and economic evolution of this province during the Sattelzeit in 1750-1850.