The first module of comparative historical analysis (CHA) will introduce comparative historical analysis to the participants who have no background knowledge about the method. As distinguished pedigree in political science, comparative historical analysis focuses on “big structures, large processes, huge comparisons” (Tilly 1984), and searches for “historically grounded explanations of large-scale and substantively important outcomes” (Mahoney and Rueschemeyer 2003). This module starts the course by introducing theories of comparison and discussing their strengths and limitations through a survey of recent examples in social and political sciences. It introduces basic concepts and methods in CHA, like controlled comparison, causal mechanism, and process tracing, and how they will be applied in comparative research. By the end of the course, participants are expected to be able to develop a simple, comparative research design and apply these concepts in the design.