I mean historical materialism has already been expanded to the idea of the school of global historical materialism by neo Marxists, who continue on from Marx like Samir Amin, if that’s what OP is looking into

In this reconstruction, the importance of developing an analysis of culture and its function in historical development is equaled only by the difficulty of the task. Its importance derives from the fact that the dominant bourgeois mainstream in the social sciences was initially founded on an overdy culturalist philosophy of history, and then, when this philosophy gradually lost its strength of conviction, took refuge in agnosticism, refusing any search for the general beyond the specific and, thus, remaining under the spell of culturalism. Vulgar Marxist theories are not fundamentally different. The thesis of the so called two roads tries unsuccessfully to reconcile the concepts of historical materialism with Eurocentric prejudice about the exceptional nature of European history; while the thesis of the “five stages” avoids the difficulty by minimizing specific traits to the point of artificially reducing the diversity of different historical paths to the mechanical repetition of the European schema.

The reconstruction of social theory along truly universalist lines must have as its base a theory of actually existing capitalism, centered on the principal contradiction generated by the worldwide expansion of this system.
This contradiction could be defined in the following way: the integration of all of the societies of our planet into the world capitalist system has created the objective conditions for universalization. However, the tendency toward homogenization, produced by the universalizing force of the ideology of commodities, that underlies capitalist development is hindered by the very conditions of unequal accumulation. The material base of the tendency toward homogenization is the continuous extension of markets, in breadth as well as in depth. The commodity and capital markets gradually extend to the entire world and progressively take hold of all aspects of social life. The labor force, at first limited in its migrations by different social, linguistic, and legal handicaps, tends to acquire international mobility.

We might use evidence but we distrust grand theories

Unless of course it’s anti-sovietism, neoclassialism, some half garbled form of zombie Keynesianism and of course the guiding star; white identitarianism

Then we reecive the blessing of all-mighty culture (i.e. god)

I’m getting a Master’s in history and I have no desire to read all that.

This is a bit outside my experience with academic historians although the ones I run with are of a certain stripe. Then again I am not in a disciplinary feild like history and tend to disregard when my historian friends assert diciplinarity boundaries and norms because it feels like putting on a straight jacket that won’t help me with my work as a grad.

you’re not arguing for grand theories right?