The ''Universal History'' (complete title: ''An Universal history, from the earliest account of time. Compiled from original authors; and illustrated with maps, cuts, notes, &c. With a general index to the whole.'') was a 65-volume
universal history of the world published in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
between 1747 and 1768. Contributors included
George Sale,
George Psalmanazar,
Archibald Bower
Archibald Bower (17 January 1686 – 3 September 1766) was a Scottish historian, now noted for his complicated and varying religious faith, and the accounts he gave of it, now considered by scholars to lack credibility.
Educated at the Scots C ...
,
George Shelvocke,
John Campbell and
John Swinton. The novelist
Tobias Smollett
Tobias George Smollett (baptised 19 March 1721 – 17 September 1771) was a Scottish poet and author. He was best known for picaresque novels such as '' The Adventures of Roderick Random'' (1748), '' The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle'' (1751 ...
edited for a short period.
It was one of the first works to attempt to unify the history of Western Europe with the stories of the world's other known cultures.
As a major historical synthesis on, among other subjects, European colonial activities during the modern era, the ''Modern Part of an Universal History'' (1754–65) can be considered, according to one specialist, Guido Abbattista, as a precursor of the famous abbé
Guillaume Raynal Guillaume may refer to:
People
* Guillaume (given name), the French equivalent of William
* Guillaume (surname)
Other uses
* Guillaume (crater)
See also
* '' Chanson de Guillaume'', an 11th or 12th century poem
* Guillaume affair, a Cold War ...
's
''
Histoire des deux Indes
The , more often known simply as , is an encyclopaedia on commerce between Europe and the Far East, Africa, and the Americas. It was published anonymously in Amsterdam in 1770 and attributed to Abbot Guillaume Thomas Raynal. It achieved consi ...
'' (1770–80), of which it was one of the most important, even if not acknowledged, sources.
References
Further reading
See the works by Guido Abbattista (University of Trieste, Italy):
* ''The literary mill: per una storia editoriale della Universal History (1736–1765)'', Studi Settecenteschi, 1981, pp. 91–133
* ''The business of Paternoster Row: towards a publishing history of the Universal History'', Publishing History (Cambridge, UK-Alexandria, Virginia), XVII, 1985, pp. 5–50
* Un dibattito settecentesco sulla storia universale (Ricerche sulle traduzioni e sulla circolazione della ''Universal History''), in Rivista storica italiana, a. CI, f. III, 1989, pp. 614–695
* “The ''English Universal History'': publishing, authorship and historiography in a European project (1736–1790)”, Paper for the Aachen conference on “Weltgeshichten/Geschicthswelten. Universalgeschichte in der Frühen Neuzeit“, Historikertag Aachen September 2000, then in ''Storia della Storiografia'', 39 (2001): 103-108
* Chapters of Abbattista's volume on ''Commercio, colonie e impero alla vigilia della Rivoluzione americana. John Campbell pubblicista e storico nell’Inghilterra del sec. XVIII'', Firenze, Olschki, 1990, are dedicated to the large sections of the ''Universal History'' on the European expansion and colonialism overseas
External links
*
Universal history books
18th-century history books
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