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
A universal history is a work aiming at the presentation of a history of all of mankind as a whole, coherent unit. A universal chronicle or world chronicle typically traces history from the beginning of written information about the past up to ...
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 Sale (1697–1736) was a British Orientalist scholar and practising solicitor, best known for his 1734 translation of the Quran into English. In 1748, after having read Sale's translation, Voltaire wrote his own essay "De l'Alcora ...
,
George Psalmanazar,
Archibald Bower,
George Shelvocke,
John Campbell and
John Swinton. The novelist
Tobias Smollett 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 espi ...
's
''
Histoire des deux Indes'' (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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