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 Universal history may refer to:
* Universal history (genre), a literary genre
**''Jami' al-tawarikh'', 14th-century work of literature and history, produced by the Mongol Ilkhanate in Persia
** Universal History (Sale et al), ''Universal History'' ...
of the world published in
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
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'Alcoran et ...
,
George Psalmanazar
George Psalmanazar ( 1679 – 3 May 1763) was a Frenchman who claimed to be the first native of Formosa (today Taiwan) to visit Europe. For some years, he convinced many in Britain, but he was eventually revealed to be of European origin. He su ...
,
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
George Shelvocke (baptised 1 April 167530 November 1742) was an English Royal Navy officer and later privateer who in 1726 wrote the memoir ''A Voyage Round the World by Way of the Great South Sea'' based on his exploits. It includes an account o ...
,
John Campbell and
John Swinton. The novelist
Tobias Smollett
Tobias George Smollett (bapt. 19 March 1721 – 17 September 1771) was a Scottish writer and surgeon. He was best known for writing picaresque novels such as ''The Adventures of Roderick Random'' (1748), ''The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle'' ...
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 known world.
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'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 François Raynal, Guillaume ...
'' (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
{{hist-book-stub