Universal history (genre)
A universal history is a work aiming at the presentation of a history of all of humankind as a whole.[1] Universal historians try to identify connections and patterns among individual historical events and phenomena, making them part of a general narrative.[2] A universal chronicle or world chronicle typically traces history from the beginning of written information about the past up to the present.[3] Therefore, any work classed as such purportedly attempts to embrace the events of all times and nations in so far as scientific treatment of them is possible.[4]
Siegfried of Ballhausen was the first to use the title Historia universalis (universal history) in 1304.[5]
Examples
Ancient examples
Hebrew Bible
A project of Universal history may be seen in the Hebrew Bible,[citation needed]
which from the point of view of its redactors[
Greco-Roman historiography
In
' History is the earliest surviving member of the Greco-Roman world-historical tradition, although under some definitions of universal history it does not qualify as universal because it reflects no attempt to describe an overall direction of history or a principle or set of principles governing or underlying it. Polybius was the first to attempt a universal history in this stricter sense of the term:For what gives my work its peculiar quality, and what is most remarkable in the present age, is this: Fortune has gained almost all the affairs of the world in one direction and has forced to incline towards one and the same end; a historian should likewise bring before his readers under one synoptic view the operations by which she has accomplished her general purpose (1:4:1-11).
Chinese historiography
During the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) of China, Sima Qian (145–86 BC) was the first Chinese historian to attempt a universal history—from the earliest mythological origins of his civilization to his present day—in his Records of the Grand Historian. Although his generation was the first in China to discover the existence of kingdoms in Central Asia and India, his work did not attempt to cover the history of these regions.[citation needed]
Medieval examples
Asia
The 11th-century Zizhi Tongjian of Sima Guang is sometimes considered the first of the chronologically arranged universal histories produced in China.[8]
The 15th-century Indo-Persian Ma'athir-i-Mahmud Shahi, written by 'Abd al-Husayn Tuni (died 1489), is sometimes considered a fragment of a universal history.[9]
Christian medieval Europe
Graeme Dunphy (2010) described medieval European Christian universal histories as follows:
The key features of the Christian world chronicle, which would be valid throughout the Middle Ages, had therefore become firmly established by late antiquity. The chronicle begins with a divine act of creation and reflects a providential view of history throughout: history is the story of an active God. History is linear and the chronicle is arranged strictly chronologically. There is a sense of decline and decay as the world becomes older, but also a belief in redemption. Though individual events are not always evaluated, there is an underlying assumption that historical facts teach spiritual truths. The patterns of four empires and six ages can be used — but rarely both together — to divide history up into manageable sections.[10]
The medieval universal chronicle thus traces history from the beginning of the world up to the present and was an especially popular genre of historiography in medieval Europe. The universal chronicle differs from the ordinary chronicle in its much broader chronological and geographical scope, giving, in principle, a continuous linear account of the progress of world history from the creation of the world up to the author's own times, but in practice often narrowing down to a more limited geographical range as it approaches those times. They usually have a theological component and are often structured around the ideas of the six ages of the world or the four empires from the Book of Daniel.[10]
According to Kathleen Biddick (2013), universal histories in Christian medieval Europe are 'those medieval histories which take as their subject the theme of salvation history from creation up to the incarnation of Christ (and usually beyond to contemporary events).'[11] She also identified "six or seven ages" into which universal histories were divided.[11]
Less commonly they may use the
In other cases, any obvious theme may be lacking. Some universal chronicles bear a more or less
The first Christian world chronicle was written in Greek around 221CE by
From around 1100, universal histories increased in graphical complexity, usually adding a mappa mundi ("world map") in which the holy city of Jerusalem was presented as the centre of the world, tying together genealogies and timelines.[11]
The
Historiography of early Islam
In the
Universal histories included two forms: the ta'rikh 'ala al-sinin was organised by annual entries and thus
Early modern examples
A philosophical attempt to work out a universal history according to a natural plan directed to achieving the civic union of the human race must be regarded as possible and, indeed, as contributing to this end of Nature
According to Hughes-Warrington (2005),
An early European project was the Universal History of George Sale and others, written in the mid-18th century.[citation needed]
Christian writers as late as Bossuet in his Discours sur l'histoire universelle (Speech of Universal History) are still reflecting on and continuing the Medieval tradition of universal history.[22] Speech of Universal History is considered by many Catholics as an actual second edition or continuation of the
Modern examples
In the 19th century, universal histories proliferated.[dubious ] Philosophers such as
Whatever concept one may hold...concerning the freedom of the will, certainly its appearances, which are human actions, like every other natural event are determined by universal laws. However obscure their causes, history...permits us to hope that if we attend to the play of freedom of the human will in the large, we may be able to discern a regular movement in it, and that what seems complex and chaotic in the single individual may be seen from the standpoint of the human race as a whole to b a steady and progressive though slow evolution of the original endowment..Each individual and people, as if following some guiding trend, goes toward a natural but to each of them unknown goal...In keeping with this purpose, it might be possible to have a history with a definite natural plan for creatures that have no plan of their own.[26]
References
- ^ Lamprecht 1905; Ploetz 1883, pp. ix–xii; Bossuet 1810, pp. 1–6.
- ISSN 1749-6977.
- ^ Ranke 1884, p. x: "History begins at the point where monuments become intelligible and documentary evidence of a trustworthy character is forthcoming but from this point onwards the domain is boundless for Universal History as understood."
- ^ Harding 1848, p. 1; Ranke 1884.
- ^ Borst 1991, p. 68.
- ^ Hughes-Warrington 2005, p. 5.
- ^ Solodow 1988, p. 18.
- ^ a b Hughes-Warrington 2005, p. 7.
- ^ a b Hughes-Warrington 2005, p. 6.
- ^ a b Dunphy 2010, p. 1529.
- ^ a b c Biddick 2013, p. 46.
- ^ Wood 1994, p. 1; Mitchell & Wood 2002.
- ^ Biddick 2013, pp. 45–48.
- ^ Dunphy 2010, p. 1528.
- ^ a b Biddick 2013, p. 48.
- ^ Biddick 2013, pp. 45–46.
- ^ Biddick 2013, p. 49.
- ^ Biddick 2013, pp. 49–51.
- ^ Hughes-Warrington 2005, pp. 6–7.
- ^ Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View
- ^ a b c Hughes-Warrington 2005, p. 9.
- ^ Bossuet, J. B. Discours sur l'histoire universelle (Paris, Furne et cie, 1853).
- ^ "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" in On History, (tr. Lewis White Beck, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co, 1963).
- ^ Universal History, (tr. F. Wilson, New York: 1953).
- ^ The Philosophy of History, (tr. Robert S. Hartman, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co, 1956).
- ^ On History, (tr. Lewis White Beck, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co, 1963, p 11-12); also Perpetual Peace in: Ibid., (p 106).
Literature cited
- Biddick, Kathleen (2013). The Typological Imaginary: Circumcision, Technology, History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 160. ISBN 9780812201277. Retrieved 29 May 2023.
- Borst, Arno (1991) [1988]. Medieval Worlds: Barbarians, Heretics and Artists in the Middle Ages. Translated by Eric Hansen. University of Chicago Press.
- Bossuet, Jacques Bénigne (1810). An universal history: from the beginning of the world, to the Empire of Charlemagne. Translated by Elphinston, James. R. Moore.
- Dunphy, Graeme (2010). "World Chronicles". In Dunphy, Graeme (ed.). Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle. Leiden: Brill. pp. 1527–1532.
- Halmi Nicholas and Borowski Audrey, Nicholas Halmi (2023). "Universal Histories". Intellectual History Review, 33:3. Vol. 33. Oxford: Taylor and Francis. pp. 367–523. .
- Halmi, Nicholas (2023). "Universal Histories - an Introduction". In Halmi Nicholas, Borowski Audrey (ed.). Intellectual History Review. Vol. 33. Oxford: Taylor and Francis. pp. 367–374. .
- Harding, Anne Raikes (1848). An epitome of universal history from the earliest period to the revolutions of 1848. London: Longman.
- ISBN 9780230523401. Retrieved 28 May 2023.
- OCLC 1169422.
- Mitchell, Kathleen; Wood, Ian (2002). The World of Gregory of Tours. Boston: Brill.
- Ploetz, Carl (1883). Epitome of ancient, mediaeval and modern history.
- Ranke, Leopold von (1884). Universal history: the oldest historical group of nations and the Greeks. Scribner.
- Solodow, Joseph B. (1988). The World of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9780807817711.
- Wood, Ian (1994). Gregory of Tours. Bangor: Headstart History.