Enlightenment Histories

Marc Hanvelt, Mark G. Spencer, Mikko Tolonen

• Publisher: De Gruyter Oldenbourg
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9783111638164
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

It has long been understood that histories were central to the Era of the Enlightenment. Enlightenment histories not only broke new scholarly ground, but they also circulated widely with an expanding reading audience. Some works, such as David Hume's History of England, were both innovative and became international bestsellers. Enlightenment Histories is a collection of complementary chapters from which to explore this intriguing field. With its international group of contributors (Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Ireland, Japan, UK, USA) this volume assembles a methodologically diverse collection of chapters ranging in their coverage from particular histories, to historiographical debates of the period, to different forms of historical writing that predominated. The discussions include the place of historical writings within the Enlightenment's moral, philosophical, and political debates. In short, the volume highlights many distinctive features of Enlightenment histories, thereby illuminating their contemporary contexts and enduring significance.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Frontmatter
• Contents
• Enlightenment Histories in the Historical Age
• Chapter 1 Voltaire’s Historical Sources: Models of Prefatory Certitude
• Chapter 2 Charting the Circulation of Histories of England: A Computational Approach to Literary Borrowing in Enlightenment Britain
• Chapter 3 “Flux and Reflux” in Hume’s Natural History of Religion (1757)
• Chapter 4 Bridging Epistemology and Politics: Hume’s Tudor Volumes in His History of England
• Chapter 5 Revisiting David Hume’s Review of the Rev. Robert Henry’s History of Great Britain: Illuminating Hume on Religion, Politics, and Modernity
• Chapter 6 Hume’s Sceptical Enlightenment Approach to The History of Great Britain
• Chapter 7 Ancient Models, Parallels, and Theory of Decadence in the Enlightenment: The Purposes of History in Gabriel Bonnot de Mably’s Works
• Chapter 8 “Solid Grounds and Proper Vouchers”: Thomas Innes and the Truth of History
• Chapter 9 Rewriting Scottish Enlightenment History: Haiti and the Boundaries of Progress
• Chapter 10 “Subject Only to the Empire of Time”: Gibbon and Posterity
• Chapter 11 “The Hand of God”: Priestley on the End of History
• Index