Original history is like that of Herodotus and Thucydides, these are almost contemporaneous writings limited to deeds, events and states of society which they had before their very eyes and whose culture they shared.

Hegel posits the goal of Original history to transfer "what was passing in the world around them, to the realm of representative intellect.

In the same way, the poet operates upon the material supplied him by his emotions; projecting it into an image for the conceptive faculty.

Thinkers such as Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) and Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) had written on the concept and importance of world history and nationalism, and Hegel's philosophy continues this trend, while breaking away from an emphasis on nationalism and striving rather to grasp the full sweep of human cultural and intellectual history as a manifestation of spirit.

"[6] The ultimate design of the world is such that absolute spirit, here understood as God, comes to know itself and fully become itself in and through the triumphs and tragedies of history.

Hegel chose to openly admit and explain his framework rather than hide it as many historians choose to do.

His account of the civilizations relied upon 19th century European scholarship, and contains an unavoidable Eurocentric bias.

At the same time, the developmental nature of Hegel's philosophy meant that rather than simply deprecating ancient civilizations and non-European cultures, he saw them as necessary (if incomplete or underdeveloped) steps in the outworking of absolute spirit.

The Germanic nations, with the rise of Christianity, were the first to realize that All men are by nature free, and that freedom of spirit is his very essence.

Hegel believes that the spirit of human freedom is best nurtured within a constitutional monarchy in which the monarch embodies the spirit and desires of the governed, and his reading of history locates the rise of such forms of government in the Germanic nations of, for example, the United Kingdom and Prussia after the Protestant Reformation.

The first English translation was made from Karl Hegel's edition, which lacked much material discovered later.

This translation, made by John Sibree (1857),[14] is still the only English version which contains not only the Introduction, but the shorter body of the lectures according to Karl Hegel's 1840 manuscript.

Though it is incomplete, this translation is often used by English speaking scholars and is prevalent in university classrooms in the English-speaking world.