Compiled from original authors; and illustrated with maps, cuts, notes, &c. With a general index to the whole.
The novelist Tobias Smollett edited for a short period.
[2] It was one of the first works to attempt to unify the history of Western Europe with the stories of the known world.
[3] 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 (1770–80), of which it was one of the most important, even if not acknowledged, sources.
See the works by Guido Abbattista (University of Trieste, Italy):