Universal history (genre)

[1] Universal historians try to identify connections and patterns among individual historical events and phenomena, making them part of a general narrative.

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).Metamorphoses by Ovid has been considered as a universal history because of its comprehensive chronology—from the creation of humankind to the death of Julius Caesar a year before the poet's birth.

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] The 11th-century Zizhi Tongjian of Sima Guang is sometimes considered the first of the chronologically arranged universal histories produced in China.

[11] Less commonly they may use the Augustinian idea of the tension between the heavenly and the earthly state, as depicted in the City of God, which plays a major role in Otto von Freising's Historia de duabus civitatibus.

Some universal chronicles bear a more or less encyclopedic character, with many digressions on non-historical subjects, as is the case with the Chronicon of Helinand of Froidmont.

Other notable universal chroniclers of the Medieval West include the Chronicon universale usque ad annum 741, Christherre-Chronik, Helinand of Froidmont (c. 1160—after 1229), Jans der Enikel, Matthew Paris (c. 1200–1259), Ranulf Higdon (c. 1280–1363), Rudolf von Ems, Sigebert of Gembloux (c. 1030–1112), Otto von Freising (c. 1114–1158), and Vincent of Beauvais (c.

[14] The Chronica of Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 275–339) contained in its second book an innovative set of concordance tables (Chronici canones) that for the first time synchronized the several concurrent chronologies in use with different peoples.

[16] By the mid-1480s, when Venetian printers controlled almost half of Europe's incunable production, they heavily promoted the inclusion of illustrations – the majority being city views – in universal chronicles.

[18] In the medieval Islamic world (13th century), universal history in this vein was taken up by Muslim historians such as Tarikh-i Jahangushay-i Juvaini ("The History of The World Conqueror") by Ala'iddin Ata-Malik Juvayni, Jami' al-tawarikh ("Compendium of Chronicles") by Rashid-al-Din Hamadani (now held at the University of Edinburgh) and the Muqaddimah by Ibn Khaldun.

[9] The History of the Prophets and Kings (Tārīkh al-Rusul wa al-Mulūk) of al-Tabari is a prime example of the latter, in which a major role was played for the last time by isnads.

[19] 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 NatureAccording to Hughes-Warrington (2005), John Knox's 1558 The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women represented 'a universal history of female monarchs'.

[dubious – discuss] Philosophers such as Kant,[23] Herder,[24] Schiller and Hegel,[25] and political philosophers such as Marx and Herbert Spencer, presented general theories of history that shared essential characteristics with the Biblical account: they conceived of history as a coherent whole, governed by certain basic characteristics or immutable principles.

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.