'Compellingly lucid and elegant.' Sir Tony Wrigley, President of the British Academy

• Acknowledgements and author's note; 1. Introduction: cosmopolitanism, narrative, history; 2. Voltaire's neoclassical poetics of history; 3. European contexts in Hume's History of England; 4. William Robertson to the rescue of Scottish history; 5. Robertson on the triumph of Europe and its empires; 6. Emulation and revival: Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; 7. David Ramsay's sceptical history of the American Revolution; Afterword; Bibliography; Index.

'Compellingly lucid and elegant.' Sir Tony Wrigley, President of the British Academy

• Acknowledgements and author's note; 1. Introduction: cosmopolitanism, narrative, history; 2. Voltaire's neoclassical poetics of history; 3. European contexts in Hume's History of England; 4. William Robertson to the rescue of Scottish history; 5. Robertson on the triumph of Europe and its empires; 6. Emulation and revival: Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; 7. David Ramsay's sceptical history of the American Revolution; Afterword; Bibliography; Index.

'Compellingly lucid and elegant.' Sir Tony Wrigley, President of the British Academy

• Acknowledgements and author's note; 1. Introduction: cosmopolitanism, narrative, history; 2. Voltaire's neoclassical poetics of history; 3. European contexts in Hume's History of England; 4. William Robertson to the rescue of Scottish history; 5. Robertson on the triumph of Europe and its empires; 6. Emulation and revival: Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; 7. David Ramsay's sceptical history of the American Revolution; Afterword; Bibliography; Index.