Histoire des deux Indes, was arguably the first major example of a world history, exploring the ramifications of European colonialism from a global perspective. Frequently reprinted and translated into many languages, its readers included statesmen, historians, philosophers and writers throughout Europe and North America. Underpinning the encyclopedic scope of the work was an extensive transnational network of correspondents and informants assiduously cultivated by Raynal to obtain the latest expert knowledge. How these networks shaped Raynal’s writing and what they reveal about eighteenth-century intellectual sociability, trade and global interaction is the driving theme of this current volume.
From text-based analyses of the anthropology that structures Raynal’s history of human society to articles that examine new archival material relating to his use of written and oral sources, contributors to this book explore among other topics:
‘This volume of twenty essays constitutes a timely intervention into debates about global history, which, where studies of the eighteenth century are concerned, have been characterized by a certain scepticism’.
French Studies
‘Ce volume propose une moisson fort riche sur une œuvre considérable dans son étendue’.
-Dix-huitième siècle