Universal History

Universal history is a term for a work aiming at the presentation of the history of humankind as a whole, as a coherent unit.

A universal chronicle or world chronicle traces history from the beginning of written information about the past up to the present. Universal history embraces the events of all times and nations with the only limitation being that they should be ascertained as to make a scientific treatment of them possible.

Universal history in the Western tradition is commonly divided into three parts, viz. ancient, medieval, and modern time. The division on ancient and medieval periods is less sharp or absent in the Arabic, Indian, Chinese and Japanese historiographies. A synoptic view of universal history led some scholars, beginning with Karl Jaspers, to distinguish the Axial Age synchronous to "classical antiquity" of the Western tradition. Jaspers also proposed a more universal periodization—prehistory, history and planetary history. All distinguished earlier periods belong to the second period (history) which is a relatively brief transitory phase between two much longer periods. Jaspers' periodization gains popularity in the current research.

The roots of historiography in the 19th century are bound up with the concept that history written with a strong connection to the primary sources could be integrated with "the big picture", i.e. to a general, universal history. For example, Leopold von Ranke, probably the pre-eminent historian of the 19th century, founder of "Rankean historical positivism", the classic mode of historiography that now stands against postmodernism, attempted to write a Universal History at the close of his career. The works of world historians, Oswald Spengler, Arnold J. Toynbee and Max Ostrovsky, are three examples of attempts to integrate primary source-based history and Universal History. Spengler's work is more general; Toynbee created a theory that would allow the study of "civilizations" to proceed with integration of source-based history writing and Universal History writing. Ostrovsky based comparative analysis of civilizations on primary sources in order to draw generalizations outlining a Universal History. All three writers attempted to incorporate teleological theories into general presentations of the history. Toynbee and Ostrovsky found as the telos (goal) of universal history the emergence of a single World State.

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