Is it possible to imagine a history that includes everything and everyone? This volume argues that the deep ancestor to modern notions of "globalization" can be found in the writing practice known as universal history – an early modern laboratory of intense and diverse attempts at thinking history and universals together.

1. Introduction Hall Bjørnstad, Helge Jordheim and Anne Régent-Susini 2. On the History of Universal History Gérard Ferreyrolles Section I: Past: Universality and Histories 3. The Unity of History in Early Modern Europe Zachary Sayre Schiffman 4. "Even Fables Will Become History": La Popelinière and Universal History at the End of the Sixteenth Century Philippe Desan 5. Experience, Confusion, and History in Bossuet’s Discourse on Universal History John D. Lyons 6. Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and the End of History Guillaume Ansart Section II: Present: Time and Visualization 7. Providential Novelties: Werner Rolevinck’s Universal Timelines Patricia Clare Ingham 8. Tattoos and Time: Visual Ethnography and Universal History in A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1590) Tony Sandset 9. Histoire de l’œil, œil de l’histoire: Can We See Universal History? About Bossuet’s Discourse on Universal History Anne Régent-Susini 10. Making Universal Time: Tools of Synchronization Helge Jordheim Section III: Future: Pedagogy and Politics 11. Between Providence and Foresight: Bossuet’s Discourse on Universal History Hall Bjørnstad 12. Commonplaces and Simple Truths: Ludvig Holberg's Synopsis historiæ universalis (1733) and the Tradition of Textbooks Anne Eriksen 13. Universal History and the Lessons of the French Revolution in Friedrich Schiller Johannes Türk 14. Historicization and Perpetuation of the French Language: A Laboratory of the Universal Hélène Merlin-Kajman