From the Flood to the Reign of George III: Developmental History and the Scottish Enlightenment

An examination of all eighteenth-century historical works produced by Scots is not the intention of this book, which is instead a case study of a limited number of Scottish eighteenth-century historical writings, here designated as “developmental history.” Since this is a term new to historiography, some explanation is in order. Prior publications on eighteenth-century historical writings of the type being explored here have used the terms “conjectural or theoretical history” or “new history.”