New Books In European Studies

Eighteenth-century England was a place of both the enlightenment and progress: new ideas abounded in science, politics, transportation, commerce, philosophy, religion, and the arts. But even as England propelled itself into the future, it was preoccupied with notions of its past, both its immediate past and its far distant past. Professor of History Jeremy Black, the most prolific historian (more than one-hundred books written) in the Anglophone world, considers the interaction of history with knowledge and culture in eighteenth-century England and shows how this engagement with the past influenced English historical writing in his new book, Charting the Past: The Historical Worlds of Eighteenth-Century England (Indiana University Press, 2018). The past was used as a tool to illustrate the contemporary religious, social, and political debates that shaped the advances and changes of the era. Professor Black reveals this type of "present-centered" historical writing to be so valued and influential in the eighte