Introduction

Summary

You know that there is no post of honour in the English Parnassus more vacant than that of History. Style, judgment, impartiality, care – everything is wanting to our historians; and even Rapin, during this latter period, is extremely deficient. I make my work very concise, after the manner of the Ancients. It divides into three very moderate volumes; one to end with the death of Charles the First; the second at the Revolution; the third at the Accession, for I dare come no nearer the present times.

Hume to John Clephane, January 1753

In August 1770, Hume wrote to his publisher William Strahan ‘I believe this is the historical Age and this the historical Nation.’ His own book The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688 (1754–61) would become a best-seller and a historiographical model for other national histories of the eighteenth century.He wrote it during a historically critical period – through most of the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), a time when Britain was struggling to build a trans-Atlantic empire. He was an astute observer of this ‘historical age’ in which Britain underwent momentous economic development and political transformation. He saw that English history was constructed on a foundation which his contemporaries too often misunderstood, and it needed to be told from a new, impartial perspective.

To fully explain the context in which Hume engaged with contemporary politics and strands of political thought would require a library. Yet the perceptive reader might with good reason be unwilling to delve into the political complexities of a distant age, and might rather ask the question: what did Hume say about those well-known events that have changed the course of English history and continue to influence the world today?

The standard reading of Hume's History remains the rich study published by Duncan Forbes in 1975. Forbes claimed that this work could be read as an alternative to ‘orthodox Whig history’ – ‘an establishment history: the application of a theory of political obligation designed for a post-revolutionary establishment to the events of the seventeenth century’. But Forbes emphasised Hume's political context at the expense of his ambition as a historian, and assumed more knowledge of the intricacies of mid-eighteenth-century British politics than general readers are likely to possess.

Since the publication of Forbes's work, many scholars have contributed new information and valuable insights.