Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading

by George Park Fisher

MEDIAEVAL AND LATER MODERN HISTORY.

Since the fall of the Roman Empire, there has occurred no revolution to be compared with the circumstances and results of that event. An old world passed away, and a new world began to be. Yet the student, as he travels hitherward, arrives at another epoch of extraordinary change,—a period of ferment, when modern society in Europe takes on a form widely different from the character that had belonged to it previously. The long interval between ancient history and modern (in this more restricted sense of thes term) is styled the Middle Ages. Its termination may be found in the fifteenth century, and a convenient date to mark the boundary-line is the capture of Constantinople by the Turks (1453).

History thus divides itself into three parts:—

Part I. Ancient History, to the migrations of the Germanic Tribes (375 A.D).

Part II. Mediæval History, from A.D. 375 to the Fall of Constantinople (1453).

PART III. Modern History, from 1453 until the present.

Works on General History.—Ranke, Universal History; Ploetz, Epitome of Ancient, Mediæval, and Modern History (Boston, 1884); Weber, Weitgeschichte (2 vols.); Assmann, Handbuch d. allgemeinen Geschichte (5 vols., 1853-1862); by the same, Abriss d. allgem. Gesch. (in 3 parts); Oncken, Allgem. Geschichte in Einzeidarstellungen (a series of full monographs of high merit). Copious works on Universal History, in German, by Weber, Schlosser, Becker, Leo. Laurent, Études sur l'Histoire de l'Humanitè (this is an extended series of historical dissertations),—The Orient and Greece (2 vols.); Rome (1 vol.); Christianity (1 vol.), etc. Prévost-Paradol, Essai sur l'Histoire Universelle (2 vols.: a suggestive critical survey of the course of history, with the omission of details). S. Willard, Synopsis of History.

PART I. ANCIENT HISTORY.

FROM THE BEGINNING OF AUTHENTIC HISTORY TO THE MIGRATIONS OF THE TEUTONIC TRIBES (A.D. 375).

DIVISIONS OF ANCIENT HISTORY.—Ancient history separates itself into two main divisions. In the first the Oriental nations form the subject; in the second, which follows in the order of time, the European peoples, especially Greece and Rome, have the central place. The first division terminates, and the second begins, with the rise of Grecian power and the great conflict of Greece with the Persian Empire, 492 B.C.