ABSTRACT
The genre of historical writing that attempts to encompass the world is a relatively new development and, even today, is in its nascent stages. “The simple truth,” wrote Barraclough, “is that the study of world history is still only in its beginnings; only our realization of the inadequacy of our traditional approach to the past in the conditions which confront us today has compelled us to give it serious attention.” Although the first debates on the methods of writing world history occurred at this time, like many other aspects of the Enlightenment, the historiography of world history writing was more successful in conception than in practice. In 1920, Wells’s work as an historian had a better reception in Russia than it did among historians in Britain. But the stimulus that Marxism gave to the application of social science theories and methods had a lasting effect on Western historiography.
