ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that eighteenth-century historians fundamentally relied on the ideas of simultaneously existing historical stages and of worldwide progress brought on by exploration. It seeks to shed new light on these scholars’ fascinations with variations in human appearance and life forms and on their tendencies to equate cultural difference with temporal difference. The chapter outlines the geopolitical background and the intellectual premises that prompted scholars to use information from voyage accounts in crafting their historiographical narratives. The impression of living at a time when exploration was about to broaden the historian’s horizon dramatically was also articulated, for example, by the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder. Cultural diversity was a subject of great interest at the recently founded university in the provincial town of Gottingen in Germany. While historians in Göttingen enjoyed exceptional access to English-language travel literature thanks to the Union, they were by no means the only German-speaking scholars who regarded scientific exploration as relevant to historiography.
