Narratives of Enlightenment reappraises the work of five of the most important narrative historians of the eighteenth century--Voltaire, David Hume, William Robertson, Edward Gibbon, and the historian of the American Revolution, David Ramsay--in the context of political and national debates in France, Scotland, England and America. Where previous studies have emphasized the growth of nationalism in eighteenth-century literature, Karen O'Brien reveals the development of cosmopolitan ways of thinking beyond national cultural issues.