It was one of the first works to attempt to unify the history of Western Europe with the stories of the known world.[3]
As a major historical synthesis on, among other subjects, European colonial activities during the modern era, the Modern Part of an Universal History (1754–65) can be considered, according to one specialist, Guido Abbattista, as a precursor of the famous abbé Guillaume Raynal's
Histoire des deux Indes (1770–80), of which it was one of the most important, even if not acknowledged, sources.
See the works by Guido Abbattista (University of Trieste, Italy):
The literary mill: per una storia editoriale della Universal History (1736–1765), Studi Settecenteschi, 1981, pp. 91–133
The business of Paternoster Row: towards a publishing history of the Universal History, Publishing History (Cambridge, UK-Alexandria, Virginia), XVII, 1985, pp. 5–50
Un dibattito settecentesco sulla storia universale (Ricerche sulle traduzioni e sulla circolazione della Universal History), in Rivista storica italiana, a. CI, f. III, 1989, pp. 614–695
“The English Universal History: publishing, authorship and historiography in a European project (1736–1790)”, Paper for the Aachen conference on “Weltgeshichten/Geschicthswelten. Universalgeschichte in der Frühen Neuzeit“, Historikertag Aachen September 2000, then in Storia della Storiografia, 39 (2001): 103-108
Chapters of Abbattista's volume on Commercio, colonie e impero alla vigilia della Rivoluzione americana. John Campbell pubblicista e storico nell’Inghilterra del sec. XVIII, Firenze, Olschki, 1990, are dedicated to the large sections of the Universal History on the European expansion and colonialism overseas
