Non-resident Long-term Fellow for Programmes in Early Modern and
Modern History, SCAS.
Shelby M.C. Davis 1958 Professor of History, Princeton University

ABSTRACT:
Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is the only work by a historian active in the 18th century that is still widely read today. It has also been one of the world's most translated books. Already by 1900, you could read it for instance in Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi. The impact and widening audience of Gibbon's work has sometimes been linked to his human sympathy, especially his opposition to the slave trade. In this seminar, Linda Colley re-examines and complicates Gibbon's position on slavery and focuses on Decline and Fall's persistent attention to varieties of regime change over time as the key factor in this book's trans-national and trans-continental appeal.