World War, which he personally had spent largely in a prisoner-of-war camp. In a keynote address to the following Congress, heldnot in St Petersburg in 1918 as originally planned but in Brusselsin 1923, the Belgian historian recommended an approach touniversal history via the comparative method. Another delegateto the 1913 London Congress, E.V.Tarle, whose reactions to theRussian Revolution are discussed at the end of Chapter 2, madean accommodation with Marxism-Leni-nism to become one of theleading Soviet historians. Tarle did this by waving the USSR’s flagof ‘socialism in one country’ and celebrating patriotism more thaninternationalism. Similarly, episodes from the career of CharlesA.Beard, first introduced towards the end of Chapter 3, illuminatesome of the historiographical currents in the West, especially theUSA. For example, Beard attempted to set out to further a ‘NewHistory’ incorporating the USA in a world-wide order andbroadening the subject in many other ways. In particular, Beardand his colleagues could not hold themselves aloof from ideologicalstruggles in Europe, although the Atlantic civilisation adumbratedbefore the First World War did not take on full shape until after theSecond. The successive stages of development from 1945 to 1962are illustrated by an examination of three articles by the Dutchhistorian Jan Romein, from ‘Theoretical History’ through ‘TheCommon Human Pattern’ to ‘The Problem of Transformation’.Reflecting a new Western concern for the history of all humankindas part of the post-1945 world order as he adapted the oldarguments of his predecessors, Romein also ran up against therestrictive influences of the Cold War and nationalist self-assertion.However, he died in 1962 before the climax of the Cold War anddecolonisation, and the many other great changes, economic, socialand cultural, associated with the 1960s. The movement towards amore complete global view of history now accelerated, against thebackground of the continuing Cold War.After the exposition of the ‘classical’ conceptions of theconstitutional and revolutionary world orders, and their twentieth-century development as reflected in the works of somerepresentative historians, we come to the denouement,‘Conclusion’. A simple analogy is made with a game of football: ifthere can be no hope of general agreement concerning themovement imparted to a ball for an hour and a half by twenty-twohuman beings in an area not exceeding a few hundred squaremetres, how can we approach an objective appraisal of the events