Robertson, William
Robertson, William (1721–93). Historian. Son of a presbyterian minister, educated for the kirk at Edinburgh University, Robertson became the leader of a group of moderate presbyterian clergy who took control of the General Assembly of the kirk in 1752 and dominated its politics until 1805. Their power base lay in the universities and in the support they received from government. Robertson became the greatest of Edinburgh University's principals in 1762; it was under his leadership that the university became the most admired of the enlightened world. His History of Scotland (1759), History of the Reign of Charles V (1769), and the History of America (1777) constituted a vast history of the modern world set in the context of a general history of the progress of civilization, notable for the elegance and sophistication with which Robertson employed the so-called ‘conjectural history’ of the Scottish Enlightenment as a context for the history of great events. They established Robertson as a historian of the first rank, regarded as the equal of Voltaire and Hume, and much admired by Burke and Gibbon.
Nicholas Phillipson
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Robertson, William