Materialism and history: Diderot and the Histoire des deux Indes

In the last years of his life, Diderot made a large number of anonymous contributions to Raynal's widely read Histoire des deux Indes. The identification of these passages over the last thirty years has led to a view of Diderot's later political thought as being far more radical than had previously been supposed. But his contributions in general are notable for their pessimism about the situation in France and in Europe generally. In part this was due to his belief in a cyclical view of history, but it was also due to his bringing to his understanding of history the materialist, and resolutely non‐providential, view of nature which he had developed earlier.