Abstract: The period from the 16th to the 18th century saw the emergence of the genre of world history, in which Europeans drew on the natural and human knowledge of the New World and other non-European regions to chart the development of different peoples, and to compare and connect them. The writing of early world history was not only a prelude to modern anthropology in the 19th century, but also a prerequisite for the birth of “comparative literature”. In the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Christian view of human homogeneity incorporated “pagan” peoples outside Europe into the biblical narrative. Subsequently, French Enlightenment thinkers such as Bernier and Montesquieu attempted to explain the origins and evolution of different societies in terms of their natural environment and institutional inheritance, emphasizing differences among peoples. At the same time, there was also a wave of “Counter-Enlightenment” thought, which proposed a prototype of the concept of multiculturalism based on the recognition of the basic commonalities of all peoples. It was during this period, from the 16th to the 18th centuries, that the writing of world history by Western thinkers shifted from Christian monism to a more philosophical consideration of the similarities and differences of national characters, giving birth to modern “comparative thinking” and highlighting the cosmopolitan origins of Western modernity.

Key words: comparative literature, comparative thinking, early modern, European, world history, ethnography