The Cambridge Modern History is a universal history covering the period from 1450 to 1910. It was published in 14 volumes between 1902 and 1912. The series was planned by Lord Acton, who intended it to be a monument of objective, collaborative scholarship, and edited by A.W. Ward, G. W. Prothero and Stanley Leathes.

From the preface: "In accordance with the scheme of the Cambridge Modern History, this volume takes as its main subject a great movement, the Reformation, and follows the theme to a fitting close in its several divisions. . . In this period the scene of principal interest shifts from Italy to Germany and Central Europe. Geneva, very nearly the geographical centre of civilised Europe at the time, becomes also the focus of its most potent religious thought, supported by her like-minded neighbours, Zurich, Strassburg, Basel, and the free imperial cities of southern Germany. As the scene shifts, the main stream of European life broadens out and embraces more distant countries, Scotland, Scandinavia, Poland. The Turkish danger, though still a grave preoccupation to the rulers of eastern Europe, had been checked; and limits had been set to the Ottoman advance." - Summary by Kazbek