I am studying the last half of the nineteenth century with my World Cultures class, and recently we discussed the concept of the metanarrative using examples from two texts composed/published in 1848 on different continents and in different languages:

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

     -Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “The Declaration of Sentiments and  Resolutions”

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

       -Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto