Susan Bassnett，a significant member of cultural school in translation studies，has attached great importance to the study on history of translation.With her cultural perception and historic insight，Bassnett succeeded in arousing people’s attention on the cultural factors more than on translation itself in the study on history of translation theory，which is quite different from the traditional“period study”.To present Bassnett’s basic theory of translation history study，this thesis has described and analyzed Bassnett’s cultural perception on history of translation from the aspects of purpose，method and significance.