The Conceptual Foundations of the Modern Idea of Government in the British Eighteenth Century: A Distributional Concept Analysis

Abstract

This essay sets out a new method for the history of ideas. Using a mixed approach combining computer assisted reading methods with more traditional close reading, the essay tracks the evolution of a set of terms over the eighteenth century that have become central to how we think about government in particular and political concepts in general. The essay is offered as an example of how data mining very large digital archives allows us to see trends and patterns that are invisible at the granular level of human scale reading, and it proposes that these largescale observations can both complement and complicate our hitherto analogue histories of ideas. The findings of this mixed approach indicate that ‘despotism’ functioned as a type of gate in an electronic circuit, sometimes allowing the connection to liberty and government and on others blocking those connections. Most significantly ‘despotism’ is shown to be an essential ingredient in the conceptual foundations of a theory of rights, liberty and government in the period and that this structure underpins contemporary theories of government.