Edward Augustus Freeman and the Dawn of Comparative Politics

The late 19th century and early 20th century was a period of tumultuous change in many parts of the world. Waning and emergent empires prompted shifts in the world's geopolitical template. Where subordinated nationalities once stood, new nation-states arose from the ashes of the Austro-Hapsburg and Ottoman empires. The scramble for Africa augured a distinct phase of European domination of human and material resources of that continent, transforming disparate African peoples into tribes and colonial subjects, and creating territorial and ethnic boundaries which, in practical terms, made more sense to colonizers than to the colonized. Amidst the swirl of imperial collapse and consolidation, self-determination, nationality, and racial and ethnic identification became important elements in the definition of what constituted a people, nation, race, and in some instances, a state.

Among the changes of this period was the deepening organization and classification of knowledge, one of the far-reaching consequences of the Enlightenment's intellectual traditions that emphasized science and reason. Increasing interaction and knowledge of peoples, norms, objects, and institutions across the globe generated the desire among a growing number of scholars to impose discipline upon forms of knowledge that had grown increasingly unruly. New genres and subject areas, ranging from the novel to mass industry and technology, made the task of information gathering and organization more difficult for all engaged in the production, translation, and dissemination of knowledge. Increasingly, scholars sought means to literally discipline new and existing information. The term discipline had not yet taken on the professional demarcated form now associated with academia, but in a more epistemological sense, it was a means to organize knowledge, to distinguish forms and objects of inquiry. Among the most significant changes in the organization of knowledge in the 19th century was the invention of the comparative method.

Methods of comparative analysis were utilized by a small but influential group of scholars in the late 19th century who would be considered pioneers in the development of several professional academic disciplines, including political science. Interest in the comparative method, and the subject matter that inspired it, led students of politics to create programs, seminars, and departments at places like Oxford, Smith, Cornell, Wisconsin, South Carolina, and Johns Hopkins University. Such efforts were designed to institutionally embed specific methodological approaches into one or more academic departments and disciplines.

Yet most late 19th century scholars preoccupied with making comparisons were not formally affiliated with a university, college, or specific academic discipline. Subject matter, rather than professional dictates, was the motivating force behind methodological speculation and innovation. A student of literature, religion, language or philosophy, no less than a student of history or politics, could rightfully claim the study of Western governmental constitutions as part of their disciplinary realm. For example, constitutions, particularly those of Western governments, often invoked God and divine right, thus opening them up as opportunities to study the relationship between religion and politics. The text or object in question was a site of what we would now refer to as interdisciplinarity or transdisciplinarity.

The comparative method was considered one of the greatest scholarly innovations of the century, enabling scholars to consider a novel, institution, market or language as an object on its own, independently of context or genesis. In the United States and Europe, scholars from divergent areas of interest were engaged in transatlantic conversation about the development of methods of inquiry best suited for comparative study. At this stage in the development of a dialogue about scholarly methods, thematic and topical interests were of greater significance than the professional subject position of the scholar engaged in the task of comparison.

As Natalie Melas noted, writing about comparative literature, the impact of the comparative method could be evidenced across the social sciences and humanities, providing "a comprehensive and systematic approach to the totality of objects in a given field and [replacing] the directionlessness of a merely taxonomic comparison with a positivist evolutionary teleology." Regardless of subject matter, the student employing a comparative method was compelled to consider the philosophical, specifically epistemological, implications of their objects of inquiry: What are the terms and conditions of comparison? What renders certain comparisons intelligible and others incoherent? Is it possible to know and understand any object of study outside of its relation to other objects?

Several key advocates of a comparative method, especially in history, literature, and, as I will detail below, the study of politics, believed in historical immanence, the universality of all human beings despite variations in language, custom, religion, region, and appearance. Comparison would render visible seemingly disparate forms and habits of peoples across the globe, allowing for the identification of and underlying telos of the human condition. Of course, such evaluations came with judgments and determinations about the best and worst representations of the human condition — the achievements and catastrophes devised by human hands and minds.

The first known lecture utilizing the term comparative literature in the United States was delivered in 1871 by Chauncey Shackford at Cornell University. Shackford is considered a pioneer in the development of a method for comparing literary production from many parts of the world. In this lecture, Shackford not only described the particular benefits of a comparative method for students of literature, but placed methodological innovations in the study of comparative literature alongside a wider trend — the development and deployment of comparative methods by scholars of various subjects:

The method in which this study can be best pursued is that which is pursued in anatomy, in language, in mythology, and recently applied by Mr. Freeman, to politics, namely the comparative. The literary productions of all ages and peoples can be classed, can be brought into comparison and contrast, can be taken out of their isolation as belonging to one nation, or one separate era.

Two points in this passage are crucial for grasping the emergent use of methods of comparison in scholarly inquiry. First, Shackford declared that the study of literature utilizing a comparative method could organize...