The Global Network of Liberty: Toward a New Framework for Understanding the History of Political Concepts

This article contends that liberty was already a globally connected concept during the late Middle Ages, and the Euro-American Enlightenment conception of liberty was only one of the many products of the global medieval legacies. Developing a network approach to concepts and applying it to primary sources in ten languages across Afro-Eurasia, I map how thinkers from different parts of the world contributed to the formation of the network. Recognizing this global network of liberty allows researchers to rediscover overlooked conceptualizations of liberty—as evidenced by examples of the Mongol Empire and its translingual politics with/in Europe, Persia, and China. Once innovations in specific contexts are placed back into the global network, revealed are global patterns of valorizing liberty, considering it either essential to possess or warranting caution. Both the findings and methodologies presented here prompt scholars to revisit the foundations of modern political thought from a global standpoint.