Contributions to the History of Concepts

Fascism has returned—not necessarily as a regime type, but as a central concept in political discourse. This editorial examines how the term “fascism” has been used to characterize Trumpism. While some historians have cautioned against simplistic analogies, other commentators and scholars insist that Trump embodies core fascist traits. Conceptual history provides a lens to analyze how fascism functions not only as an analytical category but also as a Kampfbegriff—a weaponized term in political struggle. The question emerges, however, whether the concept of fascism, even when justified as a necessary weapon in the current situation, does not ultimately risk preventing an appreciation of what is novel about Trumpism, and of its entanglement with a contemporary “postmodern” moment, arguably very different from the modern seedbed of mid-twentieth-century fascism.

On 12 December 2023, John Greville Agard Pocock passed away. Author of a prestigious body of work specialized in the history of British languages of politics during the early Modern period (1500–1830), his theoretical and methodological perspective played a crucial role in the renovation of the history of political thought and discourse in the English-speaking world and, eventually, further afield. Less well-known outside specialist circles than Quentin Skinner, his contribution to the reconfiguration of the historical study of political thought was equally significant. In his capacity as a theorist of the notion of contextualized languages of politics, he would engage late in his career in a fruitful series of discussions with Reinhart Koselleck on the relevance of the begriffsgeschichtlich program to his own work.

This article addresses the limited attention the concept of historical thinking has received in professional historiography, particularly amid the current crisis of the modern regime of historicity. It aims to define historical thinking by examining recent developments in global historiography and historical theory. The text is structured into three sections: the first summarizes postcolonial critiques of modern historiography, the second explores premodern conceptualizations of historical thought beyond the Global North, and the third discusses global reapproaches to historiography. The article concludes by suggesting that conceptual history provides essential tools for developing a multilingual and transnational understanding of global historical thought, thereby expanding the boundaries of historiographical research beyond Western-centric frameworks.

The article explores the historico-conceptual paradox of nation-building through the eyes of some collectives of artisans and craftsmen in Mexico during the 1840s. Analyzing some contributions to the history of the concept in nineteenth-century Mexico unveils some of its semantic and political paradoxes. By briefly discussing some contestations that emerged from different groups to the concept forged by centralists and industrialists, the article analyzes the importance a national-economic project had for the formation of the concept of nation. The industrialization agenda advocated by certain groups was contested by artisan collectives who developed new conceptions of political and economic relations among national subjects through the organization and cooperation of work. The article finally discusses whether the “working nation” disclosed by these associations can be considered a form of alternative nationalism or an alternative form of nation altogether.

This article probes the meanings of and distinctions between the concepts of the state, sovereignty, and government, as elaborated by Jean Bodin. There is tendency for one of these three terms to disappear in modern analyses of his work. I argue that Bodin makes the state the name of an insubstantial substantive: the condition of a civil condition that must always be qualified by an adjective stating the location of sovereignty as opposed to government. The article then considers the concept of la police in Bodin's work. Although the term is normally understood to mean “government,” I maintain that one of the ways Bodin uses the term is to designate something like “polish.” Bodin provides further textual support for a classical sociological theory about the pacification of society that proceeded alongside the rise of the modern sovereign state.

Zachary R. Goldsmith, Fanaticism: A Political Philosophical History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022), 196 pp.

Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, Der Riss in der Zeit: Kosellecks ungeschriebene Historik [The rift in time: Koselleck's unwritten theory of history] (Berlin: Suhrkamp 2023), 392 pp.

Claudio Sergio Ingerflom, Le domaine du maître: L’État russe et sa mission mondiale [The master's domain: The Russian state and its global mission] (Paris: Presses universitaires de France / Humensis, 2023), 282 pp.