In search of enlightenment : from mapping books to cultural history

Updated from an article published in 2013, this chapter discusses the philosophy, methodology, conceptual dilemmas, and ultimate findings of the award-winning AHRC-funded French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe (FBTEE) project. The project created an "interpretational-relational database" to map and visualize the pan-European book trade of a celebrated enlightenment publisher, the Société typographique de Neuchâtel (STN). This chapter showcases how careful database design, bespoke digital tools, and an intuitive online interface allow users to compensate for complexities, uncertainties, biases, and gaps in the STN archive, particularly by applying customized data filters. These allow them to create customized "representative" datasets to chart the movement of books, and hence ideas, in the later Enlightenment. Finally, this chapter maps the development of the project and its ambitions to create a single network of inter-operable projects to give users a more rounded and comprehensive sense of the reception, communication, and transformation of ideas across space and time.