I finally had the chance to play around with the new Google n-gram viewer. It lets you search a word, phrase, or name in the Google books database and then graphs for you over time the frequency of the word. Try antitrust. Try monopoly. Try your own name. Try your favorite book. It is an awesome resource, a wonderful time waster, and even a serious research tool for certain projects.
Not surprisingly, antitrust doesn't appear much before 1890 and peaks around 1980.
But monopoly appears from 1600 on with surprising peaks in years where I can't think of a cause off the top of my head. It eventually peaks around 1940.
Any idea why so much monopoly action in the 17th and 18th century (besides the passage of statute of monopolies in Elizabethian times)?
You got me thinking, so I also used Google, searching for "Seventeenth Century Monopolies." Government granted monopolies over foreign trade, e.g., the English and Dutch East India Companies, came up, including the quoted passage at this link:
ReplyDeletehttp://techliberation.com/2006/07/04/monopolies-in-the-17th-and-21st-centuries/
Anyway, it's something.