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James Brodie (politician, born 1695)

British politician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionOct 26, 2024
Entity authorityQ19871600 ↗
Source-derived summary

James Brodie, 18th of Brodie (1695 – 2 October 1720), was a Scottish clan chief and politician who sat in the House of Commons in 1720.

Broadie was the eldest son of George Brodie of Ailisk.

He was educated at Marischal College in Aberdeen, and in 1714 he succeeded to his father's estates and to the chieftainship of the Clan Brodie.

The following year, he supported the government side in the Jacobite rising of 1715.

In the Parliament of Great Britain, he was elected at a by-election in January 1720 as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Elginshire. He died later that year, aged 25,

of "a headache which put him in a fever".

His younger brother Alexander succeeded him as clan chief, and was elected in his place as MP for Elginshire.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “James Brodie (politician, born 1695)” is british politician. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through James, Brodie and politician, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1695, 1720, 1714, 1715—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1695. For this dossier, James, Brodie and politician is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “british politician” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 26, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q19871600. VIAF identifies the subject as 24473704. The Library of Congress control number is nr93026097. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1695, 1720, 1714 and 1715.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “James Brodie (politician, born 1695)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow James Brodie (politician, born 1695) primary sources, James Brodie (politician, born 1695) archive and James research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “James Brodie (politician, born 1695)”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “James Brodie (politician, born 1695)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.