This chapter is devoted to several brief sections and sets the stage for what follows by dealing with some of the key elements of context and background for the remainder of the book. These include: ancient politics and political thought in Greece and especially Rome; the distinction (and non-distinction) between party and faction; Jacobitism; Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and the nature of the eighteenth-century British fiscal-military state; and sociability and partisanship. It concludes by highlighting that the most common way to discuss and write about political parties in the eighteenth century was in political, historical, and constitutional terms.