  One crucial approach that Burke himself developed was historiographical. In works of history or in oratory, discussion involving a compound abstract noun—such as ‘civilization’ or ‘liberty’— could take place in connexion with aggregate words like ‘Indians’ or ‘the English’, and, therefore, being discussed in relation to these, connected that noun with definite ideas rather than with further ideas that had no easily identifiable content—or no content at all. Almost all of Burke's writings and his more important speeches have a strong historical element. That element is cast as a narrative in a way that connects compound abstract words with specific persons and specific transactions. Burke also wrote avowedly historical works in the years immediately after publishing A Philosophical Enquiry The content of these histories developed the preferences of his youth for improvement by embodying these in a way that made them integral to the origins and continuing character of modern arrangements in the Americas and in England.