Historical GIS

1) Historical GIS is the pairing of the mapping capabilities of geographic information systems with the study of history for the purpose of illustrating or shedding light on historical narratives or phenomena.

2) Robert Churchill identifies four distinct purposes for using GIS in history education. First, he mentions the analytical and problem-solving practice that using GIS provides for students. Next, GIS helps students understand the power and potential in visualization. Also, he sees GIS as a means of helping students understand sociopolitical issues and controversies (giving an example of personal privacy and the web), and lastly, he views it as a “pedagogic context” through which teachers can explore issues, such as gerrymandering, that can best be explained and understood through GIS (71).

Amy Hillier also sees GIS as a useful teaching tool in that it will engage students in new ways with technology with which they’re already familiar (through the use of navigational technology, for instance) and as way of encouraging spatial and visual thinking/learning (73). Hillier also testifies to the analytical skills studying history through GIS helps students develop, as using GIS encourages questions about the role of geography and spatial boundaries in history, for instance.

3) David J. Bodenhamer describes a number of ways in which historical GIS can contribute to the field of history, along with an honest summary of its limitations and drawbacks. Bodenhamer sees GIS as a new framework for historical analysis through representing the spatial/visual, which has received “little critical attention” in the field of history thus far (222). But Bodenhamer also sees GIS as a tool to aid the already-existent dilemmas of scholars, such as how to store, manage, and make sense of data and evidence and as a means of “construct[ing] multiple perspectives” visually, rather than just through text, as historians have done traditionally (223). Some of the drawbacks of historical GIS include incomplete data sets or imprecise evidence and the challenge of adapting older formats of maps to current industry standards (226-227).

Brian Donahue, in “Mapping Husbandry in Concord: GIS as a Tool for Environmental History,” gives a powerful example of how historical GIS can provide new narratives—and in this instance, a narrative which differs from the previous ones. Donahue states that little has been known of how farmers of colonial New England actually farmed their land, but the prevailing narrative was that they were poor, unsuccessful farmers, according to “a handful of colonial and early-nineteenth century observers” (152). But Donahue’s layered mapping of the land in Concord, MA reveals that the area’s farmers were knowledgeable and competent managers of the land, “a far cry from the wasteful improvident neglect of cultivation” they were previously believed to be (171). This instance illustrates how mapping and spatial analysis can shed new light on previously-believe narratives, to the point of even contradicting those narratives and telling entirely new ones. At the same time, this example shows how using new tools to view old data pulled the rug from under the power held by those few colonists/early Americans who perpetuated an inaccurate narrative.

Whereas Donahue’s mapping of farming practices in Concord revealed the flaws in the previous narratives about New England farmers, in the case of “What Could Lee See at Gettysburg?,” the mapping project showed the limitations of using GIS as a representation of the past. Knowles et al discover through the process of recreating the Gettysburg battlefield landscape that ultimately, the historic battlefield map created by Warren was a more realistic rendering of the battlefield in the nineteenth century than GIS could recreate, saying “The exquisite use of contours, color, shaded relief, and other cartographic symbols on the Warren map exceeds the verisimilitude that GIS can achieve, at least in our work here” (259). Nevertheless, the project did shed on the Battle of Gettysburg and the physical positions of the individuals involved in the battle, providing a better understanding of what Lee did or did not see in his role at Gettysburg, and prompting considerations of “individuals’ emotional and psychological experiences during the battle” (259).

4) Historical GIS appears to be changing historical scholarship in revealing how complimentary geography and history can be in informing the practice of each other, breaking down the binary of “history is the study of when, geography is the study of where” that Knowles mentions in chapter 1 (3). The case studies provided in this book demonstrate ways in which historians are becoming aware of how telling stories through spatial lenses can provide new understanding to historical narratives. Encompassing the “where” into the “when” seems to enhance the importance of both geography and history, illustrated by the Lee/Gettysburg project, for instance, where nuances in topography play such a large role in understanding a historical moment.

Historical GIS also seems to indicate an (albeit perhaps slow) willingness of historians to expand their toolkit to encompass technology that had previously been regarded as too lacking in nuance to be of use for historians (Bodenhamer 222). In the GIS projects/case studies provided by the book and especially in Churchill and Hillier’s discussion of teaching with GIS, we see that the very process of mapping something—regardless of outcome—seems to prompt important considerations of complex issues, such as administrative hierarchy in ancient China or the historical context of gerrymandering (to name just a couple instances).

Work Cited

Knowles, Anne Kelly, editor. Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS are Changing Historical Scholarship. ESRI Press, 2008.