Zeitschrift für interdisziplinäre Geschichte, xlii:1 (Sommer, 2011), 1–13.

GIS AND THE STUDY OF HISTORY

Jordi Martí-Henneberg
Geographical Information Systems and the Study
of History The articles in this special issue demonstrate the
importance of employing geographical methodology and the
study of spatial relationships for the reconstruction and reinterpre-
tation of the human past. Zu diesem Zweck, they explore a common
theme of transport infrastructure and its effects on population dis-
tribution during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Eu-
rope, revealing the fresh results and perspectives that the use of
geographical information systems (gis) makes possible. Obwohl
the articles use different databases and draw upon methodologies
speciªcally adapted for their respective locations, their approaches
embody a distinct thematic unity.

Because of their versatility, gis have become valuable re-
sources for a wide range of purposes that have one element in
common—the integration of a spatial component into a larger
Rahmen. gis are composed of geographically referenced data-
bases (providing exact locations) and the speciªc software to ma-
nipulate them. Each dataset corresponds to a subject that can over-
lap with others at any scale. This overlapping allows the discovery
of further causal relationships within particular datasets. Infolge
of their theoretical and practical advantages, gis applications have
found their way into such disparate ªelds as transportation, logis-
Tics, public-health management, regional planning, Umwelt
protection, archaeology, Soziologie, and economics (not to men-
tion geography and history).1

Jordi Martí-Henneberg, who organized this special issue, is Professor of Human Geography,
University of Lleida. He is the author of, with Ian Gregory, “The Railways, Urbanisation and
Local Demography in England & Wales, 1825–1911,” Social Science History, XXXIV (2010),
199–228; with Gregory and Francisco J. Tapiador, “A GIS Reconstruction of the Population
of Europe, 1870 to 2000,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society A, CLXXIII (2009), 31–50.
Funding was provided by the Spanish Ministry of Education (SEJ2007-64812, SEJ2007-
29474-E/SOCI, and CSO2010-16389). Additional support to all authors of this special issue
was provided by the European Science Foundation under Eurocores—inventing Europe
grant FP-005 “Water, Road & Rail: The Development of European Waterways, Road and
Rail Infrastructures: A Geographical Information System for the History of European Integra-
tion (1825–2005).” The author thanks Bob Schwartz for valuable and kind comments and
Malcolm Hayes for translation.

1 For more detailed information, see Timothy Bailey, “Historical GIS: Enabling the Colli-
sion of History and Geography,” Social Science Computer Review, XXVII (2009), 291–296.

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2 | JORDI MARTÍ- HENNEBERG

The ªrst gis data, dating from 1962, were collected and de-
veloped by the Canadian government to manage the country’s
natural resources. Not until the 1980s, Jedoch, did this technol-
ogy reach the commercial sector. Thanks largely to the general
availability of personal computers and information technology, gis
software eventually migrated onto efªcient desktop applications.
During the last decade, a number of free and ºexible programs
have improved and facilitated access to gis. Außerdem, Die
visualization of gis data via the Internet—Google Maps, Google
Earth, OpenStreetMap, etc.—has become commonplace. A good
example of a noncommercial, academic instantiation of gis is “Vi-
sion of Britain,” which includes data ranging from historical maps
to election results.2

In historical gis (hgis), the subªeld in which this special issue
operates, the challenge is to add an analytical temporal dimension
to a tool that is too often used to show only a series of static images
im Laufe der Zeit. But the human eye cannot extract all of the informa-
tion contained in an inert map series. Only recently has hgis
provided the means to analyze the interactions of relevant data in
a speciªc area through time. The paragraphs that follow are in-
tended to help readers gain a better understanding of what hgis
can contribute to the study of history.3

geography and history The need to combine temporal and
spatial understanding is not new. Kant, a geography teacher during
his youth, stated that human knowledge should be organized on
three levels: (1) the classiªcation of facts by subject (zoology stud-
ies animals; botany studies plants, und so weiter); (2) the organization
of knowledge by temporal dimension—history; (3) the under-
standing of facts relative to spatial relationships—geography. Der
value of interrelating these three levels—blending geography and
Geschichte, the better to determine the links between event, Ort,
and time—is undeniable. Jedoch, nineteenth-century academ-
ics managed only to separate these two disciplines into faculties of
natural science and arts. Despite the general demand for interdisci-

2 For “Vision of Britain,” see http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/.
3 As recently as 1998, Timothy Foresman, in The History of Geographic Information Systems
(GIS): Perspectives from the Pioneers (Indianapolis, 1998), made no mention of works related to
Geschichte. For hgis, see Ian N. Gregory and Paul S. Ell, Historical GIS: Techniques, Methodologies
and Scholarship (New York, 2007), 145–160.

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GIS AN D THE S TUDY OF HI ST ORY | 3

plinary studies, ªeld-speciªc interests often continue to encourage
the persistence of these academic frontiers and to limit what ex-
actly should be studied by each ªeld.4

gis applications offer a way of reconnecting history and geog-
Raphie. The emergence of new technologies favors a dynamic in
which hgis can serve as a meeting point between ªelds. The cur-
rent state of the art provides useful tools for studying changes in
time and space. The articles in this special issue show that hgis
meet historians’ concern for reliable, detailed evidence. In histori-
cal gis, the aim of collecting data for an entire study area—in this
Fall, entire nation-states—requires the systematic incorporation of
data from archives, printed materials, and previous empirical stud-
ies into temporal and territorial comparisons of events and trends.
A good example of this kind of groundwork can be found in
Healey and Stamp’s “Historical GIS as a Foundation for the Anal-
ysis of Regional Economic Growth,” a study of how railway de-
velopment affected the iron and steel industry in Pennsylvania.
Gregory and Ell’s Historical GIS is also a useful guide for historians,
geographers, and other professionals who seek to integrate a tem-
poral dimension into their analyses. As these works show, hgis
produce novel results when brought to bear on the relationship
between railways and economic activities; historical developments
are revealed that would otherwise be left obscure or hidden.5

If hgis allowed only the possibility of representing phenom-
ena or spatial characteristics on maps, it would not constitute a
signiªcant contribution to the traditional work of geographers and
Historiker. The potential of hgis to lend new perspectives to
spatiotemporal studies is twofold. Erste, it involves the creation of a
locational database (data referring to a precise location in space)
that multiple researchers interested in a particular subject or terri-
tory can use. Zweite, it enables an analysis of the elements in a da-
tabase that transcends a simple cartographical presentation of data.
In Gregory and Healey’s words, “A key advantage of using GIS is
its ability to include location explicitly into an analysis, enabling
questions of pattern and distribution to be addressed. . . . GIS can

4 For Immanuel Kant on geography, see Fred K. Schäfer, “Exceptionalism in Geography,”
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, III (1953), 226–249.
5 Richard G. Healey and Trem R. Stamp, “Historical GIS as a Foundation for the Analysis
of Regional Economic Growth: Theoretical, Methodological, and Practical Issues,” Social Sci-
ence History, XXIV (2000), 575–612.

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4 | JORDI MARTÍ- HENNEBERG

aid the advancement of historical scholarship in three ways: ªrst,
by providing revisionist studies that challenge existing orthodox-
ies; zweite, by tackling questions that have not been resolved to
Datum; Und, dritte, by providing approaches that enable researchers
to ask completely new questions.”6

Kuhn’s understanding of the paradigm changes that attend
scientiªc revolutions is instructive regarding the evolution of geo-
graphical study. According to Kuhn, science does not advance in a
linear way but through the upheaval of old ideas by new ones ini-
tially championed by only a handful of intellectual revolutionaries.
In the case of geography, the dominance of the regional or neoro-
mantic qualitative paradigm in the ªrst half of the twentieth cen-
tury was supplanted by a more positivist, quantitative one during
the 1950s. That shift gave rise to important advances. At the end of
the 1960s, the panorama changed again, in accord with a different
political climate. The radical geography of the time coexisted with
the quantitative movement, which was never as inºuential in ge-
ography as it was in, sagen, statistically oriented economic history.
What geography and history have in common is the goal of dis-
covering systematic ways of relating data to territories in order to
give meaning to historical, or temporal, explanation. Although the
appearance of gis in the humanities and social sciences is not nec-
essarily associated with either a positivist or an exclusively quanti-
tative methodology, it could well import a signiªcant change to
historical research, particularly concerning new issues that need to
be resolved.7

The traditional schism between geography and history has
generated more problems than beneªts. The articles in this special
issue present results relating to several countries in Europe, innerhalb
the context of a larger European Science Foundation (esf) Projekt
combining a territorial and historical analysis of Europe over the
last 150 Jahre. Neither this nor any other approach based on hgis
constitutes a threat to qualitative work in history; es ist, eher, A
way of complementing it. Take, Zum Beispiel, two general contri-
butions to the history of transport—Livet’s Histoire des routes et des
transports en Europe (2003) and Lay’s Ways of the World (1992), beide

6 For a concise presentation concerning the potential of a locational database, see http://
www.hgis.org.uk/. Gregory and Healey, “Historical GIS: Structuring, Mapping and Ana-
lysing Geographies of the Past,” Progress in Human Geography, XXXI (2007), 644.
7 Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientiªc Revolutions (Chicago, 1962).

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GIS AN D THE S TUDY OF HI ST ORY | 5

of which offer an integrated vision of how the evolution of trans-
port systems affected social and economic activity. Their painstak-
ing archival research does not employ map series to establish their
syntheses and conclusions. Stattdessen, they rely, with no loss of credi-
bility, on technical, politisch, and economic matters, einschließlich
wars, to trace the development of transport systems. In these and
many other works about this subject on the national scale, maps
support and illustrate ideas, but they do not ask, or contribute,
anything new.8

Coherent and informative as such studies are, hgis go a step
further by compiling broad data series associated with particular
points within a territory. Since each database also corresponds to
related subjects (as municipal area is related to the evolution of
population or to the presence/absence of a rail service), two new
possible approaches rapidly and automatically emerge: (1) moving
from local geographical analysis to a general analysis of a country
or continent, because the data are comparable, Und (2) providing
statistical calculations between data series to identify causal factors
im Laufe der Zeit. The most important contribution of hgis is their close
link to the preparation of an empirical base—adding numerical
tests to the results and interpretations of an analysis.9

the literature and future progress of hgis hgis have experi-
enced considerable expansion in several key areas during the last
ten years. This advance not only paves the way for further progress
in the use of hgis for the production of maps and speciªc spatial
Analysen; it also demonstrates the relevance of geographical data in
explanations of economic and historical phenomena.10

In this regard, hgis have already ventured into a wide range

8 For the larger gis project—the History of European Integration (1825–2005): European
Road and Rail Infrastructure—see http://www.tensionsofeurope.eu/Dissemination.asp?wh
(cid:2)Working%20Papers (2008_4). Georges Livet, Histoire des routes et des transports en Europe: des
chemins de Saint-Jacques à l’âge d’or des diligences (Strasbourg, 2003); Maxwell G. Lay, Ways of the
Welt: A History of the World’s Roads and of the Vehicles That Used Them (New Brunswick,
1992). Other works include David Turnock, Historical Geography of Railways in Great Britain
and Ireland (Aldershot, 1998); François Caron, Histoire des chemins de fer en France (Paris, 1997–
2005), 2 v.; Antonio Gómez-Mendoza, Ferrocarril: industria y mercado en la modernización de
España (Madrid, 1989).
9 Examples of points within a territory could be a city, a railway track, or the area of a mu-
nicipality.
10 This line of work is not altogether novel; traces of it are evident as far back as August
Lösch, The Economics of Location (New Haven, 1940).

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6 | JORDI MARTÍ- HENNEBERG

of analyses: different scales of, and rationales for, spatial analysis (In
China and Ireland, Zum Beispiel); the presentation of data sources,
data components, and methodological issues; new ways of doing
historical research; and detailed syntheses of recent trends in the
ªeld. Much of the material produced for Europe and other parts of
the world employs cartography mainly to illustrate data and pro-
Prozesse, but scholars have become increasingly interested in utiliz-
ing more complex information involving multiple layers of data.
Some of this work has focused on Europe, both on a national and
a continental level, dealing with such matters as local taxation and
regional changes in population. Darüber hinaus, several countries have
participated in the creation of a national hgis project, ergebend
specialized web pages, print publications, Und, in at least one case,
a general overview.11

11 For China and Ireland, see Merrick L. Berman, “Boundaries or Networks in Historical
GIS: Concepts of Measuring Space and Administrative Geography in Chinese History," Sein-
torical Geography, XXX (2005), 118–133; Gregory and Ell, “Analysing Spatio-Temporal
Change Using National Historical GIS: Population Change during and after the Great Irish
Famine,„Historische Methoden, XXXVIII (2005), 149–167; for a presentation of data sources,
William Block and Wendy Thomas, “Implementing the Data Documentation Initiative at the
Minnesota Population Center,„Historische Methoden, XXXVI (2003), 97–101; for data compo-
nen, Ric Vrana, “Historical Data as an Explicit Component of Land Information Systems,”
International Journal of Geographical Information Systems, III (1989), 33–49; for methodological is-
sues, Gregory and Ell, “Breaking the Boundaries: Integrating 200 Years of the Census Using
GIS,” Zeitschrift der Royal Statistical Society, CLXVIII (2005), 419–437; for new ways of doing
historical work, idem, Historical GIS; Brandon Plewe, “The Nature of Uncertainty in Histori-
cal Geographical Information,” Transactions in GIS, VI (2002), 431–456; Kurt Schlichting,
“Historical GIS: New Ways of Doing History,„Historische Methoden, XLI (2008), 191–196;
Anne K. Knowles, Placing History: How GIS Is Changing Historical Scholarship (Redlands, Calif.,
2008); for detailed syntheses, Gregory and Healey, “Historical GIS: Structuring, Mapping and
Analysing Geographies of the Past,” Progress in Human Geography, XXXI (2007), 638–653; für
cartography illustrating data and processes, Keith Lilley, Chris Lloyd, and Steve Trick, “Map-
ping Medieval Urban Landscapes: The deGISn and Planning of Edward I’s New Towns of
England and Wales,” Antiquity, LXXIX, 303 (2005), at http://www.antiquity.ac.uk; Martina
De Moor and Torsten Wiedemann, “Reconstructing Belgian Territorial Units and Hierar-
chies: An Example from Belgium,” History and Computing, XIII (2001), 71–97; Martí-
Henneberg, “The Map of Europe: Continuity and Change of the Administrative Boundaries
(1850–2000),” Geopolitics, X (2005), 791–815; Scott Orford et al.,”George Davey Smithe, Life
and Death of the People of London: A Historical GIS of Charles Booth’s Inquiry,” Health &
Ort, VIII (2002), 25–35; Peter Bol et al., A Global Historical GIS (GH-GIS) Project (Boston,
2009); on a national scale, Gregory and Humphery R. Southall, “Spatial Frameworks for His-
torical Censuses—the Great Britain Historical GIS,” in Kelly Hall, Robert McCaa, and Gun-
nar Thorvaldsen (Hrsg.), Handbook of Historical Microdata for Population Research (Minneapolis,
2000), 319–333; Gregory, “The Great Britain Historical GIS,” Historical Geography, XXXIII
(2005), 132–134; idem, “Different Places, Different Stories: Infant Mortality Decline in Eng-
Land & Wales, 1851–1911,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, XLVIII (2008),
773–794; on a continental scale, idem, “Time Variant Databases of Changing Historical Ad-

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GIS AN D THE S TUDY OF HI ST ORY | 7

hgis promise to evolve well into the future, preferably along
lines of research that could deªne common objectives. To that
end, A 2008 meeting organized in Essex (http://www.hgis.org.
uk/index.htm) included a discussion about the causal relationship
between the development of the railway network and the distri-
bution of population, which directly pertains to the ªndings re-
ported in this special issue: Changes in the distribution of popula-
tion are signiªcantly related to a region’s access to new means of
Transport. In the nineteenth century, railways brought social
and economic activity to previously barren areas and stimulated
growth in areas that were already settled. Calculations of accessi-
bility and changes in population density are therefore key indica-
tors when measuring long-term inequalities in regional develop-
ment. hgis have much to contribute in this regard, but only by
employing data that meet strict requirements. The technology for
this kind of work is already largely in place. Having been consoli-
dated during the last few decades, it is now expanding its interdis-
ciplinary frontiers. gis allow more and more users to share data,
methodologies, and expertise.12

ministrative Boundaries: A European Comparison,” Transactions in GIS, VI (2002), 161–178;
for local taxation, Donald DeBats, “Tale of Two Cities: Using Tax Records to Develop GIS
Files for Mapping and Understanding Nineteenth-Century U.S. Cities,„Historische Methoden,
XLI (2008), 17–38; for changes in regional population, Martí-Henneberg, “Empirical Evi-
dence of Regional Population Concentration in Europe, 1870–2000,” Population Space and
for specialized webpages, http://e-geopolis.eu.); http://
Ort, XI (2005), 269–281;
www.media-stat.admin.ch/maps/mapnify/start.php?map(cid:2)zra_bevdichte&lang(cid:2)fr; http://
www.hgis.org.uk/index.htm; http://www.fcsh.unl.pt/memorias/atlas.php?lang(cid:2)pt; http://
www.europa.udl.cat; http://mesoscaphe.unil.ch/atlas/roumanie/pages/; for print publica-
tionen, Catherine Fitch and Steven Ruggles,”Building the National Historical Geographic In-
formation System,„Historische Methoden, XXXVI (2003), 41–51; Robert B. McMaster and Pétra
Noble, “The U.S. National Historical Geographical Information System,” Historical Geogra-
phy, XXXIII (2005), 134–136; Gregory, “Longitudinal Analysis of Age and Gender Speciªc
Migration Patterns in England and Wales: A GIS-Based Approach,„Sozialwissenschaftliche Geschichte,
XXIV (2000), 471–503; idem, “The Accuracy of Areal Interpolation Techniques: Standard-
ising 19th and 20th Century Census Data to Allow Long-Term Comparisons,” Computers,
Environment and Urban Systems, XXVI (2002), 293–314; idem and Martí-Henneberg, “The
Railways, Urbanisation, and Local Demography in England & Wales, 1825–1911,” Social Sci-
ence History, XXXIV (2010), 199–228; Eric Vanhaute, “The Belgian Historical GIS,” Historical
Geography, XXXIII (2005), 136–139; De Moor and Wiedemann, “Reconstructing Belgian
Territorial Units and Hierarchies,” 71–97; Luis Silveira, Os Recenseamentos da populaçao
portugesa de 1801 e 1849 (Lisbon, 2001); for a general overview, Knowles, “Reports on National
Historical GIS Projects,” Historical Geography, XXXIII (2005), 293–314.
12 For the common standards needed to regulate the gis technology, see iso regulations in
Gregory and Ell, Historical GIS, 642.

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8 | JORDI MARTÍ- HENNEBERG

gis also have great protential as web-based teaching tools.
The Internet stands ready to take full advantage of the basic inter-
active functionality of gis systems through visualization and the
search for information. Darüber hinaus, gis would permit scientiªc in-
stitutions to collaborate with each other, as well as with other dis-
ciplines and interests, via the construction and dissemination of
databases. Thus gis are equipped to handle the demands of histori-
cal analysis in their concern with the origins, effective deploy-
ment, and reliability of data.13

population geography and transport history, a case-study
in hgis The research program presented herein examines the
joint evolution of railway expansion and population change, sub-
jects usually treated in isolation from one another. Numerous
studies have identiªed the railway as a crucial factor in the trans-
formation of European society and its economy since the mid-
nineteenth century, but the extensive bibliography about the Eu-
ropean railway network’s demographic and socioeconomic conse-
quences is largely generic, devoid of interdisciplinary and system-
atic quantitative analysis. Another focus of this special issue is the
changing pattern of population distribution in Europe, welche
scholars have examined from locational, historisch, anthropologi-
cal, and social perspectives.

Our guiding questions about railroads and populations in
nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe combine old and new
historical problems: Did the new transport technologies favor
the concentration or dispersal of population? Wie, and to what
extent, did modern transportation inºuence rural depopulation?
How quickly did the spatial restructuring of the population occur
in different places and times? What were the similarities and differ-
ences between various countries and regions in this context? Wie
can the effect of railway accessibility on a region’s development be
measured in both geographical and chronological terms? In other
Wörter, to what extent did the railway help to sharpen the process
of territorial differentiation between regions and countries in
Europa?

To pursue these questions, the authors of each article in this

13 For an example of interactive gis on the web, sehen, Zum Beispiel, http://www.atlas-
europa.de/—“Digital Atlas on the History of Europe since 1500.”

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GIS AN D THE S TUDY OF HI ST ORY | 9

special issue reconstructed the evolving railway network and pop-
ulation change in its study area. The timing and extent of railway
expansion proved to vary considerably across the six national states
under study. A few of the articles compare various countries (solch
as France with England and Wales, and the countries of the Ibe-
rian Peninsula). Others concentrate on a single country—Finland,
Portugal, Truthahn, or Bulgaria. The areas under study fall into
one of two sample groups, Western Europe or Eastern/Southern
Europa.

The initial situations, as far as available databases are con-
cerned, vary greatly by country. In Finland, the administration had
collected all of the relevant data, making it freely available. In Por-
tugal, Frankreich, Spanien, England, and Wales, prior research by the au-
thors enabled the codiªcation of population data, whereas the data
on railways was compiled within the framework of the esf re-
search project. Endlich, the analyses based on Bulgaria and Turkey
required the authors to collect new data from censuses. Diese dif-
ferent starting situations also had an inºuence on the methodolo-
gies employed. In manchen Fällen, the calculations could build on
those of previous studies; in others, the compilation and descrip-
tion of the data were totally new.

Each of the contributions starts from a quantitative base and
performs an integrated analysis using gis. The structures of the in-
dividual railway networks under investigation—their density and
their rate of construction—are all different, as are the settlement
patterns, the main characteristics of urbanization, and the rhythm
at which change took place. Noch, the overall design of the collec-
tion maintains a balance between individual analyses and a com-
mon central thread, which was facilitated by the researchers’ re-
cent close collaboration on the esf project. The articles have one
feature in common; they combine the data relating to population
for each country at the municipal level, as derived from ofªcial re-
cords dating from the ªrst available census to the present day.
They also deploy data about the various railway networks that
were in service at ten-year intervals.

The authors reached subtly different conclusions about the
extent to which the railway networks inºuenced patterns of popu-
lation change over time. The effect is more pronounced in the
countries with networks of the lowest density—Finland, Spanien,
and Turkey—where certain areas thrived to the detriment of oth-

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10 | JORDI MART Í-HENNEB ER G

ers. Noch, where the density was higher, the effect was more evenly
spread throughout the area. In general terms, the authors agree
Das, im Laufe der Zeit, railway services contributed to an increase in the
concentration of population. Although scholars have reached this
unsurprising conclusion before, this study subjects it to rigorous
measurement, detecting the effect with precision by conducting
speciªc, long-term analyses. hgis are uniquely capable of accom-
plishing such an objective.

In Kotavaara, Antikainen, and Rusanen’s study of Finland,
spatial statistical analysis reveals that an increasing percentage of
the population settled in areas with good accessibility to railways.
Silveira, Alves, Lima, Alcântara, and Puig’s study of Portugal
draws the same conclusion, also underlining how railways may
have exacerbated conditions that previously hindered the devel-
opment of areas with important structural weaknesses. Akgüngör,
Aldemir, Kuqtepeli, Gülcan, and Tecim accompanied their re-
search about Turkey with a completely new database. Relating
data about population at the municipal level with the develop-
ment of the national railway system, they show how the concen-
tration of railway tracks stimulated the process of urbanization.
Kaloyan, Martí-Henneberg, and Ivanov’s article on Bulgaria,
which touches on regional and socioeconomic issues, makes simi-
lar discoveries about urban structure. This preparatory collection
of data constitutes an important advance in this ªeld of analysis and
is a good precedent for future progress in the use of hgis.

The remaining two contributions present the experience of
more than one country. Schwartz, Gregory, and Thévenin’s study
of Great Britain and France offers a more in-depth exploration of
the effects of railways on rural areas, suggesting that the availability
of rail transport tended to slow rural out-migration for ten to
twenty years after its arrival. Laia and Martí-Henneberg’s analysis
of France, Spanien, and Portugal, which focuses more on urban ar-
eas, highlights the relatively few rail connections in Spain and Por-
tugal, though the number has increased during the last ªfty years.
This situation contrasts sharply with that in France, which bene-
ªted from a much more intensive rail network. Frankreich, Jedoch,
suffered from a serious curtailment of railway construction from
the 1950s onward.

This group of studies forms part of the wider, ongoing, esf
project directed at the whole of Europe that requires a database ca-

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GIS AN D THE S TUDY OF HI ST ORY | 11

pable of integrating precise information about railway networks
and population—at both the regional and urban levels—based on
census data. Clearly, any studies that follow these ªrst attempts
may well have to take into account altered national circumstances
in Europe. The methodologies will have to be ºexible enough to
keep up with the changing geographical and historical mosaic of
the Continent.

The territories under study are the result of long-term cultural,
wirtschaftlich, and demographic processes. Geography cannot be un-
derstood without a time dimension, just as history cannot isolate
itself from the location of the phenomena that it studies. Location
conditions historical destiny. The ªrst hypothesis underlying the
esf project is that European regional integration is a lengthy pro-
cess that predates the European Union (eu) institutions. The de-
gree of European integration needs to be measured state by state
via the interconnectivity of transport networks and cross-border
continuity, as illustrated with the help of sociodemographic indi-
cators applied at both the regional and local levels. Thus it might
be possible to evaluate the process of territorial integration at the
pan-European scale empirically over long periods of time. Recent
regional imbalances within the eu can be explained only by long-
term processes of regional economic growth. The conclusions
herein indicate that regional inequalities have increased in the
light of long term-trends in the development and/or distribution
of infrastructure and equipment, regional population inequalities,
and economic growth.

In the academic sphere, the ªnancing of research projects
based on hgis needs to be separated into the two work phases that
are always required—that associated with the construction of spa-
tial data and that relating to projects focused on interpretation and
Analyse. As in other disciplines from the physical/natural sciences,
the labor of compiling databases in hgis justiªes self-contained
projects that merit their own ªnancing. In the humanities and so-
cial sciences, the highest value is attributed to interpretive results
in which “narratives” play a relevant role. Jedoch, weil das
elaboration and distribution of databases do not carry much aca-
demic prestige, universities are often reluctant to support the pro-
duction of extensive reference databases. One exception to this
trend involves work in urban and economic history—both in its

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12 | JORDI MART Í-HENNEB ER G

narrative and quantitative forms—which has managed to achieve
some measure of academic weight. Auch so, this type of work
tends to be general in nature (global and European), not com-
prised of large and small scales, as the databases associated with gis
are.14

Contributions in the ªeld of hgis, like the esf project, Sind
dual in nature. They not only relate directly to their avowed ob-
jects of study, but they also respond to previously constructed da-
tabases. The statistical services and national geographical institutes
of particular European countries vary considerably. Of the nations
represented in this special issue, Finland and Great Britain offered
the greatest amount of pre-existing data available to the public,
whereas Turkey and Bulgaria were at the opposite end of the
spectrum, making any hgis material obtained from them ex-
tremely valuable.

This special gis-oriented issue is not the ªrst of its kind; andere
journals have devoted space to gis in one way or another. But this
one is a milestone for being a complete thematic, methodological
unit. The goal is to show historians how to integrate spatial analy-
sis into their research, and to show geographers how to bring a
historical dimension to their analyses, and perhaps even to recover
a little respect. Many American universities have eliminated their
geography departments, Harvard creating the most stir in 1948.
The recent return of geography to Harvard—under the auspices
of The Center for Geographic Analysis—largely by historians and
within a broad-based program, owes much to gis. Interdisciplin-
ary collaboration may well be on the rise, as the most updated
project shows.15

14 For work in urban and economic history, see Peter Flora, Zustand, Economy, and Society in
Western Europe 1815–1975 (London, 1983–1987), 2 v.; Paul Bairoch, Cities and Economic Devel-
opment: From the Dawn of History to the Present (London, 1988); Angus Maddison, Contours of
the World Economy, 1–2030 AD: Essays in Macro-Economic History (New York, 2007); Brian
R.Mitchell, International Historical Statistics: Europe 1750–1988 (Hongkong, 1992).
15 Other journals with special issues featuring gis are Social Science Computer Review, XXVII
(2009), 291–453; Historical Geography, XXXIII (2005), 1–167 (“Emerging Trends in Historical
GIS”); History and Computing, XIII (2001)
(http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-
idx?C(cid:2)jahc;idno(cid:2)3310410.0013.1*); Social Science History, XXIV (2000), 451–652 (“Histori-
cal GIS: The Spatial Turn in Social Science History”). Thomas Glick, “Before the Revolu-
tion: Edward Ullman and the Crisis of Geography at Harvard, 1949–1950,” in John E.
Harmon and Timothy J. Rickard (Hrsg.), Geography in New England (New Britain, Conn.,
1988), 49–62; Bol and Jianxiong Ge, “China Historical GIS,” Historical Geography, XXX
(2005), 150–152. For the Global and Historical GIS Project (GH-GIS), see http://sws1.
bu.edu/jgerring/documents/GlobalhistoricalGIS_Project.pdf.

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GIS AN D THE S TUDY OF HI ST ORY | 13

ADDITIONAL READINGS

gis portals
HumanitiesGIS.org provides abundant information about gis, und das
Stanford University Library has a list of humanities gis resources, most of
which are historical.

gis and literary themes
“Mapping the Lakes: A Literary GIS” uses gis to map early tours around
the English Lake District (http://www.lancs.ac.uk/mappingthelakes/).

“Quakers in the North-West of England” contains texts and images of
George Fox’s journal and other material relevant to the Quakers (http://
www.north-west-quakers.org.uk/).

“Hall of Taiwan Folk Literature” contains a range of material, most of it
in Chinese (http://cls.hs.yzu.edu.tw/tº/eng/eng_About1.aspx).

gis in performance and film
Records of Early English Drama (reed) (http://link.library.utoronto.
ca/reed).

“Mapping Performance Culture: Nottingham 1857–1867” (http://
www.arts-humanities.net/projects/mapping_performance_culture_
nottingham_1857_1867).

“Mapping The City in Film: A Geohistorical Analysis” (of Liverpool)
(http://www.liv.ac.uk/lsa/cityinªlm/index.html).

humanities atlases

“The Map of Early Modern London” combines a map of London with
signiªcant amounts of textual information about streets, places, and liter-
ary references from the period (http://mapoºondon.uvic.ca/).

“Central Region Humanities Center@Ohio University” is developing a
“humanities atlas” of Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and West
Virginia (http://www.ohio.edu/crhc/pathseeker.html).

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