Geographical Informational Systems (GIS) and Spatial History: The Versatility of Digital Tools

Geographical Informational Systems (GIS) in the past twenty years have become an integral part of studying history. Anne K. Knowles defines GIS as “a spatial database that integrates map-based information about the historical location of certain entities (such as census districts, industrial firms, or rivers) with quantitative or qualitative information about those entities (such as population, product, or level of pollution).” (Knowles, 2000) The use of GIS in the field of history is underused at this point in time. The reasons behind this appear to be due to modern-day Luddites who are uninterested in adding a new skillset in their toolbelt. This, I do not understand; academic historians are dedicated to education and spend their life researching and pursuing knowledge, but when there is a digital panacea for answering so many questions, would it not be the epitome of antithetical to not want to learn to apply these new methods? I digress: this blog post seeks to discuss the benefits and versatility of GIS and some of the best ways to apply it.

One of the ways in which GIS assists historians is analyzing spatial history (Knowles, 2000). Spatial history can assists historians in numerous ways, and little utilize it. One of the ways in which spatial history can help historians is by understanding the demographics of an area, this also goes hand in hand with migration studies (Knowles, 2000). By looking at patterns of migrations (immigrations/emigration) we can understand both the races and ethnicities that traveled from or to one place to another. After understanding this, historians can look at the reasons why. Spatial history also allows historians to pay attention to areas that may have been neglected to historians before looking at the geography. For example, Benjamin C. Ray et. al, began to look at towns that they previously did not due to looking at the spatial data (Ray, et. al., 2014). This spatial history helped them better understand and locate the accused, accusers, and their defenders during the Holocaust (Ray, et. al, 2014). Due to the number of digital sources that are now available, Ray uses this to defend his belief that digital history is needed (ray, et. al, 2014).

In addition to the benefits of spatial history and GIS, there is the numerous fields in history that assist historians. The field that spatial history assists historians the most is social history; social history is data driven. Social historians rely on numbers and trends in numbers to analyze society as a whole instead of the top-down approach of political histories. With that being said, more recent political historians have utilized GIS to understand how politics are the same or different in difference regions, and/or how they developed or changed over time in certain areas. To my own surprise, even legal history can benefit from GIS and spatial history. William G. Thomas discusses how “recently, legal historians have begun to examine the role of space and spatial history and to describe a field of inquiry they are calling ‘law and geography.’” (Thomas, 2004) The same as political history, it assists historians with understanding how law differs or is the same in various locations.

One way in which we need some improvement in the scholarly field of spatial history, is posing new questions. As Stephen Robertson discusses, historians have been slowly using digital history more in great ways, but there are still other ways that we should utilize it. One of these ways in to present questions for other historians to answer questions (Robertson, 2016). At the end of historiographical essay/reviews, there is always a series of questions in the conclusion; questions that historians have yet to answer. Using GIS, historians can provide more data to pose questions.

Lastly, we can use GIS for digital story telling. Dr. Earley-Spadoni discusses the use of digital tools for telling stories. She mentions a book on the Cultural Landscapes of the Irish Coast Research Project that “is a print-format book which allows users to access short videos by scanning photos in the book with a mobile device.” (Earley-Spadoni, 2016). I believe that this idea can have a profound impact on the study of history, not only at the university level, but also secondary. Unfortunately, secondary reading has declined in the twenty-first century due to the emergence of popular video games and reality television programs. To add onto this, most people prefer to learn history via historical-based fictions. This is both beneficial and troubling. While we want people to become more interested in history and by marketing it in a television show with some fiction does that, it also provides a false-narrative and understanding of history. If we have more integration of digital books like the aforementioned one, it is more likely to get secondary students more interested in history and do their own independent research.

In conclusion, there are a plethora of uses for both GIS both for scholars and education. Seasoned academics should be more open to educating themselves of these newer digital tools available to them; for many thematic questions can be both answered and proposed through them. In addition, instead of more textbook writing, there should be more implementation of book reading similar to colloquia, except far less lengthy and the integration of videos for supplemental knowledge to pique the interest of students. Doing the things listed above can benefit the historical field as well as open it up to new individuals.