ABSTRACT

The Routledge Companion to Spatial History explores the full range of ways in which GIS can be used to study the past, considering key questions such as what types of new knowledge can be developed solely as a consequence of using GIS and how effective GIS can be for different types of research.

Global in scope and covering a broad range of subjects, the chapters in this volume discuss ways of turning sources into a GIS database, methods of analysing these databases, methods of visualising the results of the analyses, and approaches to interpreting analyses and visualisations. Chapter authors draw from a diverse collection of case studies from around the world, covering topics from state power in imperial China to the urban property market in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro, health and society in twentieth-century Britain and the demographic impact of the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915.

Critically evaluating both the strengths and limitations of GIS and illustrated with over two hundred maps and figures, this volume is an essential resource for all students and scholars interested in the use of GIS and spatial analysis as a method of historical research.

chapter |6 pages

Introduction

Spatial history, history, and GIS

part I|124 pages

Population and demography

chapter 1|23 pages

Re-focus on women in an industrial revolution

Montreal 1848–1903

chapter 3|22 pages

Railroads and population distribution

HGIS data and indicators for spatial analysis

chapter 4|16 pages

Enhancing life-courses

Using GIS to construct ‘new’ aggregate and individual-level data on health and society in twentieth-century Britain

chapter 5|38 pages

Relating economic and demographic change in the United States from 1970 to 2012

A preliminary examination using GIS and spatial analysis techniques with national data sources 1

part II|91 pages

Spatial economic history

chapter 7|17 pages

De Geer revisited

Changing territorial and organizational control in the railroad network of the American manufacturing belt, 1850–1900

part III|126 pages

Urban spatial history

chapter 12|21 pages

Geodetic data and spatial photography

New assets for urban history

chapter 13|28 pages

‘Kleindeutschland’, the Lower East Side in New York City at Tompkins Square in the 1880s

Exploring immigration at street and building level

chapter 14|21 pages

Following workers of the industrial city across a decade

Residential, occupational, and workplace mobilities, 1881–1891

chapter 15|28 pages

‘A city of the white race occupies its place’

Kanaka Row, Chinatown, and the Indian Quarter in Victorian Victoria

part IV|176 pages

Spatial rural and environmental history

chapter 16|22 pages

Re-evaluating an environmental history icon

The American Dust Bowl

chapter 17|19 pages

The post, the railroad and the state

An HGIS approach to study Western Canada settlement, 1850–1900

chapter 18|20 pages

Using GIS to transition from contemporary to historical geographical research

Exploring rural land use change in southern England in the twentieth century

chapter 19|23 pages

Food, farms, and fish in Great Britain and France, 1860–1914

A mixed-methods spatial history

part V|88 pages

Spatial political history

chapter 20|20 pages

White maps and black votes

GIS and the electoral dynamics of white and African-American voters in the late nineteenth century

chapter 21|16 pages

The spatial history of state power

A view from imperial China

chapter 22|24 pages

Peasants and politics

How GIS offers new insights into the German countryside

chapter 23|23 pages

Mapping inequality

‘Big data’ meets social history in the story of redlining

part VI|19 pages

Spatial humanities

chapter 24|14 pages

Chasing Bakhtin’s ghost

From Historical GIS to deep mapping

chapter 25|23 pages

Urban property in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro

Rent, neighborhoods, and networks

chapter 26|20 pages

The Second Battle of Ypres and a northern English town

Digital humanities and the First World War