Historical geographic information system

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GIS tracking temporal changes

A historical geographic information system (also written as historical GIS or HGIS) is a geographic information system that may display, store and analyze data of past geographies and track changes in time. It can be regarded as a tool for historical geography.

## Techniques

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Historical geographic information systems are built from a variety of sources and techniques. An especially prominent method is the digitization and georeferencing of historical maps. Old maps may contain valuable information about the past. By adding coordinates to such maps, they may be added as a feature layer to modern GIS data. This facilitates comparison of different map layers showing the geography at different times. The maps may be further enhanced by techniques such as rubbersheeting, which spatially warps the data to fit with more accurate modern maps. Large map collections, such as the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, have digitized and georeferenced their maps and published them on the Internet, making them accessible for a variety of projects.

Georeferencing historical microdata, such as census or parish records, allows researchers to conduct spatial analysis of historical data. Comparisons between statistical areas can require reconstructing former political boundaries and other types of borders and tracking their evolution.

## Notable historical GIS projects

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* China Historical Geographic Information System is a project on Imperial China developed by Harvard University and Fudan University.
* Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI) is a clearinghouse for the exchange of metadata of Historical GIS. Maintained by the University of California, Berkeley.
* Euratlas History Maps is a historical atlas of Europe from year 1 to present days with one map per century. The maps depict sovereign states as well as administrative divisions and dependent territories.
* Great Britain Historical GIS is a GIS-enabled database holding diverse geo-referenced maps, statistics, gazetteers and travel writing, especially for the period 1801–2001 covered by British censuses. Created and maintained by Portsmouth University.
* HistoAtlas is an open historical geographical information system that tries to build a free historical atlas of the world.
* National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS) is a system for displaying and analyzing Census tracts and tract changes in the United States.
* OpenHistoricalMap is an open-source historical world atlas based on OpenStreetMap technology and practices.

## Software or web services developed for Historical GIS

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* Google Earth added a time line feature in version 4 (2006) that enables simple temporal browsing of spatial data.[1]
* TimeMap is a Java open-source applet (or program) for browsing spatial-temporal data and ECAI data sets. Developed by the department of archaeology University of Sydney.

## See also

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* Digital history
* Geographic information system § Adding the dimension of time
* GIS in archaeology
* Landscape history
* Rephotography
* Spatiotemporal database
* Time geography

## References

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1. ^ Announcement of the feature at the Google Earth blog, 2006.

## Further reading

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* Ian N. Gregory, Don Debats, Don Lafreniere eds.: The Routledge Companion to Spatial History. Routledge 2018 ISBN 9781138860148
* Joachim Laczny: Friedrich III. (1440–1493) auf Reisen. Die Erstellung des Itinerars eines spätmittelalterlichen Herrschers unter Anwendung eines Historical Geographic Information System (Historical GIS) In: Joachim Laczny, Jürgen Sarnowsky eds.: Perzeption und Rezeption. Wahrnehmung und Deutung im Mittelalter und in der Moderne (Nova Mediaevalia Quellen und Studien zum europäischen Mittelalter, 12), Göttingen: V&R unipress 2014, p. 33–65. ISBN 978-3-8471-0248-9, doi:10.14220/9783737002486.33
* Ian N. Gregory, Paul Ell: Historical GIS: Technologies, Methodologies, and Scholarship (Cambridge Studies in Historical Geography) 2008 ISBN 978-0-521-67170-5
* Anne Kelly Knowles: Past Time, Past Place: GIS for history A collection of twelve case studies on the use of GIS in historical research and education. ESRI press 2002 ISBN 1-58948-032-5
* Anne Kelly Knowles, Amy Hillier eds.: Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS Are Changing Historical Scholarship 2008 ISBN 978-1-58948-013-1
* Ian N. Gregory: A place in History A short introduction to HGIS by the lead developers of GBHGIS ISSN 1463-5194
* Ott, T. and Swiaczny, F.: Time-integrative GIS. Management and analysis of spatio-temporal data, Berlin / Heidelberg / New York: Springer 2001 ISBN 3-540-41016-3
* Feature edition of Historical development GIS in the journal Social Science History 24 2000, Introduction by Anne Kelly Knowles.

* v
* t
* e

Historiography

* Historians
* list / by area of study
* History

* historians
* historicity
* history
* theories of history

Historical sources

| Types|

* Primary sources
* Secondary sources
* Tertiary sources

|

Sources|

* Annals
* Archives
* Artifacts
* Archaeological site
* Chronicles
* Codices
* Deeds
* Facsimiles
* Features
* Hieroglyphs
* Historical documents
* Logbooks
* Manuscripts
* Illuminated
* Oral tradition
* Papyri
* Religious texts
* Scrolls
* War diaries
* Service records

Fields of study

| By scale|

* Big History
* World history
* Human history
* Local history
* Microhistory

|

By source|

* Archival science / Library and information science (template)
* Books / Writing systems
* Chorography
* Chronology
* dating
* Diplomatics
* Encyclopaedistics
* Epigraphy
* Genealogy
* Heraldry
* Numismatics (Money)
* Onomastics
* Oral history
* preservation
* Phaleristics
* Philology
* Postage stamps
* Prosopography
* Sigillography
* Toponymy
* Vexillology

By topic|

* Anthropology / Paleoanthropology
* Cultural
* Ecology / Environment / Geography
* Economic
* Business
* Capitalism
* Perspectives on capitalism by school of thought
* Thought
* Intellectual
* Geistesgeschichte
* Linguistics
* Medieval churches
* Military
* Political
* Constitutional
* Diplomatic
* Social
* Feminism
* Gender
* Indigenous
* Labour
* LGBTQ
* Rural
* Quantitative
* Urban
* Women

Methodology

* Case study
* Periodization
* Historical eras
* Tarikh
* Three-age system

| Approaches,
schools|

* Annales school
* History of mentalities
* Nouvelle histoire
* Historiometry / Cliometrics
* Comparative historical research
* Critical
* Decoloniality
* Feminist
* Historical anthropology
* Historical determinism
* Historism
* Historical-critical method
* Humanistic
* Indiscipline of history [pt]
* Leninist
* Marxist
* Historical materialism
* Nationalist
* Ancestral civilisation
* Nationalization of history
* People's history
* Subaltern Studies
* Pop history
* Quantitative history
* Revisionist
* Transnational
* Whig
* Great Man theory

|

Concepts

| General|

* Change and continuity
* Historic preservation
* Historic recurrence
* Historical significance
* Historicity
* Historiology [es]
* Theory of history [de]
* Philosophy

|

Specific|

* Black legend
* Coloniality and decolonization of knowledge
* Dark Ages
* Historical negationism
* Historian's fallacy / Presentism
* Invented tradition
* Modernisation theory
* Narratives
* Paradigm shift
* Pax
* list
* Thirty-year rule
* Transhistoricity
* Translatio imperii / Translatio studii
* Vaticinium ex eventu

| Periodization of
modern history|

* Age of Discovery
* Age of Enlightenment
* European Civil War / Second Thirty Years' War
* Long 18th / 19th century
* Renaissance
* Continuity thesis

|

By country or region

| Africa|

* Egypt
* Pyramid construction techniques
* Black Egypt Thesis [es]
* Ethiopia
* Morocco
* Greater Morocco
* Rwanda
* Double genocide theory
* Maafa

|

Americas|

* Canada
* Metropolitan-hinterland thesis
* Residential schools
* Staples thesis
* Indigenous population history

| Latin America|

* Argentina
* May Revolution / Causes
* Revisionist [es]
* Peru
* Iquicha Royalism
* Colonial Spanish America
* Casta

|

United States|

* African-American history
* Nadir of American race relations
* Neoabolitionism
* Reconstruction era
* Consensus history
* Cyclical theory
* Frontier thesis
* Political history
* Eras
* Progressive-era historians

Eurasia|

* Albania
* Dealbanisation
* Austria
* Habsburg myth
* Balhae
* Belarus
* Litvinism
* Bulgaria
* Byzantine Empire [de]
* Early [ru]
* Croatia
* Europe
* Ancient [ru]
* Medieval [ru]
* New Age [ru]
* Georgia
* Aryan Kartli
* Greek
* Ages of Man
* Iran
* 2,500-year celebration
* Japan
* Korea
* Nationalist
* Goguryeo controversies
* North Macedonia
* Philippines
* Early settlements
* Portugal [pt]
* Lusotropicalism
* Romania
* Great Union
* Serbia
* Kosovo Myth
* Sweden
* Götaland theory
* Switzerland
* Taiwan
* Ukraine
* Executed Renaissance
* Vietnam
* Nam tiến
* Trưng sisters

| Ancient Rome|

* Catilinarian conspiracy
* Christianization
* Constantinian shift
* Expansion
* Fall of Western Rome
* Prosopography
* Succession
* Byzantine succession
* Moscow, third Rome
* Ottoman claim
* Problem of two emperors

|

China|

* 5000-year civilization assertion
* Archaeology
* Wunu School [zh]
* Century of humiliation
* Conquest dynasty
* "Chineseness" debate
* New Qing History
* Golden ages
* Hua–Yi distinction
* Four Barbarians
* Sinocentrism
* Self-Strengthening Movement
* Sprouts of capitalism
* Tibetan sovereignty debate

France|

* Cordon sanitaire
* Frankish Interregnum [fr]
* Grand Siècle
* Legendary Saracen [fr]
* Location of Alésia [fr]
* Lyon [fr]

Germany|

* Alltagsgeschichte
* Borussian myth
* Historikerstreit
* Sonderweg
* Strukturgeschichte [de]
* Sybel-Ficker controversy
* Vergangenheitsbewältigung

India|

* Greater Magadha
* Indocentrism
* Indigenous Aryanism

Ireland|

* Great Famine
* "More Irish than the Irish themselves"
* Revisionism
* Revolutionary period

Italy|

* Fascist Italy
* Fourth Italian War of Independence
* Historiae Patriae Monumenta
* Historical Series of the Bank of Italy
* Italians, the good people
* Rerum italicarum scriptores
* Revisionism of Risorgimento
* Southern question
* Neo-Bourbonism

Poland|

* Golden Liberty
* Sarmatism
* Deluge
* Partitions
* Polish People's Republic [pl]

Russia|

* Anti-Normanism
* Pre-Revolutionary Russia [ru]
* Skeptic School [ru]
* Soviet Union
* October Revolution
* Soviet famine of 1930–1933
* Causes of the Holodomor
* Holodomor genocide question
* Holodomor in modern politics

Spain|

* Black legend / White legend
* Hispanism
* Carlism in the Francoist era
* Convivencia
* Inquisition
* Limpieza de sangre controversy [es]
* Reconquista
* Islamic revolution of Spain [es]
* Revisionist
* Colonies or Provinces
* Spanish decline [es]
* Ser de España [es]

Turkey|

* Kemalist
* Ottoman Empire
* Ghaza thesis
* Decline thesis

United
Kingdom|

* Poor Laws
* Scotland
* Kingdom of Alba
* Westminster Stone
* Storm over the gentry
* Suffragette Campaign
* Tudor myth
* Ricardians
* Winter of Discontent

| British
Empire|

* Cambridge School
* Porter–MacKenzie debate
* Second colonial occupation

|

Oceania|

* Colonial Australia

By war, conflict

* v
* t
* e

Military historiography

* Military history
* List of military museums

Pre-18th century
conflicts|

* Albigensian Crusade
* Catharism debate
* Crusades
* Islamic views
* Eighty Years' War
* Origins
* Fall of Babylon
* Gallic Wars
* Late Bronze Age collapse
* Dorian invasion
* Sea Peoples
* Peloponnesian War

18th and 19th
century conflicts|

| Coalition Wars
(1792–1815)|

* French Revolution
* Pre-revolution [fr]
* Causes
* New Russian School [ru]
* War in the Vendée
* Napoleonic era
* Invasion of Russia
* Waterloo

|

* American Civil War
* Origins
* Turning point
* Franco-Prussian War
* Causes
* Paris Commune
* Great Game
* Indian Rebellion of 1857
* Causes
* Paraguayan War
* War of 1812
* Origins
* War of the Pacific
* Causes
* Myth of English aid [es]

World War I|

* Causes (Color books / Fischer thesis)
* Late Ottoman genocides (Causes of the Armenian genocide)
* Patriotic consent [fr]
* Persian famine of 1917–1919
* Powder keg of Europe
* Schlieffen Plan
* Spirit of 1914 / 1917
* Treaty of Brest-Litovsk [ru]

| Treaty of
Versailles|

* Reparations
* War guilt question
* Article 231
* Reichstag inquiry

|

Interwar period|

* Burning of Smyrna
* Polish–Soviet War
* Causes
* Spanish Civil War
* Background

World War II|

* Causes
* "Blitzkrieg" concept
* Broad vs. narrow front
* German resistance to Nazism
* Nazi foreign policy debate

| Eastern Front|

* Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact
* Soviet offensive plans
* Soviets and the Warsaw Uprising
* Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia
* Winter War
* Background
* Spirit

|

The Holocaust|

* Auschwitz bombing debate
* Awareness in Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe
* Functionalism–intentionalism debate
* In relation to the Armenian genocide / Nakba
* Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust
* Pius Wars
* "Polish death camp"
* Responsibility
* Slovakia
* Uniqueness

Pacific War|

* Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
* "Battle for Australia"
* Bengal famine
* Second Sino-Japanese War
* Nanjing Massacre

Western Front|

* Battle of France
* Guilty Men
* Résistancialisme
* Vichy France [fr]

Cold War|

* Origins
* 1948 Palestine war
* Palestinian expulsion and flight / Ongoing Nakba
* Zionism as settler colonialism
* New Historians
* Malayan Emergency
* Causes
* Algerian War
* Six-Day War
* Origins
* Iranian revolution
* Causes
* Iran–Iraq War
* Falklands War
* Sovereignty dispute
* Sri Lankan civil war
* Origins

Post-Cold War|

* Russo-Georgian War
* Background
* Responsibility
* Syrian revolution
* Causes

Related|

* Conflict thesis
* Gunpowder and gun transmission
* Torsion mangonel myth
* War and genocide

* Category

By person

| Political
leaders|

* Adolf Hitler
* Alexander the Great
* Amin al-Husseini
* Aurangzeb
* Cato the Younger
* Che Guevara
* Chiang Ching-kuo [zh]
* Chiang Kai Shek [zh]
* Constantine the Great
* Gregory Palamas
* Horatio Nelson
* Hypatia
* Jiang Zemin [zh]
* Joseph Stalin [ru]
* José de San Martín
* Juan Manuel de Rosas
* Klemens von Metternich
* Leonid Brezhnev
* Louis Riel
* Mao Zedong [zh]
* Muammar Gaddafi
* Napoleon
* Neville Chamberlain
* Pedro II of Brazil
* Simon Bolivar
* Cult of personality [es]
* Bolivarianism
* Saladin
* Sun Yat Tse [zh]
* Thomas Aquinas
* Thomas Jefferson
* Ulysses S. Grant
* Warren G. Harding
* Yuan Shikai [zh]
* Zhou Enlai [zh]
* Zhuge Liang [zh]

| Historical
rankings|

* Australia
* Canada
* Modern Germany
* Netherlands
* United Kingdom
* United States

|

Others|

* The Beatles
* Charles Darwin
* Friedrich Nietzsche
* H. P. Lovecraft
* Jane Austen
* Muhammed
* Historicity
* Judaism
* Medieval Christian
* Jesus
* Historicity
* Resurrection
* Religious perspectives
* Christianity
* Judaism
* Islam
* J. R. R. Tolkien
* The Lord of the Rings
* Madonna
* Robert Falcon Scott
* Socrates
* Søren Kierkegaard
* William Shakespeare

Other topics

* Bears in antiquity
* Crisis of historiography [pt]
* Feudalism
* Library of Alexandria
* Nationalism in the Middle Ages
* Professionalization and institutionalization of history
* Salons
* Western European colonialism and colonization
* Desacralization of knowledge

| Economics|

* Industrial Revolution
* Great Recession
* Great Depression
* School of Thoughts
* Historical school of economics
* English historical school of economics

|

Religion|

* Avestan geography
* Early Christianity
* Background
* Historical reliability of the Gospels
* Primacy of Peter
* Opposition to Papal supremacy
* Proto-orthodox Christianity
* Early Islam
* Criticism of the Quran
* Succession to Muhammad
* Islamic golden age
* Kharijites
* Ecclesiastical history of the Catholic Church
* Second Vatican Council
* Hermeneutics of Vatican Council II [it]
* Hesychast controversy
* Protestant Reformation
* Proto-Protestantism
* Criticism of Protestantism
* Protestant work ethic
* Jesuit historiography
* Modern Jewish history
* Wissenschaft des Judentums
* Schools of thought
* Biblical criticism
* Catholic theology
* Panbabylonism
* Urreligion
* Perennial
* Religionsgeschichtliche Schule
* Roman
* Revisionist school of Islamic studies

Science /
Technology|

* Merton thesis
* Protestant Ethic and Capitalism
* Heroic theory of invention and scientific development
* Gunpowder and gun transmission
* Torsion mangonel myth

Organizations, publications

* Heritage registers
* Historical society (list)
* History institutes
* History journals
* template

Related

* Commemorative plaque
* Documentary film
* Hagiography
* Historical fiction
* Historical realism
* Historiographic metafiction
* Historical geographic information system

* Category
* Multimedia

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