In his presidential address before the Economic History Association, published in the June 2013 issue of the
Journal of Economic History and freely available on-line
here, Jeremy Atack described in detail his ongoing efforts to use Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques to create a transportation database for the United States. The essay is also
featured in the blog of the Southwestern University GIS Laboratory. We have in the past on The Exchange provided links to projects using historical GIS for topics in economic and business history (see
here, for example). Atack's address encourages us to feature more historical GIS examples:
"Visualizing Ocean Shipping" and American whaling, both by Ben Schmidt on his blog, "Sapping Attention"
"Visualizing US Expansion through Post Offices," Derek Watkins
"Locating London's Past"
Atlas of the Rhode Island Book Trade in the 18th Century
"History on the Move," Shane Hamilton
"Slave Revolt in Jamaica," Harvard University, Vincent Brown
Mapping History, University of Oregon
China Historical GIS, Harvard University
The Occupational Structure of Britain, 1379-1911
Spatial History Project, Stanford University (now much enlarged)
See also
an article by Daniel Hopkins, Philip Morgan, and Justin Roberts in
Historical Geography (2011) (on-line), "The Application of GIS to the Reconstruction of the Slave-Plantation Economy of St. Croix, Danish West Indies."
