BA Politics and Modern History

How can maps help us understand the past? Whether we consider the geography of the Holocaust, the trade winds that fuelled the rise of the British Empire, or the history of epidemic disease, maps are fundamental to grasping some of the most critical problems in early and late modern history. This course introduces students to spatial history, a strand of history that studies the past by studying and making maps. Each week, we will look at a different topic in this emergent field, with readings ranging from themes such as the history of borders, empires and indigenous land, urban decline, to epidemic disease and others. As part of the exercise to think spatially about the past, students will receive basic training in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and will learn to create their own maps. Students will apply those skills to a particular topic and develop their own expertise in that area.

No prior technical skills are needed for this course as all training will be provided.

HIST32112 is restricted to History programmes, History joint honours programmes, and Euro Studies (please check your programme structure for further details).

This course aims at:

• Exploring the use (and abuse) of maps and spatial concepts in history
• Identifying a historical question amenable to geographical analysis and explore the use of spatial concepts and techniques to answer it
• Developing basic skills in GIS (Geographic Information Systems), cartography, and data visualisation
• Apply skills and concepts relating to spatial history to historical research

 

Introduction to what is Spatial History?
                  Workshop: GIS Basics and Projections

Walled States, Waning Sovereignty: Borders and Borderlands Visualising Space 
                   Workshop: Introduction to CartographyWebmapping

Thinking Space: Spatial TheoryIndigenous Land and Empire: Placing the Comanche
                   Workshop: Introduction to GIS 1Introduction to QGIS 1

Geographies of Race and Inequality: Urban Segregation
                   Workshop: Introduction to QGIS 22

Networks Mapping Water: Writing the History of the Monsoon
                   Workshop: Obtaining Spatial Data Network Analysis

Spaces of Violence and War: Geographies of the Holocaust Walled States, Waning Sovereignty: Putting the State on the Map
                   Workshop: NetWorking with Spatial DataYour Own Data in GIS: From Table to Map

Vertical Histories: Contending with the SkyIntangibles: Atmospheric Mapping
                   Workshop: Data Visualisation Historical Maps in GIS: Georeferencing

Mapping Disease: Cholera, AIDS, COVID Spaces of Disease: Cholera, AIDS, COVID
                   Workshop: Storymaps Mapping Text: Geographic Text Analysis

Troubleshooting Session Counter-Cartographies and Indigenous Land
                   Workshop: Spatial Storytelling

Open Week: Subject Proposed by StudentsTroubleshooting

Propaganda, or How to Lie with Maps                    
                   When to Stop Using GIS: Finishing Graphics

Final Presentation of Projects

 

This syllabus is indicative only

At the end of this course it is expected that you will be able to:

• Critically evaluate the ways in which historians make and use maps
• Recognise how maps both enhance and limit our understanding of spatial phenomena
• Challenge basic geographical notions that we may take for granted as misconceived and ethnocentric
• Devise alternative ways of understanding geographies of power beyond the model of the nation state

 

At the end of this course it is expected that you will be able to:

• Develop a spatial argument
• Clarify and condense a broad research topic into its manageable essence
• Learn to use geospatial visualisation as a means of generating new questions and revealing historical relations
• Critically reflect on how data modelling choices influence the interpretation of the data
• Develop a critical perspective on maps and learn to identify misuse, oversimplification, or misleading use of colour or symbology and act on your criticism by creating maps of your own

 

At the end of this course it is expected that you will be able to:

• Use GIS and web mapping applications to collect, analyse, and explore spatial data
• Create high quality maps and graphs
• See a digital research project from inception to completion
• Present an argument through visualization and narrative, combining short texts, supporting graphics, figures, and tables

 

At the end of this course it is expected that you will be able to:

• Work collaboratively with a team with diverse skills and potentially conflicting visions
• Gather, clean, and synthesise data from a diverse range of sources
• Present information and arguments orally, verbally and visually with due regard to the target audience
• Think creatively how to develop and communicate your work

 

Final Project: Either an individual project which must use a digital map as an intrinsic part of a spatial history argument OR a collaborative project which must use digital maps as an intrinsic part of a spatial history argument (groups of 3 or 4 students)	70 %
Presentation of a digital map: use one of the technologies learned to develop a basic digital map and present it to the class	30%
Intermediate requirements: a) Project proposals b) Project draft	0%

Feedback method	Formative or Summative
Oral feedback on intermediate project requirements as they are completed	Formative
30 minutes of the weekly seminars will be dedicated to discussing project progress and address issues as soon as they arise. Week 9 is entirely dedicated to project troubleshooting ahead of the final submission. Moreover, students are encouraged to seek formative feedback during seminars and in consultation hours.	Formative
Detailed written feedback on final collaborative project and essay, designed to include advice on improving future performance.	Summative

 

Amrith, Sunil, Unruly Waters: How Mountain Rivers and Monsoons Have Shaped South Asia’s History (Penguin: 2018).

Brown, Wendy: Walled States, Waning Sovereignty (Zone: 2010).

Edney, Matthew H., Cartography: The Ideal and Its History (University of Chicago Press: 2019)

Gordon, Colin: Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (University of Pennsylvania Press: 2008)

Hämäläinen, Pekka, The Comanche Empire (Yale University Press: 2009).

Koch, Tom, Cartographies of Disease: Maps, Mapping, and Medicine (ESRI: 2017)

Lewis, Martin and Kären Wigen: The Myth of Continents. A Critique of Metageography (University of California Press: 1997).

Monmonier, Mark, How to Lie with Maps (University of Chicago Press: 1991).

Mullaney, Thomas, Christian Henriot, Jeffrey Snyder-Reinke, David McClure, and Glen Worthey, The Chinese Deathscape: Grave Reform in Modern China (Stanford University Press: 2019) [http://chinesedeathscape.org].

Smallman-Raynor, Matthew, and Andrew Cliff. Atlas of Epidemic Britain: A Twentieth Century Picture (Oxford University Press: 2012). Scott, James C., The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (Yale University Press: 2009).

Tufte, Edward R., The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (Graphics Press: 1983).

White, Richard, “What is Spatial History?” Spatial History Lab: Working Paper (2010).