Each of the readings deal with enlarging the scale of previous research, or modifying them in some way, while using the now widely available GIS technologies. One of my favorite implementations of this was in the “Teaching the Salem Witch Trials” chapter by Benjamin C. Ray. As a proponent of digitizing sources, the fact that Ray’s plan for letting his students become the researchers “required creating a digital library” including “transcriptions…pamphlets and books” was so exciting![1] While it certainly made these items available for his student scholars, it also makes it more widely available to other, older researchers. He discusses previous iterations of geographic mapping in studying the Salem Witch Trials, but states that “generalizations and scale…leave out important details” and even notes that another map completely left out the girls who had been “afflicted” by the witches they accused.[2] This is a major lapse of data in my opinion; the included maps look far too simplified and doesn’t feel like they prove anything, let alone an argument. Additionally, these eight girls went on to influence other witch trials outside Salem, so any in-town weight they might have had should be noted.[3]
To avoid staying in Salem too long, Geoff Confer’s “Scaling the Dust Bowl” was another interesting look into using GIS, though this time on a massive scale. Previously, the narrative blamed farmers (whether they were willfully or ignorantly to blame), but this was based on a lack of wider knowledge and a particular work by Donald Worster, which only focused on two case studies.[4] When taking 208 counties into consideration though, as well as previous weather patterns that hadn’t been as well-recorded, a different picture developes with the help of GIS – unavailable to Worster at the time of his work.[5] Though with this broader view we lose the individual stories that historians often tell, it can still lead to a better understanding of these people and the time they were in; particularly that they weren’t just money-hungry land-killers.
Confer’s use of GIS is a great application, effectively using it to clear people’s name to an extent. However, when we turn to “Bringing the Ghetto to the Jew,” another example of utilizing GIS technologies in a historical framework, I am less aligned with how they completed certain aspects of their study. Overall, the goal of viewing the streets as they were during the time of Jewish segregation to determine “what physical distance meant in the daily lives of Jews living in the city’s dispersed ghetto” is an amazing one.[6] This can show us how much or little non-Jewish citizens might have been exposed to the ghetto conditions, to Jewish people who would have been their neighbors just weeks before, or in Cole and Giordano’s words “interrogate the ‘bystander gaze’ in Budapest during the Holocaust.”[7] In execution though, while their transparency should be emulated, the use of census records from 1941 makes little sense from a methodological standpoint when considering the time period. Since the study takes place in 1944, though it may have been necessary to get “hard copy individual census returns” if not for using the already published 1941 records, this should have been a priority.[8] While three years is not often a big difference for population during normal periods, the years between 1941 to 1944 were incredibly fraught with regards to population in Europe. People were fleeing to or from countries during these years to escape persecution or simply get away from the fighting – a well-known example being the Frank family, who might have left Amsterdam if they had not decided to hide, one of many families that faced this choice. Without this exactness, or even the mention of, their study falls somewhat short, though of course can give a general overview of the situation.
I appreciate the mentions that this wide availability of GIS tools lead to new ends, but still requires interpretations. Geospatial technology and other digital history tools are not items meant to replace historians, but to instead supplement their already existing toolkit. It led Ray to “rethink assumptions about how to organize and use material in teaching and research,” while Cole and Giordano make sure to mention that “our analytical results must be interpreted with the eyes of the historian to avoid naïve explanations.”[9] I’m glad to know we old schoolers are still needed sometimes!
[1] Benjamin Ray, “Teaching the Salem Witch Trials,” in Past Time, Past Place: GIS for History, ESRI Press, 2002, 20.
[2] Ray, “Teaching the Salem Witch Trials,” 24, 25.
[3] Ray, “Teaching the Salem Witch Trials,” 28.
[4] Geoff Confer, “Scaling the Dust Bowl,” in Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS are Changing Historical Scholarship, ESRI Press, 2008, 99.
[5] Confer, “Scaling the Dust Bowl,” 102.
[6] Tim Cole and Alberto Giordano, “Bringing the Ghetto to the Jew: Spatialities of Ghettoization in Budapest,” in Geographies of the Holocaust, Indiana University Press, 2014, 122.
[7] Cole and Giordano, “Bringing the Ghetto to the Jew: Spatialities of Ghettoization in Budapest,” 122.
[8] Cole and Giordano, “Bringing the Ghetto to the Jew: Spatialities of Ghettoization in Budapest,” 132.
[9] Ray, “Teaching the Salem Witch Trials,” 21; Cole and Giordano, “Bringing the Ghetto to the Jew: Spatialities of Ghettoization in Budapest,” 123.
[2] Ray, “Teaching the Salem Witch Trials,” 24, 25.
[3] Ray, “Teaching the Salem Witch Trials,” 28.
[4] Geoff Confer, “Scaling the Dust Bowl,” in Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS are Changing Historical Scholarship, ESRI Press, 2008, 99.
[5] Confer, “Scaling the Dust Bowl,” 102.
[6] Tim Cole and Alberto Giordano, “Bringing the Ghetto to the Jew: Spatialities of Ghettoization in Budapest,” in Geographies of the Holocaust, Indiana University Press, 2014, 122.
[7] Cole and Giordano, “Bringing the Ghetto to the Jew: Spatialities of Ghettoization in Budapest,” 122.
[8] Cole and Giordano, “Bringing the Ghetto to the Jew: Spatialities of Ghettoization in Budapest,” 132.
[9] Ray, “Teaching the Salem Witch Trials,” 21; Cole and Giordano, “Bringing the Ghetto to the Jew: Spatialities of Ghettoization in Budapest,” 123.