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• 1 media/NEW DETAIL Desceliers Library and Archives Canada NMC 44736.gif 2023-09-04T17:11:03+00:00 Visualizing History 43 2024/25 image_header 2024-10-08T18:40:40+00:00

  Big question:

  
  What do maps, images, materials, and digital tools add to our understanding of the past?
  
  
  Learning outcomes

  
  At the end of this week you should be able to:
  • Develop a reasonable method for analyzing a visual image or map
  • Describe some Early Modern Maps
  • Experiment with distant reading using Voyant Tools
  • Create a shareable URL of your Voyant Tools output, and analyze it using at least 2 tools.
  • Evaluate another person's map or Voyant Tools analysis.

  Ultimately, the goal here is to explore new ways of finding evidence in our sources. Don't just tell us what the images can tell us - give us examples of evidence you can draw from these images. What does each image add to our understanding of that topic?

  
  Background

  Historians spend a great deal of time working with words. We read written and printed documents. We write essays, books, and blogs. But, how do we read images? Or, better yet, how can we use visualizations of text to help us ask different questions about the past? 
  
  This workshop is in THREE parts. The first part will introduce you to how to read images, in this case maps, as primary sources. You will take a closer look at one of the maps from an earlier lesson, consider its component parts, and formulate an analysis of the map as a source.  In the second part, you will have the opportunity to experiment with Voyant Tools as a method of pre-reading a text using OCR (optical character recognition) software. Finally, you will have the opportunity to explore the materiality of texts by comparing a handwritten document with a modern transcription.
  
  Does this mean that you need to create three posts and three responses? The short answer is no, but you should experiment with at least TWO parts of the workshop. So, you can work with Voyant Tools, and the Title page options, the Map and Title Page option, or the Map and Voyant Tools options. 
  
  How to choose?
  
  Well...Assignment Two requires that you either approach a text using the pre-reading and distant reading skills outlined here in Parts 2 and 3 OR to read and compare maps using the visual skills in part 1 of this workshop. So, consider this an opportunity to get your historical hands dirty and practice your skills before you apply them in your next assignment!

  Part One: How to read a map!

  This section of the workshop shifts your focus from finding digital ways to visualize texts to reading images, and in this particular case, maps as historical documents. 
  
  
  
  Take a closer look at one or two of the following maps:
  • Herman Moll, Map of Africa “To the Right Honourable Charles, Earl of Peterborow and Monmouth, &c This Map of Africa Is Most Humbly Dedicated”. (London, 1710) Source: Princeton University Library
  • Emanuel Bowen, A new & accurate map of Negroland and the adjacent countries (London,1747). Source: Library of Congress.
  
  We will be using these maps to explore reading maps as historical sources, so keep them close at hand, and choose one, or at most two of them to analyze in the discussions. We are already familiar with the process of analyzing primary sources from our toolbox of Historical Thinking Skills, and for the purposes of this course, we can also consider many of the maps we have shown you to be primary sources. If so, then what are the questions we need to ask when we analyze maps?
  
  A good starting place is to think through some the following questions:
  • When was this map made? By whom? For what purpose?
  • What are their biases, and how do we know this? Can we tell from the map, or do we need to research the cartographer?
  • What does it depict (geographically)?
  • How has the information been organized on the map?
  • Is the information depicted in the map accurate and authoritative? 
  • What is not being shown on this map? Why not? What does that say about the map's purpose?
  • Are there images on the map? If so, what do they depict, and how might we interpret them?
  • Is there writing on the map? If so, how does that help us to better interpret the map?
  
  Some of the answers to these questions will be quite evident from the maps themselves. Others may require that you sleuth a little to uncover the answers. A quick search for the cartographer will provide you with some basic biographical information that you may find useful. Try not to go overboard here! Remember, your focus should be the map itself
  
  It is also important to understand the various parts of a map, as they can help you to better read the map, and use the appropriate vocabulary in your analyses. Check out the following blog by Matt Knutzen on the New York Public Library entitled, Elements of Cartography. Try to locate some of these elements on your map. You may find it helpful to take a screenshot, identify the elements on your image, and share it in the forums.
  
  Your post for this section asks you to analyze your chosen map, or an aspect of it to keep your thoughts succinct, using the questions above to guide you. Remember to evaluate the map in historical context, rather than contemporary context! In most cases, you will not find a completely accurate geographical representation of the map based on our current knowledge, but we are more interested in what the maps say about the culture that produced them!
  
  
  One element we'd like you to think about it the cartouche, The cartouche usually contains information about the map - the creator, the engraver, where their located, the year its made, and so on - but are often decorated in ways that are meant to convey meaning about the map. Below, for example, we see the illustration from the cartouche of Morden and Moll's map of the Americas, and one sees very quickly the framework within which these cartographers (or their employers, or whoever commissioned the map) see this map. Here we see clearly that in this illustration, finding new souls for the Christian chuches seems less important than the wealth being generated. What else does this cartouche suggest about the place of maps and mapping in early European colonisation?
  
  
  Your post for this section asks you to analyze your chosen map, or an aspect of it to keep your thoughts succinct, using the questions above to guide you. Remember to evaluate the map in historical context, rather than contemporary context! In most cases, you will not find a completely accurate geographical representation of the map based on our current knowledge, but we are more interested in what the maps say about the culture that produced them!
  
  Don't forget to comment on one another's experiences. Did you read the same maps? Did you come up with different readings? Find ways to help one another explore the maps as historical sources.

  Part Two: Pre-Reading and Distant Reading with Voyant Tools

  
  
  Over the last several weeks we have worked together to transcribe a section of an eighteenth-century text describing European explorations in South America and the Slave Trade that ensued there. The resulting digital files are valuable for historical research because once these texts are in a digital format, they are machine-readable. This format allows you (and other historians that we might share our files with) several powerful options for text analysis. Scholars sometimes use the term "distant reading" (or sometimes "text mining") to describe the techniques of analyzing sources with computers.
  
  In part of this Workshop you will learn about one program for distant reading: Voyant Tools. Two excellent ways to learn about these options are
  • to read about and play with other researchers' projects online;
  • and to build your own project.

  
  Questions to consider, and learning activity

  
  The learning activity for this week's workshop consists of three main parts.

  Step 1: Learning about Voyant Tools and Distant Reading

  Start by exploring Alyssa Anderson's blog on "Using Voyant Tools for Text Analysis." This essay introduces you to a Rice University project to read over 2,500 runaway slave ads from the nineteenth-century US! Of course, that's far too many ads to expect you to read, even though they're short. But what if there was a way for you to "read" these in a few minutes and actually have a chance to make some useful hypotheses?
  
  Voyant Tools and other applications for distant reading allow just these kinds of possibilities. Anderson's essay not only tells you about the possibilities but it also allows you to play around with the huge file of runaway slave ads.
  
  The following introduction by Stefan Sinclair will provide you with a brief introduction to Voyant Tools:
  
  
  
  
  You should also budget about 6-10 minutes to watch Tom Lynch's introduction to using Voyant Tools. Lynch is an education professor at Pace University. His introduction focuses on "reading" Herman Melville's very long nineteenth-century novel, Moby Dick. (If you are not familiar with Moby Dick, you might look briefly at the the Wikipedia page on the novel, but this is not a requirement.)
  
  
   

  Step 2: Creating Your Own Voyant Tools File

  Now it is your turn to experiment with Voyant Tools! In this Part of the Workshop you will create an exportable visual output of a transcribed document from the list at the bottom of the page.
  • Choose a transcribed document. Some you may know, and others will be completely new to you!
  • Open the link to the transcribed document.
  • Open up the Voyant Tools page at http://voyant-tools.org/.
  • Highlight and copy the contents of your chosen document.

  If you are experimenting with larger texts, make sure you only copy the main text of the article. In other words, be careful to avoid copying the bibliography, notes, or menu material in the left-hand margin. The reason is that this "tertiary" material will skew the results in Voyant. We don't want the program to "read" these extra data.

  • Go to the Voyant window in your browser. Paste the contents into the "Add Text" window of Voyant.
  • Click the "Reveal" button in the "Add Text" window.
  • Once Voyant has generated an initial analysis of your text, you will notice a word cloud (aka cirrus) in the top-left frame. In the top-right of that small word cloud frame you will see several action icons. The first one on the left is a gear. Click on it.
  • In the "Options" window that appears, make sure that "English (Taporware)" is selected. Also make sure there is a check in the "Apply Stop Words Globally" field. Then click "OK." The word cloud will update, this time without all the peripheral helping words that don't have any special meaning. The Stop Words function will be an important one for those of you choosing the text analysis option for Assignment Two. This allows you to eliminate overused, and often distracting words from your output, which in turn affords more robust analyses.
  • In the top-right of the word cloud frame, go to the second action icon from the left (the "Export" icon) and click it.
  • Make sure you select the option "a URL for this tool and current data." Then click "OK."
  • Copy the URL that Voyant creates. 
  • Start a new discussion post, indicate which document you chose in the subject line, and paste your URL into the body.  That is your first post. This will give everyone a chance to see your output, and explore the text you chose. (it should not take long at all to do this!)

  Step 3: Experiment with Voyant Tools

  For this week's discussion, we'd like to hear about your experiences "reading" texts using Voyant. Tell us a bit about your results (especially its subject!). Spend some time exploring at least 2 of the various tools Voyant has to offer, and explain your results. Tell us what tools you are working with. Describe what you see, and explain what it might say about your text. How helpful was the tool you chose? How might Voyant might help you to pre-read a document you have not, yet encountered. Take a screen shot showing the results of the tool you are using and share it in your discussion post so your reader can better visualize your explanation.
  
  Finally, comment on one another's experiences. What worked? What did you struggle with? What might you like to explore given more time?

  Hint: You will have the option to work with Voyant again in Assignment Two, and throughout next semester, so take your time to experiment now if this appeals to you!

  
  Feel free to experiment with Voyant to read future texts you encounter in the course, and share your thoughts in the discussions as we move through the course!

  Source options to experiment with Voyant

  • John Cotton, God’s Promise to his Plantation (1630).
  • Thomas Hariot, A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, (1588).
  • John Brereton, Brief and True Relation of the Discovery of the North Part of Virginia, (1602)
  • John Stedman, Narrative of Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam, (1796)

  Part Three: The Materiality of Texts

  In a lot of our lessons we try to give you not simply the words of texts, but images that allow you to see how it was originally written. As you've already seen, in some cases that means seeing odd spellings, or different fonts that can be challenging for a contemporary reader. But we think it's important for you to see these differences because they help us think about the differences that exist between our worlds. 
  
  This exercise urges you to think of our documents as not only a text, but also an object - that is, that the document is not just words/idea, but also has a material form. Here, we want you to examine the transcription of an early 18th-century treaty and a reproduction of the actual treaty and to compare the two. The transcription certainly adds value as it makes it easier to read. But what does looking at the original document add to your understanding of the treaty? What does the transcription take away from your understanding?
  
  Focus on three specific questions: (i) what do the texts actually say (compare the two); (ii) what are the differences in the material nature of the two texts; and (iii) what do these differences mean for our interpretation of these 18th-century actions - that is, discuss how the materiality of the texts (18th-century vellum versus 21st-century plain text) can affect our interpretation. 

  If you are unfamiliar with cursive writing, revisit the Supplementary Materials from our lesson on Reading Early Modern Texts for some guidance! 

  
  Find the transcript here.
  
  And links to the hi-res versions of the actual treaty document from the Library of Congress here.
  
  
  Finally, comment on one another's experiences. What worked? What did you struggle with? What might you like to explore given more time?
  ​
• 1 media/Moll West Indies 1702 DETAIL Raremaps.jpg 2016-06-28T20:23:44+00:00 Europe's Empires Expand 31 image_header 2016-09-03T12:30:30+00:00

  This week's big question

  What were the motivations of the private adventurers who claimed land for European countries?

  Learning outcomes

  At the end of this week you should be able to:
  • describe some of the major locations and bases for European overseas expansion in the 15th through 17th centuries;
  • explain something of the different motivations for overseas expansion;
  • explain the basis for the integration of the New World into the emerging Atlantic economy;
  • outline some of the major economic, political, and cultural reasons for overseas exploration and colonization.
   

  Questions to consider, and learning activity

  • How would you characterize the motives of these writers for colonizing the New World? Drawing on the cultural and political ideas you’ve seen in the first module, do you see some of those influences at work in the discussions of colonization? Do you see patterns among the different writers? Differences?
  • What can the images tell us about early modern understandings of the New World? What did early modern viewers “see” when they looked at these images? Discuss different ways the maps can help us understand the process of imperial expansion. Do the maps speak to the same motivations as the texts?
  • How did these authors justify their plans to take over these newly discovered lands?
  • Why did Parkhurst urge English colonization of Newfoundland?  Why was he writing to Hakluyt? How is he similar/different from what we read in Hakluyt? Was Newfoundland different than the other cases?
  • Biard was a Jesuit missionary - how does that influence how we should interpret this document?
  • None of our primary sources, including images, were produced by Americans.  What does that tell us about the sources we use? Are they, in fact, primary sources? And if they are primary sources how might we qualify their importance? What does this mean for our (i.e. Western) understanding of early modern American history?
  • How was America drawn into the Atlantic world?

  Background

  Paralleling the development of the centralized state and the agricultural revolution, west European states also began utilizing improvements in map-making, navigation devices, and ship construction that allowed them to explore further along the coasts of Africa and ultimately to venture further to the west. We will not, in this course, pursue these questions relating to navigation. Instead we will focus on the question of what encouraged them to venture further afield, and what motivated them to colonize the Americas.  An interesting dimension of this early exploration is who was leading these expansive movements.  While we often speak of these states as actors – that is, that England (or France, or whatever) did things (explored, colonized, whatever) – it was not the states themselves leading the way but private adventurers acting in the name of these states.  This in part explains why some of the most famous “explorers” were Italian seamen such as Cristoforo Columbo (who in English we call Christopher Columbus) and Giovanni Caboto (who we call John Cabot) sailing for Spain and England respectively.  ​Our questions this week focus on these adventurers’ motivations for exploring, what value they saw in the new lands, how they encouraged their sponsoring states to continue to support their endeavours, and ultimately what motivated the states to support expansion.
  
  Our topic this week is the rise of European colonialism, particularly in the 16th and 17th centuries.  This is very much one of those longer-term stories that we discussed in past weeks. But the exact parameters aren’t clear.  We might be tempted to say this story began with Columbus arriving in the Caribbean in 1492 – and certainly in many ways it did – but of course all that really happened on those voyages was that Europeans learned that there was another continent across the ocean, what they came to call the New World.  And while significant consequences began very quickly in places like Mexico and the Caribbean, the emergence of European power in the Americas, Africa, and Asia did not begin that day.  It took centuries to reach the point that we might now recognize as the colonial world being under the control, or domination, of Europe.  When we can begin to speak of a European dominance of the Americas is not clear.
  
  Which raises several big questions: why? Why did the European empires form?  Why did European colonization take place? Why did it take so long? And if it took so long, and is not especially clear as to why it happened, how can we even understand it as a story?  We won’t answer that question this week.  Indeed, historians don't completely agree on the answers anyhow, but as we proceed over the next few weeks we’ll begin to see some patterns.
  
  This week, we’ll emphasize two features of this story. First, that much of the “imperial expansion” of Europe looked quite different on the ground than it did in the minds of (and as seen on the maps of) the European powers.  There are five early modern European powers that we should keep in mind: Britain, France, Holland, Spain, and Portugal.  While the Spanish and Portuguese did make significant inroads in terms of conquering and controlling territory in the Caribbean and South America, France, Holland, and Britain’s place on the ground in North America was much less impressive – especially much less impressive than its cartographers imagined.  As we’ll see in a few weeks, New England and the other British colonies would grow quickly, but even by the time of the American revolution – almost 300 years after Columbus! – they remained tightly enclosed along the Atlantic seaboard.  Similarly, French maps depicted their control of much of eastern North America, but the actual place of French power was limited to a few enclaves along the St. Lawrence River.  
  
  Second, what the European states and their private adventurer-proxies thought the best actions on the ground were not always the same things, and often not at all compatible.  While private adventurers had to maintain the good graces of their Old World political supporters, in the New World they had a lot of latitude on the ground. There was no army – i.e., no state force – there in the New World or in Africa to enforce the expectations of Kings or legislators. Thus, these merchant-adventurers were taking risks if they tested their rulers' authority, but the lure of profit – and power – could be great.  Moreover, again as will become clear in future weeks, even that limited presence could have profound consequences.

  Toolbox

  *** new entry needed on perspective ***
  
  *** also a note about notetaking??? ***

  Note-taking, quoting, and paraphrasing

  When you take notes, remember to put all quotations in quotation marks, and include a clear indication of where the quotation is from (i.e., include page numbers). You should ideally also have a system to indicate when you have summarized someone else's ideas in your own words (i.e., when you have paraphrased). If you are not clear about the difference between a quotation and a paraphrase, make sure you check.

  Keeping a clear line between your ideas and words, and those of others people, will help you avoid plagiarism, and it will help you express your own ideas more effectively.

   

  Primary sources

  
  Read any 3 or 4 of the following documents (and, to be clear, 3 doesn’t allow you to read less – it means read some of the longer docs). Pay attention to the bibliographical details below (e.g., page numbers).
  1. Christopher Columbus to Luis de Sant Angel [a high-ranking minister to King Ferdinand of Spain], 1493 (http://www.bartleby.com/43/2.html).
  2. Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia: of the Commodities and of the Nature and Manners of the Naturall Inhabitants (1585), 5-9.
  3. Richard Hakluyt, the elder, “Inducements to the Liking of the Voyage Intended towards Virginia [1585]”, in David B. Quinn, ed., New American World: A Documentary History of North America to 1612, volume III (London, Macmillan, 1979), 64-69.
  4. John Cotton, God’s Promise to his Plantation (1630).
  5. Letters from Anthony Parkhurst, Newfoundland, 1577 and 1578, in David B. Quinn, ed., New American World: A Documentary History of North America to 1612, volume IV (London, Macmillan, 1979), 5-10.
  6. Stephen Parminius to Richard Hakluyt the Younger, Newfoundland, 6 August 1583, in David B. Quinn, ed., New American World: A Documentary History of North America to 1612, volume IV (London, Macmillan, 1979), 21-2.
  7. “Petition of Merchants of London and Bristol for a Newfoundland Charter, 1610”, in David B. Quinn, ed., New American World: A Documentary History of North America to 1612, volume IV (London, Macmillan, 1979), 131-2. [in the same file as Parminius]
  8. Pierre Biard, “Reasons why the Cultivation of New France ought to be Undertaken in Earnest”, Rueben Gold Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, volume IV (Cleveland, 1894), 111-7.
  9. John Brereton, A Briefe Relation of the Description of Elizabeth's Ile [Cape Cod] (London, 1602).
   

  Secondary sources

  John C. Appleby, "War, Politics, and Colonization"​, in Nicholas Canny, ed., The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century, vol. I of The Oxford History of the British Empire (Oxford, Oxford University press, 1998), 55-78.