A Methodology for Historical Geography: Internet Implementation

Abstract

In the study of the past, especially of dynamic sequences of events such as resolved and unresolved conflicts, linear narrative and exposition techniques used in book-length text production limit the juxtaposition of text, graphic images, maps, and source materials. These limitations shape analysis and understanding of the events that we are investigating. Rather than forming a purely linear progression or a single narrative, historical events and processes are in fact the results of a vast network of related actions and events, some more obvious than others. The historical dynamic of cause and effect, action and reaction, is broad and dispersed. No matter how well this characteristic of history is understood, it is still often the case that paper-based narrative techniques of book production favor portraying such complex networks as a series of linear narratives. The scholarly techniques most readily available to the student of history often provide a stylized simplified picture of history removed from the complexity and variety of available sources and information. The current technological scene, however, offers the scholar remarkable opportunities to present research results in media which much better reflect the dispersed occurrence of intricately interconnected past events. Thus, it becomes possible to fuse the spatial approach of geography and the temporal approach of history. When the technological scene works interactively with the research effort, such fusion is the consequence.