History/Geography: Railways, Uneven Development, Cultural Change, and Globalization in France and Great Britain, 1830-1914

FAIN: RZ-50577-06

Mount Holyoke College (South Hadley, MA 01075-1423)
Robert M. Schwartz (Project Director: November 2005 to November 2010)

Conference papers, scholarly articles, digital publications, and a book on the 19th-century transportation revolution in Britain and France. (36 months)

An historian and two geographers join to create new understandings of the nineteenth-century transport revolution and its effects in France and Great Britain. The first comparative history of its kind, it brings humanistic perspectives to the use of Geographic Information System technology and existing databases. Set within patterns of change at national and international levels, it explains the impact of railways in specific communities, providing a history of lived experience and cultural change in the railway era. Using village archives, census records, newspapers, print images, photographs, poetry, and novels in addition to GIS data, it will prove a major contribution to the humanities, history, and geography.

Associated Products

“Rail Transport, Agrarian Crisis, and the Restructuring of Agriculture: France and Great Britain Con (Article)
Title: “Rail Transport, Agrarian Crisis, and the Restructuring of Agriculture: France and Great Britain Con
Author: Robert M. Schwartz
Abstract: This comparative study of late nineteenth century Britain and France examines regional and local patterns of rural change in relation to the expansion of railways, the agrarian crisis, and the responses to the crisis by the governments and farmers of the two countries. Using spatial statistics and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) to identify spatially varying relationships in case studies of Dorset County in England and the Allier Department in France, it shows that railways facilitated the shift from cereal production to livestock and dairy farming during the era of agrarian crisis. More broadly, it concludes that the differing political economies of Britain and France led to different trade and railway policies during the crisis and to different agrarian outcomes in which agricultural productivity declined in Britain and improved in France.
Year: 2010
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Social Science History

“Spatial History: Railways, Uneven Development, and Population Change in France and Great Britain, 1 (Article)
Title: “Spatial History: Railways, Uneven Development, and Population Change in France and Great Britain, 1
Author: Thomas Thevenin
Author: Robert M. Schwartz
Author: Ian N. Gregory
Abstract: This comparative spatial history combines historical narrative, geographical thinking, and spatial analysis of historical data to offer new perspectives on railway expansion and its effects in France and Great Britain during the long nineteenth-century. After describing the expansion across time and state territories, it looks not to cities but to the countryside to gauge some economic and social effects of railways in the rural regions of the countries. Accessible rail transport opened new economic opportunities in agriculture, extractive industries, and service trades. It helped revitalize rural communities favored by ready rail access and reduced their rates of out migration. In France, long-standing economic disparities between the developed north and the less-productive south were gradually reduced. In making the argument, we apply historical GIS and spatial statistics, illustrating one new component of interdisciplinary spatial history.
Year: 2011
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of Interdisciplinary History
Publisher: MIT Press

Railways, Population Change, and Agricultural Development in late nineteenth century Wales (Book Section)
Title: Railways, Population Change, and Agricultural Development in late nineteenth century Wales
Author: Jordi Marti Henneberg
Author: Robert M. Schwartz
Author: Ian N. Gregory
Editor: Doug Richardson
Editor: Michael Dear
Editor: Jim Ketchum
Editor: Sarah Luria
Abstract: The chapter illustrates the use of GIS in historical research. Exploring the case of nineteenth-century Wales, it describes the expansion of the railway system and examines the relationship between rail accessibility, population change, and farming practice during the late nineteenth century, show how proximity to railway stations influenced population growth and the development of livestock farming.
Year: 2011
Publisher: Routledge
Book Title: Geohumanities: Art, History, Text at the Edge of Place
ISBN: 0415589800

National Historical Geographical Information System as a Tool For Historical Research (Article)
Title: National Historical Geographical Information System as a Tool For Historical Research
Author: Robert M. Schwartz
Author: Ian Gregory
Abstract: One of the early drivers of historical GIS was the development of national historical GISs. These systems usually hold all of a country's census and related statistics from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As such they have represent an extremely valuable resource, but at the same time they were and remain extremely expensive and time consuming to build. Was the investment worthwhile? This paper takes one of these systems, the Great Britain Historical GIS, and explores how it was built, what methodologies were developed to exploit the data that it contains, and provides an example to demonstrate how it made possible a unique analysis of railroads in Wales before the First World War.
Year: 2009
Primary URL: http://www.euppublishing.com/toc/ijhac/3/1-2
Primary URL Description: Journal website
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing
Publisher: University of Edinburgh Press

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/railways/ (Web Resource)
Title: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/railways/
Author: Thomas Thevenin
Author: Robert M. Schwartz
Author: Ian N. Gregory
Abstract: Website reporting the results of NEH sponsored research by historian Schwartz and Geographers Gregory (Lancaster University, England) and Thevenin (University of Burgundy, France): pre-publication papers, conference papers, and selected essays by students from courses taught by Schwartz at Mount Holyoke College
Year: 2010
Primary URL: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/railways/
Primary URL Description: Website reporting the results of NEH sponsored research

“Les transports ferroviaires, la crise agraire, et la restructuration de l’agriculture : la France e (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: “Les transports ferroviaires, la crise agraire, et la restructuration de l’agriculture : la France e
Author: Robert M. Schwartz
Abstract: Abridged French version of an article published in 2010 in Social Science History. Presented at the symposium "Genèse des Marchés," Institute de la Gestion Publique et du Développement Économique et Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France.
Date: 05/19/2009
Conference Name: Genèse des Marchés

New Tools for Clio: GIS, Railways, and Change over Time and Space in France and Great Britain, 1840- (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: New Tools for Clio: GIS, Railways, and Change over Time and Space in France and Great Britain, 1840-
Author: Robert M. Schwartz
Abstract: A digital article and presentation to illustrate the use of Geographical Information Systems in historical research, demonstrating, among other things, the use of animated maps to depict change over space and time.
Date: 02/01/2007
Primary URL: http://digitalhistory.unl.edu/essays/schwartzessay.php
Primary URL Description: Digital version of the article
Conference Name: History in the Digital Age

Interpreting Nature: Environmental Thinking and Practice in Europe 1500 to the Present (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: Interpreting Nature: Environmental Thinking and Practice in Europe 1500 to the Present
Author: Robert M. Schwartz
Abstract: A course website with links to materials used to introduce undergraduate students to the use of GIS in historical research.
Year: 2010
Primary URL: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist256/
Primary URL Description: website with links
Audience: Undergraduate

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