The site isn’t live yet, but attendees were able to have a play with the beta version, and I found it very impressive. First thing I did was check for cases of monetary crime in the 17th and 18th centuries, and their distribution across the region. In a couple of minutes, I had formulated a query and got it displayed in front of me. St James Clerkenwell, St Giles in the Fields and St Martins in the Fields, all outside the City of London, came out top. It has been suggested that coining was a pursuit often practiced in slums; all three areas contained notorious rookeries.

This was a quick experiment and one shouldn’t jump to conclusions. The number of cases was quite low – just 9 in St Giles, if memory serves. Population density and geographical size of the parish need to be taken into account. But it does illustrate the possibilities, and the ease of use, of this site.

There were a few bugs and problems. The old difficulty of markers overlapping one another hasn’t been solved with this site. A toggleable, full-window view of the map would be useful, as zooming in on an area pushes its neighbours out of sight, diminishing context. The lack of unique URLs makes bookmarking and referencing very difficult.

I also felt that it was difficult to see landmarks and thus orient oneself: a number of the test cases claimed to show marked differences between the City proper and Westminster, but without this political geography being explicitly marked on the map it looked more like a contrast between an indistinct west and east. And if this boundary had been explicit, the picture may have been described in a different way. I have a hunch that there are very important divergences between the City of London within the Walls, and the extramural wards. This is not easy to see on the site as it stands.

A concluding discussion on digital history and GIS covered issues such as the lack of an academic GIS infrastructure, the lack of training available and the possibilities of importing and exporting data. The need for easy mapping software was only briefly raised, although the website dotspotting was recommended.

What struck me later was that Locating London’s Past wasn’t your standard GIS-based website but a real investigative tool, requiring a high level of engagement on the part of the user. With many map-centric websites one can do little more than take a virtual walk through an area, looking at a restricted range of points. With LLP, one has to formulate a question, translate it into a search query and then analyze the output, which may be suggestive in itself but by no means obvious. The difference is partly due to the enormous quantity of geo-referenced data LLP has, so much that it cannot all fit on a map. But there’s a qualitative aspect as well, that puts the stress not on cartography but on the database. Without a question, there is nothing to see.

Tim Hitchcock has said that London is the most digitized city in the world. More of its records have been made available online than anywhere else in the world. There’s more to do of course, most notably in relation to areas transpontine, but the focus now has to be on how we use this material. Locating London’s Past offers not just a visualization of data, but also a way of thinking about different uses of it.

TCP Releases Over 4,000 New EEBO-TCP Texts

What the Public Release of ECCO-TCP Texts Means for You, Now and in the Future

Unfortunately, they didn’t make the texts easily accessible. To obtain them one had to apply by email to be subscribed to a Dropbox folder. There is a database and search interface, but it requires registration, and is unclear as to who qualifies for an account. I think that the database holds the marked up, XML texts, which have not (yet) been publicly released.

So I have created a package via the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Data Hub. You can download the zip package and an index in csv format from ckan. Note the zip bundle is around 142 mb. Don’t try this on dial-up. Check the index first. When I have time, I’ll work on a web interface that allows easy searching and sorting of it. I hope also that these texts will be made available individually, but given the number of them that’s not a trivial task.

What to do with these texts will be discussed tomorrow, Saturday 13th August, at Textcamp (London); the twitter hashtag is #tcamp11.

Update: xml (.tei) and epub versions are available from tei-Oxford.

It’s a site with a long carceral history: the Clerkenwell Bridewell and the New Prison were established there in the early seventeenth century. Tens of thousands of unfortunates, including children, passed through its gates. It also has a parallel counter-history: scene of one of Jack Sheppard’s many escapes, attacked during the Gordon Riots, and the site of the first Irish bombing in London, the ‘Clerkenwell Outrage‘ of 1867.

Since the prison’s demolition, the cellars have only been opened to the public occasionally. They were shelters during the second world war, have been used for office and storage space (according to wikipedia), turn up as TV settings fairly regularly and recently were the stage for performances of Oliver Twist and Macbeth. It was also a museum between 1993 and 2000, apparently closed down by Customs and Excise due to non-payment of tax. Rumour has it that it is going to be redeveloped, but rumour also has it that the site is subject to some legal dispute.

I recall visiting it some 15 years ago, when it hosted a somewhat sparse display in a subdued light. In a way, that was to its credit; one could be captivated by the material remains, the pokey cells, dark tunnels leading off into the distance (apparently, one led to the local courthouse), the whole purgatorial atmosphere. Today the vaults are much cleaner, there’s been both restoration work and a general tidying up, and there was more than enough illumination. Walking around it now my feeling is of excitement, rather than horror as previously. There is a different sense of the underground, one of art and play, rather than infernal depths. Certainly, it’s a great venue for a party, with so much to explore, so many places to hide and seek. And it’s far better than being used as a prison. But I have a lingering unease at the banishment of its terrors, of its history as a penal institution.

More: Wikipedia, Victorian London, Mayhew, The Criminal Prisons of London, 1872 map of Clerkenwell, Londonist, Itasca Locations.

Text and photos licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Plan of the House of Detention free of known copyright restrictions.

1: The Luddites are politically charged. The word is commonly used today as a slur to anyone questioning modern technologies. The impetus behind many of the commemorations is coming from activists involved in campaigns against the likes of genetically modified foods and cloning. This isn’t an academic or antiquarian history.

2: The word has a history. This was brought up by one of the audience in the midday discussion session, which had me reaching for my ngrams:

Luddites ngram, English corpus, smoothing 3

Full ngram link

The remarkable aspect of this graph is that it shows four periods of sustained use of the terms Luddite and Luddites after the initial movement subsided. The late 1960s peak can be understood as part of the rising green, ecological movements, and the 1830s due to Captain Swing, but I can’t see easy explanations for the other periods. Perhaps  the 1880s relates to the ‘new unionism’, and the 1930s the great depression and a corresponding lack of faith in progress. The 1930s also see the first concerted use of the term ‘Luddism’, as a theorization of their practice. There’s also a jump in the late 1940s; a consequence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki perhaps? One of the problems of this data is it’s not clear who is using the word, or how; is it a smear thrown at one’s enemies, or a claiming of one’s own tradition? (The results pre-1810 are due to Google’s dodgy metadata.)

3: There’s a history of rocketry that predates – and subverts – that of Wernher Von Braun. Peter Linebaugh mentioned the early uses of rockets as weapons, by the Kingdom of Mysore against the East India Company in the late eighteenth century.  They were then taken up by the British military, and used for signaling as well as for artillery. States one account of the Luddites:

In some instances, signals were made by rockets and blue lights, by which they communicated intelligence to the parties, and the system evinced an extraordinary degree of concert, secrecy and organization.

This quite confuses the traditional view of the Luddites as being indiscriminately against all technology. There’s judicious adoption of modern communications here!

4: Peter Linebaugh needs to write about his historiography. I felt his talk, rich though it was, full of anecdote and story, didn’t come together. From the Comet of 1811, via a couple of earthquakes, Indian and Slave revolts, enclosures (133 bills passed in 1811), grain exports from Egypt to the Peninsular army, an Irishman searching for a teacher of classics, ballooning and Bardology,  to Queen Mab by Shelly and the Ratcliffe Highway murders, it was always suggestive but more jigsaw pieces than a well-woven tapestry. Yet it wasn’t a random assemblage; a theme of global cotton – grown in India and America, worked up in England by machine and worker – was starting to emerge. Linebaugh made mention of his technique as ‘pulling at a thread’, but that isn’t explicit enough a description for what he does

5: Were the Luddites successful? Iain Boal made an important point about what success means. Just putting off mechanization for a generation, to safe-guard the livelihoods of weavers, is a victory (of sorts).

The talks were recorded by the Backdoor Broadcasting Co., and are available now. Meanwhile, follow the Luddite Bicentenary blog and Luddittes 200.

Through that blog I found that Birkbeck are holding a free one-day conference in London, to discuss not only the Luddites, but also other opponents of capitalist modernization across the world. Speakers include Peter Linebaugh of London Hanged fame, T.J. Clark once of King Mob, Iain Boal (whose history of enclosure I’m eagerly awaiting), and Amita Baviskar, critic of Indian environmentalism.

Songs are an important historical source, yet without music can read rather drily. Even where a tune is referenced – which may be unfamiliar, or worse lost – to read is not to sing nor to hear. The Luddites had some fine songs in their repertoire, and in remembering them it would be good to give them full voice. So embedded below, the first part of Chumbawamba’s English Rebel Songs, including the Luddite song ‘General Ludd’s Triumph’, which starts at the 6.52 mark. You Tube also hosts part two; a full track listing can be found on Wikipedia. I don’t know if the music is accurate; the Luddites sung it to the tune ‘Poor Jack’, appropriating the work of the patriot and composer of war songs Charles Dibdin. The lyrics below – so you can sing along – were found here. For some background on Luddite song, and annotated lyrics, see the fine article by Kevin Binfield, who has compiled an anthology of Luddite writings, selections of which are available via Google Books.

Chant no more your old rhymes about bold Robin Hood,
His feats I but little admire
I will sing the Achievements of General Ludd
Now the Hero of Nottinghamshire
Brave Ludd was to measures of violence unused
Till his sufferings became so severe
That at last to defend his own Interest he rous’d
And for the great work did prepare

Now by force unsubdued, and by threats undismay’d
Death itself can’t his ardour repress
The presence of Armies can’t make him afraid
Nor impede his career of success
Whilst the news of his conquests is spread far and near
How his Enemies take the alarm
His courage, his fortitude, strikes them with fear
For they dread his Omnipotent Arm!

The guilty may fear, but no vengeance he aims
At [the] honest man’s life or Estate
His wrath is entirely confined to wide frames
And to those that old prices abate
These Engines of mischief were sentenced to die
By unanimous vote of the Trade
And Ludd who can all opposition defy
Was the grand Executioner made

And when in the work of destruction employed
He himself to no method confines
By fire and by water he gets them destroyed
For the Elements aid his designs
Whether guarded by Soldiers along the Highway
Or closely secured in the room
He shivers them up both by night and by day
And nothing can soften their doom

He may censure great Ludd’s disrespect for the Laws
Who ne’er for a moment reflects
That foul Imposition alone was the cause
Which produced these unhappy effects
Let the haughty no longer the humble oppress
Then shall Ludd sheath his conquering Sword
His grievances instantly meet with redress
Then peace will be quickly restored

Let the wise and the great lend their aid and advice
Nor e’er their assistance withdraw
Till full fashioned work at the old fashioned price
Is established by Custom and Law
Then the Trade when this arduous contest is o’er
Shall raise in full splendour its head
And colting and cutting and squaring no more
Shall deprive honest workmen of bread.

Cohen’s specific historical object is the Victorian ‘frame of mind.’ How did they think, how did they see the world, and how did they believe? His method is to use Google’s vast digitization program to read the Victorians, or at least those who were published, en masse, rather than rely on a canon of notable authors. The move from the anecdotal and elite selection of Houghton’s The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830-1870, to a truly comprehensive survey of all Victorian authors, will hopefully give a broader, more accurate and more subtle view of Victorian modes of thought, and perhaps a more open one that allows for discordance and diversity.

This isn’t a simple matter of chucking a load of material into a database, pushing a button and then having the computer throw out unambiguous facts and truths. Cohen and Gibbs have posted some caveats: the data isn’t perfect, meaning of words change over time, as yet only the titles of books are being mined, no collocation or context is given. It also requires some careful methodology, and weighing for all sorts of extraneous factors: William Briggs has done some very interesting analysis bringing in population statistics. But with freely available data, anyone with a spreadsheet program can try out ideas and run checks, allowing for the collaborative development of analytical techniques.

Percentage of British books with 'revolution' in the title, 1789-1914

Of the words Cohen and Gibbs have chosen, one stands out as being more temporal than the others: revolution. None of the other terms is so event-related, or has a specific chronological location. Many are abstract, like ‘God’ or ‘honour’; some are names (‘Aristotle, ‘Jesus’, ‘Plato’ and ‘Socrates’); and there’s one place, Rome. That does not mean that there is no relation between these words and contemporary events – Rome has a startling peak in 1851, possibly related to the French occupation in the aftermath of 1848. Nor does revolution refer only to moments of uprising; it can equally mean the movement of the planets and the development of industry (Google’s ngram machine has the latter taking off in the 1880s). But it is the only chosen term that has a specific chronological collorary. Although the project is oriented around more long-term and subtle concerns, the changes in Victorian mentalities, I began to wonder how much the data reflected more immediate responses to human affairs.

Unsurprisingly, in the case of revolution, we have a mass of titles registering in the 1790s, and a very sharp peak in 1848. There are two other clear spikes in 1817 and 1830/1. A little bit of scrutiny, and you’ll see that 1871, the year of the Paris Commune, shows a marked increase. From prior knowledge of revolutions and threats of them, we can validate the data as reflecting events. As yet the statistics are not telling us anything new. There are some differences if one visualizes the data as the number of publications rather than percentages. 1830-1 and 1848 still stand out, 1817 and the Paris Commune less so. There also seems to be a different distribution: the last few decades have far more occurrences more evenly distributed than the first half of the century.

Graph of no. of English books published 1789 - 1914 with 'Revolution' in the title

Although it is important to check the data against what is already known, one must guard against presumptions of correlation. Can we be sure we know what revolution is being reflected? 1848 saw revolutions throughout Europe, but were the titles referring to all of them, a subset, or even just the domestic radicalism of the Chartists? Similarly, Cohen considers the 1830 spike to point to “the successful 1830 revolution in France”; but given the figures for 1831, it could be a result of the turmoil preceding the reform act of 1832. Merthyr Tydfil saw perhaps the first industrial working class uprising in Britain; Bristol and Nottingham saw state institutions go up in flames; there were incidents across the country, from Exeter to Huddersfield. The British publishing trade may have taken more note of this than three glorious days in Paris: the small rise around 1871 may also indicate that British publishing would register domestic concerns far more dramatically than events abroad. Against this, the jump in 1857 is probably due to the Indian Mutiny. In turn, the 1831 figures could indicate that the situation in Britain was far more volatile than todays historians have judged it.

So although there is evidence of a causal relationship between events and book titles, it is not transparent. It is further clouded by changes in the meaning of the word. The sustained increase over the last 25 years suggests a change in the conception of revolution from taking to the streets to building working class organizations, from riot and insurgency to factory strikes and the new unionism, from an immediate event to a longer term social struggle.  This indicates a fundamental change in class structure – the growth of an industrial proletariat – and consistent class antagonism. But note that events still affect the numbers: the increase from 1904 to 1905 is probably due to the first Russian revolution.

The greater concern with domestic events and the change in meaning of the word ‘revolution’ are working hypotheses. Hopefully, the full corpus from which the numbers are drawn will be opened up, allowing these to be checked. I’d also like to investigate the 1853 spike, after the defeat of the Chartists and with no foreign correlate that I can think of.

Finally, a curious absence, and a warning against presuming an easy reflection of reality in words. The following graph is of the occurrence of the word ‘money’ in book titles, expressed as a percentage.

Percentage of British books with 'money' in the title, 1789-1914

See that dip for 1825? Yet there was a banking crisis that year!

* Insert standard complaint about proprietary file formats here. However, it’s a simple spreadsheet, and neither Open Office nor Libre Office had any difficulties opening it.

It’s easy to play. Just go to http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/, put in some words or phrases, separating multiples with commas, adjust the settings as you wish, and press the button. Up comes a graph showing distribution across your chosen time period. Thrill to the peaks! Gasp at the troughs! Wonder at the abundances! Curse the absences!

Like all good games, there’s much wisdom to be gained from playing. For one thing, it tests the sources, both the original works and their translation into digital format. (Some of Google’s metadata is bizarrely inaccurate.) It makes one think about possible reasons: whatever the results of a query are, they never explain why. It questions the technologies of language, whether printed or digital, including orthography, typeface and grammar. (Note that it only covers  written language, not that spoken or sung, with rhythm, accents and inflections.) In all, it indicates the ambiguity and instability of language, as against any needs or claims of clarity and transparency of meaning.

Below are four jests: testing a grandiose claim, a revealing anachronism, typographical obscenity and the deleterious effects of popular culture on the Queen’s English.

Benjamin was right!

By searching on four major Western cities, we can see that Walter Benjamin was right to consider Paris ‘the capital of the nineteenth century‘ [pdf].

Google Ngram for Paris, London, Berlin, New York, 1800-1900

Link

And never mind population, trade, dominions and suchlike. But note that had I included ‘Rome’, Benjamin would have been refuted by the number of works on ancient history.

Surrealism: A Victorian Creation?

Although the word ‘surrealism’ was originally coined by Apollinaire in 1917, and given substance in the 1920s by Andre Breton, Google finds it in mid-Victorian English:

Google Ngram for 'surrealism.'

Link

There’s an interesting error behind this. In parsing The London Review, volume 15, 1860-1, the last hypenated word of one page, and the first of the next, the chapter heading rather than the continuation of the text proper, have been run together by Google’s OCR software. Such bugs, the ‘revealing errors‘  of logic, can be considered a manifestation of the surrealist spirit.

FFS!

Early modern printing is notorious for using ‘f’ in place of ‘s.’ Oh the comedic potential, as is born out by this graph:

Google Ngram for 'fuck.'

Link

The alternative explanation is, of course, that we were a foulmouthed bunch until the Victorians, and only since the 1950s have we begun to throw off those moral shackles.

Star Trek and the split infinitive

That most controversial of grammatical issues had a historical turn in the 1980s, when “to boldly go” overtook “to go boldly.” A way of interrogating the corpus for the frequency of split infinitives isn’t obvious, but the results would be very interesting.

Google Ngram: 'to go boldly' and 'to boldly go.'

Link. Wikipedia on Split Infinitives

Google have provided some basic, but literate, documentation. And the datasets are freely available under a creative commons license. A Guardian article serves as a decent introduction, although it exaggerates the originality of the techniques. See also the New York Times. And don’t ever, ever, use the pseudo-word ‘culturomics.’

As part of this article – which may still come – I was going to raise the question of how the internet could revitalize critical history. History Workshop was as important for its social role as for publishing papers and theses. Whether it be the news, the less-formal articles on historical passions or the correspondence in the journal, or the meetings and attendant socializing, it brought people together. What chance that today critical historians can use modern technologies to once again find each other?

The good news is that History Workshop is now establishing a proper online presence, with a website (powered, thanks to WordPress, by free software) due to launch fully in January 2011. A Call For Papers has been issued, stating:

The History Workshop Journal editorial collective is launching History Workshop Online, a website devoted to the practice of politically-engaged history. Affiliated to the journal but entirely separate in its content, the site will serve as a forum, laboratory, and virtual coffeehouse for anyone interested in connecting historical exploration with the politics of the present, whether through engagement with public history, social history, the history of sexuality, or intimate histories of everyday life. In the spirit of the original history workshop movement, we’re keen to explore the diverse (and now multi-media) ways in which progressive history is being “done”, in and out of universities and the museum and heritage sector.

For the launch of the website in January 2011, we welcome all pertinent contributions: reports on public history initiatives; multimedia essays and articles; flagged events for our noticeboard; fulminations, rants, and raves.
For further information please contact the site’s editor, Marybeth Hamilton, at marybeth@historyworkshop.org.uk

The crucial phrase: “in the spirit of the original history workshop movement”, as befits this web that we weave.

There have been objections, on twitter and in the comments to the article, that so much is missing. The reformation, the slave trade, the industrial revolution, the Palestine mandate, the founding of the Bank of England and the national debt; all these and more have been proposed as absolutely fundamental moments that children should be taught. And each of these is of great importance, and would expand the present anemic curriculum of ‘Henries and Hitler.’

But this is to simply continue what Schama has done, namely pick a hit parade of important phenomena. This is an impossible and restricting task. Impossible because the past just does not come down to six, ten or even a hundred pivotal moments. Restricting because it treats of phenomena that can be neatly encapsulated, bounded within dates, and discards the rest. Anything broader, which would be much of social history, is thereby marginalised. Women’s history is not reducible to nor encapsulated by female suffrage. It further narrows history down to ‘the past’, a separate and knowable object, without considering  the ways in which we preserve, remember and think about it. Yet all the topics suggested are quite obviously proposed due to their contemporary relevance.

If the curriculum needs some sort of historical ranking system, that’s got nothing to do with history, but the exigencies of the current educational system.

1: Wu Ming is a band. If musicians can group together, why not writers?

2: Wu Ming 6 is the waste paper basket, and a most valuable contributor to the works. (But they have also said Wu Ming 6 is their translators.)

3: Filuzzi – for me the great revelation of 54, although admittedly I never finished that novel – is breathtaking: History is Made at Night has a video, as does Wu Ming’s YouTube channel.

4: The translator is to blame for the dreadful dialogue of the London Mohawks in Manituana, but the original Italian had them speaking a sort of Nadsat, from A Clockwork Orange, which strikes me as an odd choice.

5: The surprising, sideways view of history – such as Lafayette introducing mesmerism to the American Indians, in the next volume of their Atlantic Triptych – is how Wu Ming transcend the formulas of historical fiction. They make the past a subject for inquiry, and so say something new, rather than pile up clichés as scenery or mount a freakshow for mocking inspection.

6: The position of the native Americans in the American revolution is another such sideways view. It almost sounds obvious when one thinks about it, but conceiving of it is the great leap.

7: Historical practice is (or should be) the making of such jumps. A systematic derangement of the senses. The shock of the old. Or as they said in an interview:

We usually think of an historical period which seems fascinating to us, then we spend months watching microfilms, reading sources, doing research, writing down all kinds of stuff, then the brainstorm comes and it lasts several weeks. We have hallucinations, sort of. Historical research is like peyote to us. After we recover from all the shocks and flashes, we start to write.