Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
tion, and batles. Finally, while historical spatial analysis can generate
conclusions, it is also a research tool. An important future step in this
project is to use the GIS to identify particular jurisdictions that typified
larger paterns or diverged from them and search for documentary evi-
dence about them in the historical record.
Conclusions and Methodological Implications
This essay explores several interrelated premises about HGIS methodol-
ogy and about the spatial history of China's Song era. First, it asserts that
the distribution of administrative units represents state power mani-
fested as geography. At the spatial scale of the entire empire, variations
in the character and density of the state presence are the evidence and
the residue of policies about war, taxation, and colonization. Second, it
explains that data organization for spatial history has a semantic and
that the Digital Gazeteer of the Song Dynasty, the database utilized
for this research, is tuned toward analyzing a frequently changing po-
litical landscape. Finally, it demonstrates that integrating the gazeteer
with ecological information in a GIS makes it possible to study spatial
history at the scale of a watershed and suggests possible correlations be-
tween geopolitics, ecology, and spatial politics. Support for reasoning at
multiple scales is a benefit of HGIS. This essay demonstrates that spatial
history methods can help scholars to move between multiple geogra-
phies, bridging the divide that has often existed between local history
and political history. As historian R ichard W hite points out, “W hen
historians move to the regional, national and transnational scales, not
only does the detail usually fall away, but the region and the nation often
become mere containers. Spatial analysis maters less and less as the
scale increases.” 39 In this essay, while remaining within a GIS framework,
we have explained phenomena in a consistent way that extends from the
river course to the empire.
This work also underscores the need for incorporating events and
processes into the HGIS field. As historical geographer Anne Knowles
has observed, “Historians seek causal explanations by establishing the
temporal sequence of events. Geographers find causation in the spatial
proximity or distance of conditions.” 40 Incorporating spatial change into
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