Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
when studying the influence of proximity in social relations was a hard
row to hoe, and one had to limit either the size of the study area or the
sample of data. Today, GIS and geographically referenced data reduce
these previous constraints and open new possibilities in spatial analy-
sis using visualization, cartography, and spatial statistics.
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In this case,
encoding the geographic coordinates in each unit of analysis makes it
possible to calculate many different aspects of distance, proximity, ac-
cessibility, and transport cost when joined with GIS data on the devel-
opment of railways and rail stations from the 1830s to the 1930s. Using
georeferenced information on agricultural production and land use at-
tached to British counties, registration districts, and parishes and to the
corresponding units of French administration - departments, cantons,
and communes - gives us comparable data at these several scales of geo-
graphic resolution.
Now we turn to specific questions. W hich communities in a given
rural area were ten miles or farther from a railway station, the condition
Jefferies characterized as lamentable? Over the years, which villages con-
tinued to fall into the “distant” category, as opposed to those that, with
rail expansion, came to be “near” a station, having five miles or fewer to
get their crops to a shipping point? Further, how was proximity to rail
transport related to change in the use of agricultural land, to the shift
from arable farming to livestock and dairy farming? The combination
of GIS and spatial analysis brings the examination of these complexities
within reach.
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Back to the Story: The Agr arian Depression and
the R ailway Systems of Britain and Fr ance
The Depression
Many of his contemporaries agreed with Jefferies's concerns about the
inadequacies of Britain's rural rail transport services. British services
were woefully outmatched by those in the United States and might be
overtaken by those in France as well. This insufficiency seriously under-
mined the British farmer's ability to survive the agricultural depression
and withstand intensifying international competition in foodstuffs from
