Collaborators

For decades, geographic information system (GIS) techniques have been applied to problems in environmental and land management, military logistics, and geography. Only recently have scholars begun to appreciate its potential for other fields, and in particular for charting the course of human events through secular-historical time.1 In this quest, researchers have digitized maps of the past (either contemporary maps of historical subjects or very old maps) and, in a very limited way, incorporated features within these maps as attributes. Such projects typically cover only a few selected topics and countries, situated mostly in the developed world (e.g., in Germany, Great Britain, Canada, and the United States).2 The time seems ripe for the development of a truly Global and Historical GIS project (hereafter, GH-GIS), one oriented to serve the needs of scholars across the social sciences and humanities. Before proceeding to a detailed discussion of how such a project might be implemented, let us focus on some of the potential payoffs it might bring. Broadly stated, the aim of historical GIS is to unify the world of spatial representation wit