Digital Approaches to Chinese History
Merrick Lex Berman
China Biographical Database, IQSS
ABCD-TIE, 17th Sep 2018
General goals of Digital Humanities
• access to cultural / historical information
• tools to find, browse, mashup, query, map, and analyze this info
• communicate the resources, topics, and findings of digital scholarship
• utilize digital resources and methods for teaching and learning
• connect communities (across disciplines, institutions, and with the public )
Trend of Digital Humanities projects
movement from
introverted projects by individual scholars ->
to collaborative cross-disciplinary projects ->
to exposing data and methods to wider academic communities & the public.
• access to cultural / historical information
• tools to find, browse, mashup, query, map, and analyze this info
• communicate the resources, topics, and findings of digital scholarship
• utilize digital resources and methods for teaching and learning
• connect communities (across disciplines, institutions, and with the public )
how to bridge the gaps between
(a) primary sources
(b) scholars with domain expertise
(c) technical implementations
Challenges of Digital Humanities
http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub151/pub151.pdf
CBDB Overview: Methods and Technologies
CHGIS Overview: From Datasets to APIs
Prospects for Digital Humanities Infrastructure
CBDB :: China Biographical Database
CBDB :: Creators and Contents
Contributing research centers:
Harvard University, Academia Sinica, Peking University
Contains detailed biographical data on historical individuals:
420,000 individuals (mainly 7th through 19th century)
relational database
relationships between individuals are specified as types:
“parent of”, “student of”, “planned to assassinate”, “wrote letter to”
Over 400 distinct types of social relationships modeled
Many other types of data included on Kinship, place of registry, place
of civil service examination, place of official posts
CBDB :: Development Stack Issues
Original Version Future Version
CBDB :: Data Entry Methods - Markup
Lü Zuqian, whose style name was Bogong, was a
grandson of the Right Assistant Director to the Imperial
Secretary Haowen. His family had lived in Wuzhou since
his grandfather's generation. The learning of Zuqian was
based on family [tradition], and embodied the textual
transmission from the Central Plain. When he grew up,
Zuqian studied with Lin Zhiqi, Wang Yingchen, and Hu
Xian respectively. Then he also befriended Zhang Shi and
Zhu Xi, and his explication and inquiry became more
sophisticated.
First he obtained official rank by way of the protection
privilege. But later he obtained his Jinshi degree and also
passed the special decree examination for "Erudite
Learning and Exceptional Literary Composition." Then he
was appointed to the School for the Imperial Clan in the
Southern Outer Office. During the mourning period for his
mother, when he stayed in Mt. Mingzhao (in Wuyi), literati
from all directions raced there. He was appointed Erudite
in the National University.
呂祖謙字伯恭,尚書
右丞好問之孫也.自
其祖始居婺州.祖謙
之學本之家庭,有中
原文獻之傳.長從林
之奇、汪應辰、胡憲
游,既又友張栻、朱
熹,講索益精.
初,蔭補入官,
後舉進士,復中博學
宏詞科,調南外宗
教.丁內艱,居明招
山,四方之士爭趨
之.除太學博士
CBDB :: Data Entry Methods - Automation
BIOG ADDR
地址
Person ID
Addr Type ID
Place ID,
etc
POSTINGS
任官
Person ID
Postings ID
Office ID
Start Date
End Date,
etc
SOCIAL STATUS
社會區分
Person ID
Status ID,
etc
BIOG_MAIN
基本資料
Person ID
Name
姓名Born
Died
Index Year
Choronym ID
Dynasty ID,
Etc
ASSOCIATIONS
社會關係
Person ID
Assoc Relation ID
Associate ID,
etc
ALT NAMES
別名
Person ID
Name Type ID
Alt Name,
etc
KINSHIP
親屬
Person ID
Kin Relation ID
Kin ID,
etc
ENTRY
入仕
Person ID
Entry ID
Year,
etc
WRITINGS
著述
Person ID
Text ID,
etc
POST ADDR
任官地
Postings ID
Place ID,
etc
CBDB :: Foreign Keys are Person IDs
CBDB :: ACCESS ER Diagram
CBDB :: ACCESS ER Diagram Yikes!
CBDB :: ACCESS Database User Interface
https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/cbdb
CBDB :: ACCESS person query Place
CBDB :: ACCESS person query Date
CBDB :: ACCESS entry into service query
CBDB :: ACCESS export to GIS
CBDB :: ACCESS kinship query
CBDB :: Graphing Content by Type
Circa 2013
CBDB :: Graphing Age at Death - Male
Age at Death-CBDB data Tang through Qing - 22270 persons
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
1 6 11 16 21 26 31 36 41 46 51 56 61 66 71 76 81 86 91 96 101 106
Age
Re
co
rds
CBDB :: Graphing Age at Death - Female
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49 51 53 55 57 59 61 63 65 67 69 71 73 75 77 79 81 83 85 87 89 91 93 95
Age at Death of the 3072 Women in CBDB with Death Ages
number
CBDB Overview: Methods and Technologies
CHGIS Overview: From Datasets to APIs
Prospects for Digital Humanities Infrastructure
Source texts for Chinese Local Gazetteers
Compiled into “Dynastic Gazetteers”
“Historical Atlas of China” (8 volumes)
⚫ find admin units in existence at a particular time
⚫ search by placename
⚫ filter by admin status (feature type)
⚫ determine the administrative hierarchy for a particular place instance
⚫ show how a particular admin unit changes over time
Requirements for the CHGIS Data Model (2001)
Maximize Point Locations
Record each change of Placename, Unit Type, or Location
Digitize changing boundaries based on printed maps annotated by scholars
For each set of changes, detailed source citations are stored
Relational Database for administrative hierarchy, sequence in time, sources
How CHGIS was compiled
CHGIS database of all historical instances
CHGIS relational database (circa 2003)
~40,000 towns & villages
CHGIS Version 5 (2012)
~10,000 county seats
~3,500 prefecture capitals
~3,000 prefecture polygons
Time Series data - CHGIS Version 5 (2012)
v5
Time Series data - CHGIS Version 6 draft (2016)
v6
CHGIS Datasets – Publication and Archiving
⚫ General Project Info
⚫ Papers and Presentations
⚫ Sample Maps
⚫ Gazetteer Research
CHGIS website(s) DataVerse archive
⚫ Shapefiles
⚫ ACCESS database
⚫ DEM and Supplements
⚫ Scanned Historical Maps
⚫ Reports and Documentation
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~chgis/
https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/chgishttp://yugong.fudan.edu.cn/
Learning Curve – Managing Expectations
Steep learning curve
False assumptions based on other common geo-spatial technologies
Providing GIS Layers for Browsing: Worldmap
ChinaX (Teaching resources for HarvardX)
China’s History in Maps (General historical data)
Chinamap (modern China Data)
G. W. Skinner Archive (Regional Systems Analysis)
CHGIS case study Buddhist sites: 大清一統志
大清一統志 (Da Qing yitongzhi)
[Qing Dynasty National Gazetteer]
Jiaqing 嘉慶 (560 juan) Beijing, 1842
臺灣商務印書館 11 v. (7036 p.), Taipei, 1934
Digitization of Buddhist Sites Index
中国の寺院 Chugoku no ji’in.
[Temples of China]
矢島玄亮 Yajima, Genryo, editor.
Tōhoku Daigaku Fuzoku Toshokan , Sendai, 1966. [1941] 264 p.
Geocoding Temple locations with CHGIS data
Geocoding Temple locations with CHGIS data
Mapped locations of all 2,400 temple sites
COUNT density of temples at geocode locations
Comparison of Yizhongzhi and Qinghai Temples
甘青藏传佛教寺院 (Gan Qing Zang Chuanfojiao Siyuan) [Buddhist Traditional Monasteries in Gansu, Qinghai, and Tibet] Xining, 1990.
Greater Tibetan region monastery sites
Heat map of Tibetan sites and Yitongzhi sites
Heat map of Qing exams & Ming courier routes
Ming Courier Routes Network Model
http://maps.cga.harvard.edu/chinapostoffice/
Animation of events -- Ming Examinees
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLLchSgVcXo
CBDB Overview: Methods and Technologies
CHGIS Overview: From Datasets to APIs
Prospects for Digital Humanities Infrastructure
CHGIS Gazetteer XML Webservice (2006)
CHGIS XML to Temporal Gazetteer (2013)
CHGIS Gazetteer Web Service Temporal Gazetteer Web Service
Existing System Proposed System
Temporal Gazetteer System Architecture (2014)
TGAZ API launched (2014)
TGAZ test: Russian Gazetteer (2014)
TGAZ RDF interchange format (2015)
TGAZ RDF ingested into Pelagios (2015)
<http://chgis.hmdc.harvard.edu/placename/hvd_1> a lawd:Place ;rdfs:label "Ba Zhou"@en ;lawd:hasName [ lawd:primaryForm "霸州"@zh-Hant ] ;lawd:hasName [ lawd:primaryForm "霸州"@zh ] ;lawd:hasName [ lawd:primaryForm "Ba Zhou"@en ] ;geo:location [ geo:lat 39.10154 ; geo:long 116.39525 ] ;gn:countryCode "cn" ; dcterms:description "河北霸县" ; dcterms:temporal "start=1820; end=1820;" ;dcterms:subject "department 州" ;
. <http://chgis.hmdc.harvard.edu/placename/hvd_2> a lawd:Place ;
rdfs:label "Zhenghuangdengsiqi Muchang"@en ;lawd:hasName [ lawd:primaryForm "正黃等四旗牧廠"@zh-Hant ] ;lawd:hasName [ lawd:primaryForm "正黄等四旗牧厂"@zh ] ;lawd:hasName [ lawd:primaryForm "Zhenghuangdengsiqi
Muchang"@en ] ;geo:location [ geo:lat 41.21478 ; geo:long 113.89422 ] ;gn:countryCode "cn" ; dcterms:description "内蒙古兴和县北大井洼东北" ; dcterms:temporal "start=1820; end=1820;" ;dcterms:subject "pasture land 牧场" ;
.
Dump of database to RDF71,000 records
Ingested gazetteerInto Pelagios system
http://pelagios.org/recogito/
Integration of CHGIS data with MARKUS (2015)
APIs and Federated Search: biogref.org
http://biogref.org/mm.pl?method=search&person_name=王維
Points for consideration
• Customized databases are only useful to specialist users
• Publishing in GIS format or ACCESS limits the potential user base
• Publishing in web-based applications has wider audience
• Even web-based applications are siloes
• Open APIs provide machine-actionable access to content
• APIs and LOD will outlive our web-based applications & portals
Lex Berman Institute Fellow IQSS
CBDB: http://fas.chgis.harvard.edu/cbdb/
CHGIS: http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chgis/
Merrick Lex Berman: [email protected]