New Open-Access Publication

We are pleased to announce the publication of a new article by Project Administrator, Philip Gooding. Entitled, ‘Mapping Agricultural Change in Eastern Africa: A Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Approach to Early Imperial Sources, 1857–76,’ it is published open access in History in Africa. This article represents an output of two projects hosted by the IOWC:

• ‘Appraising Risk, Past and Present,’ funded by a SSHRC Partnership Grant led by Prof. Gwyn Campbell.

• ‘Climate History and Human-Environment Interaction in Equatorial Eastern Africa, c.1780-1900,’ funded by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant led by Philip Gooding.

The article builds on methods developed by former IOWC research assistants Luka Miro and Kareem Hammami in the digitisation and manipulation of historical maps for analysis in GIS environments. The author would also like to thank another former IOWC RA, Hamid Farahani, for his assistance with data collection.

Abstract:

This article uses digital Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to visualize changing crop choice over time in nineteenth-century equatorial eastern Africa. It maps the locations of crops mentioned in early imperial sources, using contemporary cartographic representations of the region as a base. This enables a novel visualization of changing agricultural potential and vulnerability to climate variability over time. The maps contextualize the growth of commercial and political centers, a series of famines during years and seasons of below average rainfall, and the well-known environmental challenges of the early colonial period.