Horizons of interest: the geographical scope of knowledge in early modern chronicles (1500-1850)

In this project we test the assumption that chronicles came to include news and topics deriving from a greater variety of information sources and therefore from an increasingly global information network. The question this project wishes to answer is in what way the geographical scope of the chroniclers’ access to information and news changed in the period 1500-1850. What places are mentioned by these authors in their accounts? How did the ratios between local, supra local or regional and international news develop over time? In order to answer these questions and to study the spatial dimensions of the chroniclers’ worlds of interest, this project will apply Linked Data technology to map and compare the places, people, and events mentioned in these chronicles over time.

In this project we test the assumption that chronicles came to include news and topics deriving from a greater variety of information sources and therefore from an increasingly global information network. The question this project wishes to answer is in what way the geographical scope of the chroniclers’ access to information and news changed in the period 1500-1850. What places are mentioned by these authors in their accounts? How did the ratios between local, supra local or regional and international news develop over time?

This project is in progress