Mapping
and Interpreting Population Change
The
Example of Rural Development and Railways
The purpose of this lab and exercise is several fold:
- to construct three choropleth maps showing patterns of net migration and the rail system in your assigned region at three points during the industrialization of Victorian England and Wales: 1851-1861, 1881-1891, and 1901-1911.
- to learn the use of the Layout feature in Arc View to make high quality maps that include a) a scale b) a legend and c) a meaningful title and other map labels or annotations as appropriate. The title and other text on a finished map need to be specific in order to communicate to the reader the point that the map is intended to convey.
- to identify and describe the patterns in each map, and then, through comparison of all three maps, to identify and describe historical change and/or continuity in the patterns.
- after identifying patterns of change and/or continuity, to propose likely explanations of the patterns, drawing on pertinent information in Winter, Simmons, and other readings. (Use the index in Winter whenever possible to locate specific details of interest.) Also draw on the detailed maps in the lab that indicate the topography of the region you’re studying as well as the rail and station system as of 1876.
- to identify questions for discussion in class and for future research and consideration.
This lab and exercise will form a major part of the GIS project that I’m asking you to do for this section of the course.
For Tuesday, November 20, I’d like you have completed steps 1 and 2 and to have started on 3, so that we can look at your maps and discuss their interpretation.
You will need to print these maps in color. Labs on Thursday and Friday. Becky will lead you through step 1. On Friday, beginning at 9 a.m. (not 8:35) Jon will help you through step 2 and the color printing.
To help guide you through this exploration, study several examples that are on the web at the following address:
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist361/index.htm
- Railways,
Rural Development, and Population Change gives an example that I worked up for East Anglia, an agrarian
district. This begins with a model
of the impact of industrialization on rural development:
The diagram suggests the inter-relationships that affect rural out-migration. As rural economic opportunities (jobs) decline, rural out migration tends to increase, i.e., there is an inverse relationship between rural economic opportunities and rural out migration. The effect that the development of the rail system had on rural out migration is the main question that is open to answer and thus stands as the chief object of this exploratory analysis.
Note also how the model suggests three ways in which the environment is affected by change: via population growth (or decline), food production, and rural out migration. A line from the Growth of the Railway System to Environmental Effects perhaps should be added because the construction of railways, as Winter and Schivelbush point out, entail no small amount of environmental effects. The images I’ve posted here serve to illustrate some of the ways—not all—that these effects came about.
My question concerns rural development and rural out migration. Your question may well differ depending upon what you “see” in your maps, what you can bring to bear about the region, etc. You can modify the above model to fit your conception of the problem you’re exploring.
Before setting out on your exploration, please study this model and look at the images on this web site. You can expand the images by clicking on them.
- http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist361/ioli/page1.htm gives an example of a project of this
kind that was done last year in my more advanced seminar by Ioli Christopoulou.
After you’ve constructed your maps and identified some patterns,
you can read this to get an idea of where I want you to end up.
- http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist361/london_popden.htm shows the population density in London in 1851 and in 1901. I include this because it illustrates how I had to adjust the categories of population density to the particular situation of London. These categories would not work well at all for a map of England and Wales as a whole because of the extremely high levels of population density in London as compared to most other areas of England and Wales. Depending upon the region and problem you explore, you may well have to devise categories of net migration that will produce a meaningful map.