In August of 1789, it was by no means clear that the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen published by the newly constituted National Assembly of France would rock the foundations of societies worldwide as profoundly as it did. The Declaration’s affirmations that all men were endowed with a wide range of fundamental rights and freedoms were certainly radical and unheard of for their time, more emphatic, specific and detailed than any comparable language in the American Declaration of Independence only 13 years earlier. Yet, the Declaration carried no legal weight at this early stage in the French Revolution- it was a statement of abstract principles at best, self-congratulatory propaganda at worst. The National Assembly, comprised exclusively of white men of propertied classes, would take a pragmatic course that only extended the Declaration’s principles so far in the drafting of a true constitution for France, rejecting the ideas of an expanded suffrage, limiting or abolishing colonial slavery, or even disempowering the monarchy.
With the six word caption above I wanted to capture the feeling of inspiration and wonder mixed with deep ambiguity that the publication of the Declaration of the Rights of Man inspired in France and soon the world at large. Some questioned the value of such a Declaration as an ultimately empty statement but in reality, the dissemination of such a profound egalitarian document for the public became an incredible source of legitimacy for those who insisted that the reforms of the National Assembly did not go far enough and further revolutionary actions were necessary- in the public imagination, the Assembly was increasingly criticized for appearing to turn their backs on the very principles that they had first professed. And even while the National Assembly sought to contain the growing radicalism that it had inadvertently unleashed, the content of the Declaration itself would prompt the birth of wholly new and more radical discourses in response to it, such as whether it was just to declare the equality of all men to the exclusion of women, or whether collective rights to welfare and dignity were just as important as the rights to individual freedom and autonomy.
Image Credit: Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen, painting by Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier circa 1789. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.
Continuing some of the previous work that I’ve been doing to explore the revolutions of 1848 using digital tools, I have created two interactive maps that showcase a variety of the events and individuals involved in the 1848 revolutions. StoryMap JS and Google Maps both have tools for placing markers on a digital map with integrated captions and other media, but there are key differences in the ways that they present information and tell narratives.
StoryMapJS allows for the creation of an interwoven chronological slideshow that moves across the map, which to me made it ideal for a presentation connecting the dots of a single person’s life. For this presentation, I chose Mazzini, the Italian radical republican leader, as an individual to highlight that had strong connections to a number of the ideological currents that influenced the 1848 revolutions and who leaves a multifaceted and controversial philosophical legacy- much like the Revolutions of 1848 themselves.
For the interactive Google Map, I depicted a number of major flashpoints in the Revolutions of 1848 with a specific focus on the Austrian Empire. Of all the parts of Europe which faced revolutions in 1848, I found Austria the most interesting to make a map about because of their varied motivations and objectives, as well as the vast geographic distances that separated them.
I found both of these mapping tools very useful and applicable to my overarching project about the Revolutions of 1848. However, StoryMapJS will be most useful for narratives that stretch out over time, and makes the most sense to use when depicting a subject that travels, moves or spreads from one location to the next. Google Maps is somewhat more flexible and less specialized in the kind of information that it can present, but slightly less polished.
The Google interactive maps are able to add more information than simply planting markers by categorizing and color-coding different types of marked locations and events, which is absolutely a useful feature for illustrating highly complicated situations in which many different kinds of events may be happening simultaneously. Overall, I would say that both of these mapping tools were very convenient and straightforward to use, and the simple act of creating these maps has improved my memory of the spatial and geographic relationships between the events depicted.
A great many of the battle lines of the ideological struggles of the 20th century could be considered to have been first drawn by the Revolutions of 1848. The political strife and spread of radical new ideas that swept across Europe in the year 1848 would have profound significance for the theoretical development of modern ideas of democracy, liberalism, nationalism and socialism worldwide. But what exactly were the events that occurred in 1848, and how did they come to pass? The Revolutions of 1848 consisted of a large number of simultaneous, distinct yet significantly interconnected events that I thought would be an ideal subject to demonstrate the interactive virtual timeline creator TimelineJS. With a TimelineJS timeline, I’ve visualized some of the key events to create a clear and easy to understand picture of the sequence in which the Revolutions of 1848 unfolded, helping to illustrate how they impacted one another.
Developing the Timeline
Of all the events that I chose, the ones I found the most important were the ones to do with the growth of internal tensions among revolutionaries such as the June Days Uprising in France, the debates at the Frankfurt Parliament in Germany, and the Hungarian War of Independence. It’s these events- between the initial successes of revolutionary organizations and their abrupt downfall that I would argue most encapsulate the challenges of the Revolutions of 1848 and carried the most significant lessons for future political movements.
When filling out all twelve major events for the timeline, I wanted to add enough to give context to those primary pivotal events, and then wanted to ensure that I gave a fair amount of attention to all of the major theaters of the revolutions- France, Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary. I wanted to distribute my events roughly evenly across time as well. There were a couple events that I wish I could have added more about but didn’t- the political turmoil in France following the June Days would also have profound impacts on the future of political thought, although it extended slightly longer than the scope that this timeline was intended for. If the timeline was longer, I think I would have given slightly more attention to Germany, and perhaps mentioned a few more specific people and groups that were involved in the events.
One persistent difficulty in developing the timeline was that there weren’t necessarily many images for many of my events, particularly ones with Creative Commons licenses. Overall, however, I think that I was more successful in finding images than I initially expected to be. The images that I found are a mixture of primary and secondary sources. In a timeline like this, the images add color, an eye-catching liveliness that keeps the viewer engaged in ways that text alone can’t. I’m broadly confident that my timeline is historically accurate, as most of the dates that I present are factual and easily cross-referenceable in multiple sources.
How Timelines Shape History
A timeline is one of the easiest and most straightforward ways to introduce an audience to a historical subject. It gives a list of the most key events to remember and places them in context relative to each other, building a clear narrative. Depending on how a timeline is presented, it may create an impression of the first and last events being the definitive beginning or end of an era, when in reality those choices may be more or less arbitrary. Additionally, while timelines are very helpful for introducing basic facts about a subject, they are often limited in their ability to critically analyze the reasons for which an event occurred by presenting history as simply a sequence of one event after another.
Final Thoughts
I’m very glad to have learned about TimelineJS and I hope that others will find it useful or interesting themselves. Taking on this project has improved my knowledge of the Revolutions of 1848, and I would definitely say that the timeline I made would be a helpful reference for understanding the sequence of events. If I were to create another timeline, I might sort the events more clearly by type or location, but as is, I thought that TimelineJS was very simple to use and aesthetically pleasing, and I’d definitely recommend it to anyone interested in making a presentation-style timeline.
One digital history resource that has contributed a lot to my own interest in history would be GeaCron, an online virtual interactive map updated between 2011 and 2022 that depicts the distribution of historical states, kingdoms and empires for every year from 3000 BCE to the present as well as key events such as battles and voyages. While I discovered many historical topics for the very first time from GeaCron, its presentation of history is far from perfect in many areas, and in this post, I want to take a simple retrospective to analyze just how reliable of a historical resource it actually is. While the creators of GeaCron may not be planning to support the site for much longer in the future, you can view the current free version here: http://geacron.com/home-en/
Geacron.com was created by Luis Múzquiz, a Madrid-based computer specialist with degrees in geography and history. The website cites an extensive number of academic historical sources for the many time periods that it tries to cover, all of them secondary sources- mostly books, as well as some online databases. The books include both English and Spanish language sources, and are mostly by professional historians, but they include a handful of non-academic works of popular history such as Isaac Asimov’s “Chronology of the World”. The site does not go into any further detail about how or where different sources were used, nor do the books listed appear to be organized in any particular order. The online databases that Geacron draws upon are even more mixed- while some are well-curated university projects among them it also cites Wikipedia. The nature of the project means that the vast majority of the sources are those that involve maps or large-scale political histories.
The page gives a brief explanation of the methodology of GeaCron that addresses some of the controversy in dating particular events for the ancient world, but it also gets to the heart of what I believe some of GeaCron’s greatest challenges are. It attempts to represent all of history from the Bronze Age to the present in the form of modern-style colorful maps of discrete sovereign states, effectively requiring an amalgamation of all kinds of conceptions of political territoriality that have existed throughout history into a very particular and somewhat binary framework that can’t straightforwardly be “mapped” from one era to the next.
GeaCron is fairly straightforward to navigate and use. The maps are easy to navigate back and forth, clearly labeled, and aesthetically sharp. Click on a location, and you will be able to open a link with more specific information. While most of the features are plainly intuitive, there isn’t a tutorial of any sort and I could see some of the elements being confusing to those who are unfamiliar.
In the bar at the bottom of the screen, one can bookmark particular years for quick and easy reference, but this isn’t outright explained. Overall, I would say that I like most of the design choices for what they are- the colors, labels and sidebars all make for vivid and engaging visuals that are absorbing to scroll through. While Geacron is available for free, most of the features beyond the basic map come with a twenty-nine Euro paywall, such as the links to further information, timelines and increased resolution of the map. In my opinion, the core of what makes GeaCron a worthwhile resource is all available for free, however. The cursory, digestible approach it takes to representing world history on a map is GeaCron’s main attraction, and any other information that it contains is largely accessible elsewhere. Moreover, applying scrutiny to GeaCron’s maps closely at the local level makes it more clear that the representation of discrete sovereign states often has severe limitations and inaccuracies for the majority of the time periods depicted, making the zoom resolution a feature with mixed value. GeaCron is best viewed as a jumping-off point for further engagement- it doesn’t impart comprehensive knowledge about any one place or time in particular, but for the less experienced in history, it stokes the imagination to see the array of places and times and think: things were happening here, events as complex and significant as the geopolitical tensions of today.
In conclusion, I would say that GeaCron has some, if limited, educational value. In terms of straightforward reliability, it is a facile tool to get a surface-level understanding of what the world was like at any given point in time. However, my impression from using GeaCron periodically over the years is that as a project it may have been somewhat over-ambitious in scope. In its description, GeaCron states that it seeks to be the “most powerful geo-temporal tool for history research, education, and findings dissemination”, that streamlines and synthesizes the overwhelming amount of history knowledge that can be found online, but the lack of detail and nuance that comes with the GeaCron project make it less than actually useful to anyone attempting to gain serious understanding. If GeaCron has a way of challenging narratives or bringing marginalized histories to light, it is in the fact that it puts all historical events in broader context- while observing the growth of one empire or civilization one can see how the rest of the world fared at the same time. Yet, it could also reinforce some significant misconceptions by back-projecting modern conceptions of statehood to historical periods where they are not necessarily applicable.
Overall, if you think that you know something or other about the contours of global history in just about every given place, GeaCron may not have much to offer. But if you find yourself drawing a complete blank for knowledge of any epoch of history, it may be worth checking out- you could discover something totally new.
One of the most remarkable applications of digital history tools currently in the news has been the work done in decoding the charcoal papyri recovered from the library of Herculaneum, the ancient Roman city destroyed in the 79 AD volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius alongside Pompeii. The Herculaneum scrolls, numbering nearly two thousand, are one of the largest surviving collections of papyri from antiquity, believed to contain a diverse array of works of literature and philosophy. Due to their extreme fragility, unrolling and reading the scrolls has been extremely challenging for archaeologists- until the recent application of digital tools revolutionized the method used to study them.
In recent years, there’s been a string of attempts to “virtually unroll” the Herculaneum scrolls by using x-ray scans to render a detailed three-dimensional model of the artifacts and then use artificial intelligence and other tools to distinguish ink from the papyrus. In 2023, a group of technology investors announced grand prize of up to $700,000 to decode passages from the Herculaneum scrolls, and since then there have been a number of breakthroughs towards full decipherment. In February 2024, the first passages of a previously unknown work by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus were fully deciphered.
The new work that’s been done to study the Herculaneum scrolls reveals the incredible potential of digital tools to push the boundaries of our historical knowledge. What was for years considered near-impossible has now been effectively accomplished- revelations of ancient philosophy have been deciphered from pieces of volcanic charcoal. The techniques used to read the Herculaneum scrolls are not necessarily widely usable on other artifacts- the scrolls are an extremely unique case of historical preservation. However, the practice of 3D modeling used to study them may have broader applicability for the study of fragile artifacts, allowing them to be analyzed in close detail while ensuring responsible preservation. Beyond that, I find the decipherment of the Herculaneum scrolls an incredible reminder of how many transformative historical discoveries may be yet to be made.
Hello and welcome readers! This is a blog where I’ll be exploring a range of history topics and the presentation of history in digital media to complement an academic project. I’ll be posting a new entry roughly once a week.
One artifact that I found to be an interesting piece to begin a history blog with that provides unique historical insight but reminds us of some of the limitations of historical work, would be the Narmer Palette. The Narmer Palette is a siltstone engraving originating from the city of Nekhen that dates to some time around ~3000 BC, depicting the triumph of the Pharaoh Narmer who is generally agreed to be the first ruler of a unified Egypt from the mouths of the Nile to the first cataract. The Narmer Palette was recovered by archaeologists in 1898 and is today preserved in the Egyptian Museum of Cairo.
Large siltstone palettes were common in Early Dynastic Egypt and were conventionally used to grind and mix cosmetic ingredients. However, some palettes such as this one, which is ornately decorated on both sides, were purely artistic. The Narmer Palette has been described by some scholars as one of the oldest surviving representations of a historic event, with the vanquished figure to the right representing the Lower Egyptian ruler who Narmer defeated in battle to establish a unified rule over Egypt. While this interpretation of the palette is not entirely agreed upon, it does reveal something substantial about how ancient societies began to preserve historical memory in written inscriptions and the view that this can present to modern observers.
Routinely, the earliest written references to socio-political events and the figures involved in them that historians and archeologists have observed describe warrior-kings , their conquests and edicts- from Egypt to its neighbors in Syria, Sumer and Elam similar ideological and artistic motifs to the Narmer Palette can be seen- notably but not limited to the “Master of Animals” iconography showing a king or deity in control of powerful beasts. The picture given by these earliest historical records can suggest that some patterns of emergent social stratification and the consolidation of states through warfare were essential by-products of the development of agricultural, urbanized and literate societies- potentially, but one of the most critical lessons of the Narmer Palette is that the first individuals to record history will be the first with the means and motive to do so. Narmer had only recently consolidated what might have been the largest single realm on Earth at his time. For early Egyptian rulers, inscribing their serekh (a unique hieroglyphic representation of the Pharaoh’s name) provided tangible evidence and reminders of their rule. King lists offered legitimacy that connected the Pharaoh to those who came before them. Artistic representations of victorious battles could intimidate potential rivals, and most significantly, absolute monarchs had a substantial demand for writing to manage the administration of a nascent state.
When we bring history into the digital realm, we’ll always face the challenge that the records which exist will always be vastly incomplete or biased, often in subtle ways that aren’t immediately obvious. Works like the Narmer Palette offer a window into an otherwise forgotten time, but it’s important to communicate just how narrow that window can be.
History Against the Grain 