Maps with a sense of the past: what are synthetic maps, and why do we love them?

by Chris Fleet, Zekun Li, Katie McDonough, and Valeria Vitale. Maps are excellent documentary sources for understanding the history of the landscape, including past human activities and former physical environments. Many organizations have scanned tens of thousands of historical maps and shared them online. For example, the Sanborn Fire Insurance Map Collection scanned by the […]

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Geocoding the Stevenson Maps and Plans of Scotland

Written by Rachel Dishington, Collaborative Doctoral Partnership PhD student at the University of Edinburgh The Stevenson family of engineers worked extensively throughout Scotland during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their work focused primarily on coastal engineering projects, particularly harbours including at Peterhead as shown below. Most famously, they were responsible for the construction and […]

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Mapping Slavery

It shocks many people to learn that when in 1833, the British Parliament finally abolished slavery in various parts of the British Empire, those most closely involved in the trade received huge sums of money in compensation. It has been estimated that of the £20 million compensation payments, half remained in Great Britain, with the […]

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