Historical Metrology and the Challenges of Digital Research in Economic History
Werner Scheltjens, University of Bamberg / Markus A. Denzel, University of Leipzig
Contact person: Werner Scheltjens, werner.scheltjens (at) uni-bamberg.de
25 August 2022; https://ichs2020poznan.pl/en/session/comite-international-pour-la-metrologie-historique/
Panel Description
Historians working with sources of preindustrial economic history, such as customs registers, trade statistics, or a merchant's account books, are confronted with a wide variety of weights, measures and currencies that were used to establish the volumes and values of commodities carried on maritime, riverine and overland routes. Despite the availability of some useful overviews of historical measurement systems in distinct geographical areas (e.g. Italy) or for distinct uses (e.g. Amsterdam's grain measure), researchers often have to turn to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century reference works and dictionaries for merchants, traders and businessmen to identify and describe the units of measurement in their particular project. Whereas some historians limit themselves to short descriptions of, or mere references to lexicon or dictionary entries, others prefer to collect information about the metric equivalents of premodern weights and measures in order to further the processing and visualisation of the data. In most cases, however, the rich and varied knowledge base of historical metrology is used for referencing purposes only. Uses that are more elaborate, e.g. distinguishing local varieties in units of measurement, often remain out of scope or are limited to specific research purposes.
The current situation hardly comes as a surprise. Until the present day, no encompassing and reliable electronic datasets are available that account for local and regional differences in the practical uses of historical weights and measures, their development over time, their semantic equivalents in different languages, or their corresponding values in standardized systems of measurement. Moreover, many aspects of the packaging, weighing and measuring of commodities are still largely unknown. In order to find out more about these practices, one would have to address additional archival documents, descriptions of eyewitnesses, encyclopaedic descriptions in contemporary sources, or - with any luck - drawings or paintings. Often, however, existing descriptions and images of measurement procedures are not marked as such in existing data repositories. Therefore, they remain hard to find. Finally, quite a few commodities were measured as pieces, sacks, bales, or the like, which poses yet another set of problems to historians working with sources of preindustrial international trade: what could have been their weight or volume? To sum up, dealing with historical weights and measures continues to be a painstaking task.
At the same time, the last two decades have shown remarkable progress in the digitization of sources, images and artefacts. So far, however, the discipline of historical metrology has not benefited from these developments. We argue that a first step towards overcoming these issues would be to face and embrace the challenges of digital historical research. The panel aims to elaborate a strategy for bringing historical metrology into the twenty-first century. In the panel, historians and digital humanists working with primary sources of preindustrial economic history share their experiences and approaches in the processing premodern units of measurement. Based on these presentations, the panel aims to establish an agenda for the subsequent development and application of digital research and data processing methods to the benefit of the field of historical metrology.
The panel consists of two parts. In the first part, a number of economic and business historians address the role of premodern weights and measures in their work, and address the issues they encounter in dealing with metrological data. In the second part, two novel, digital approaches for dealing with historical metrological data are presented, and the challenges of pursuing these approaches in historical research practice are discussed.
Part 1: The historian's perspective
Confirmed speakers:
Ulf Christian Ewert (University of Erfurt) / Markus A. Denzel (University of Leipzig), Metric problems in determining early modern overland trade volume: The digitisation of the G?rlitz toll register (1606–1640)
Jari Ojala (University of Jyv?skyl?) / Lauri Karvonen (University of Jyv?skyl?), Issues of measurement in the Swedish timber trade to Southern Europe, 1700-1815
Jeremy Land (University of Helsinki), Dealing with weights, measures and currencies in eighteenth-century invoices
Werner Scheltjens (University of Bamberg): Packaging and the calculation of transport costs: Evidence from the “Hamburgische Waarenberechnungen” (1772/1782).
Part 2: The digital humanist's perspective
Werner Scheltjens (Digital History, University of Bamberg) / Christoph Schlieder (Cultural Informatics Research Group, University of Bamberg). Planning Semantic Retrodigitization: The Digital Noback as a Case Study.
Abstract
The retrodigitization of non-copyrighted library collections has created a wealth of resources for historians of all disciplines. Often, these digital libraries include eighteenth- and nineteenth-century reference works and lexica for trade and manufacturing that systematize the metrological knowledge of their time. This paper explores the renowned example of Noback and Noback’s Vollst?ndiges Taschenbuch der Mass-, Münz- und Gewichtsverh?ltnisse (Leipzig 1850). The Bavarian State Library (BSB) made Noback and Noback’s Handbook available in digital format. The BSB publishes scans in PDF format and accompanies them with a plain text file obtained from OCR. In this sense, the retrodigitization effort has produced a digital version of the Handbook. However, the Handbook’s complex content and layout prohibits gaining insight into the size, structure and composition of historical metrological systems. Even in digitized form, the use of reference works on historical units of measurement is still limited mostly to looking up the metric equivalents for selected units. We argue that there are metrological research questions, which make it necessary to complement the “first retrodigitization” by a “second retrodigitization”. The second or semantic retrodigitization explicitly extracts and encodes the semantic structure of the encyclopedic information. The paper outlines a planning workflow that permits assessing the benefits and the costs of semantic modelling and supports the discovery of new knowledge that has hitherto been hidden in old and well-known reference works.
Christopher Pollin (University of Graz), Georg Vogeler (University of Graz). DEPCHA - Linked Open Historical Units and Currencies.
Abstract
The project DEPCHA - Digital Edition Publishing Cooperative for Historical Accounts (Prototype at: gams.uni-graz.at/context:depcha) - aims to use Semantic Web technologies to publish heterogeneous historical data from financial documents on a web platform, not only to make the data available, but also to offer a web interface (Dashboard) with functionalities for data exploration and visualization. For this purpose, the so-called Bookkeeping Ontology, a CIDOC-CRM based conceptual model, allows formalizing economic transactions in historical sources. DEPCHA converts multiple formats (CSV, XML/TEI) into RDF and publishes these as Linked Open Data in combination with the associated transcriptions, taxonomies or indices. A special challenge arises in dealing with historical currencies and units of measurement. DEPCHA has to support a wide range of time periods and spaces, and therefore also to support an extensive amount of units and currencies. Two things seem to be important: models (ontologies) to formalize the knowledge about currencies and units to store it alongside the transactions in RDF, and a strategy to link this data to hubs (Wikidata) and other data sets. Within the context of this project, these questions will be evaluated and put into practice.