This website is no longer updated and has been replaced with a static copy. The Spatial History Project was active at Stanford University from 2007-2022, engaging in dozens of collaborative projects led by faculty, staff, graduate students, post-docs, visiting scholars and others at Stanford and beyond. More than 150 undergraduate students from more than a dozen disciplines contributed to these projects. In addition to a robust intellectual exchange built through these partnerships, research outputs included major monographs, edited volumes, journal articles, museum exhibitions, digital articles, robust websites, and dozens of lightweight interactive visualizations, mostly developed with Adobe Flash (now defunct). While most of those publications live on in other forms, the content exclusive to this website is preserved in good faith through this static version of the site. Flash-based content is partially available in emulated form using the Ruffle emulator.
Mapping Rebellions in the Americas
The birth of the Americas was a time of discontent. This is expressed in the disputes that shook the colonies. This project aims at creating a model of spatial and semantic representation of rebellions and showing that they are a potentially promising object for Spatial History.
The activities in this project include research in cartography, readings of the pertinent literature, analysis of primary document, and spatial localization of the events for the development of geo-referenced historical maps of conflicts.
Phase 1. Two conflicts in British and Portuguese Americas will be intensively surveyed: the revolt of Rio de Janeiro in 1660 and Bacon's rebellion in Virginia in 1676. In both rebellions, local groups ousted the governor, set off reforms, appealed for the right to resistance and ended in heavy-handed repression. Episodes of each of the conflicts will be presented in two synchronized timelines combined with spatial plans of the territories of Virginia and Rio de Janeiro. This will allow viewers to see the use of space, the mobility of social groups in conflict, the rituals of protest, the role of cities, and the distribution of violence.
With these spatial resources, the model should offer new possibilities for comparative analysis of the political history of English and Portuguese colonization in the Americas.
The activities in this project include research in cartography, readings of the pertinent literature, analysis of primary document, and spatial localization of the events for the development of geo-referenced historical maps of conflicts.
Phase 1. Two conflicts in British and Portuguese Americas will be intensively surveyed: the revolt of Rio de Janeiro in 1660 and Bacon's rebellion in Virginia in 1676. In both rebellions, local groups ousted the governor, set off reforms, appealed for the right to resistance and ended in heavy-handed repression. Episodes of each of the conflicts will be presented in two synchronized timelines combined with spatial plans of the territories of Virginia and Rio de Janeiro. This will allow viewers to see the use of space, the mobility of social groups in conflict, the rituals of protest, the role of cities, and the distribution of violence.
With these spatial resources, the model should offer new possibilities for comparative analysis of the political history of English and Portuguese colonization in the Americas.
Former Lab Staff:
Celena Allen
![Spatial History](../media/images/bottom_corner.png)