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Geographical Dimension of Colonial Justice: Using GIS in Research on Law and History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2016

Michael Ng ,
T. Edwin Chow  and
David W.S. Wong
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Extract

This article reviews and reflects on the use of the geographic information system (GIS) as a tool, or geographic information science (GIScience) as a research methodology, and associated techniques of analysis in an empirical study-in-progress on the law and history of early twentieth century British Hong Kong. The article begins by introducing the study and its objectives, as well as the rationale for adopting GIS/GIScience as one of its research methodologies. It then highlights the preliminary findings of the current project and compares them with those of earlier research on the legal history of early twentieth century Beijing using GIS. The article also discusses the difficulties involved in adopting such a digital tool and methodology in historical research. It concludes by reflecting on what GIS can help scholars understand about the social history of law in Hong Kong, beyond what is already known, and how specialists in law, history, and geography can collaborate in a digital law and history project involving the use of GIS. This article also gives an overview of the use of GIS in conducting empirical research in the humanities (including but not limited to history and legal history research) and points to digital sources and web sites useful to researchers who may need tools and data to launch a GIS study in law and history.

Type
Articles
Information
Law and History Review , Volume 34 , Special Issue 4: Digital Law and History , November 2016 , pp. 1027 - 1045
Copyright
Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 2016 

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References

1. This 3 year project is funded by the Research Grant Council of the Hong Kong Government and is scheduled to be completed in December 2017 (project code: HKU 17407214 ).

2. Steve Tsang, ed., Judicial Independence and the Rule of Law in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2001).

3. James W. Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong from the Earliest Period to 1898 (Hong Kong: Vetch and Lee, 1971); and George B. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong (London: Oxford University Press, 1958).

4. The colonial narratives have been subjected to critical review in recent years. See Martin Chanock, Law, Custom and SocialOorder: the Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); and Elizabeth Kolsky, Colonial Justice in British India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). At the same time, efforts have recently been made to re-balance this revisionist historiography of colonial justice. See Martin Wiener, An Empire on Trial: Race, Murder, and Justice under British Rule, 1870-1935. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

5. Keith Clarke, Getting Started with Geographic Information Systems (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2003).

6. “Platial” indicates place, whereas “spatial” indicates space, see Michael F. Goodchild, . “Formalizing place in geographic information systems,” in Communities, Neighborhoods, and Health: Expanding the Boundaries of Place, ed. Linda M. Burton, Stephen A. Matthews, Man-chui Leung, Susan P. Kemp, and David T Takeuchi (New York: Springer, 2011.), 21–33.

7. For Historical GIS study of Republican Beijing, see Michael Ng, Legal Transplantation in Early Twentieth-Century China: Practicing Law in Republican Beijing (1910s–1930s) (New York, London: Routledge, 2014).

8. The Chronicle & Directory for China, Japan & the Philippines 1900 (Hong Kong: Hongkong Daily Press, 1900).

9. Hong Kong Government, Hongkong Block Book. Eastern District of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government, 1914).

10. Out of the eighty-seven solicitors who were admitted to practice in Hong Kong between 1914 and 1940, only seventeen were Chinese. The proportion of Chinese lawyers rose gradually with the establishment of the first law school at the University of Hong Kong in 1969. Faculty of Law, Res Ipsa Loquitur (Hong Kong: HKU Faculty of Law, 2012), 22.

11. Ng, Legal Transplantation, ch. 3.

12. Sun Hueimin, “Qingmao Minguo Shiqi Shanghai Lushi de Guozhang,” (Expansion of Shanghai Lawyers during Late Qing and Early Republican Periods) in Zhongguo Jindai Chengshi Wenhua de Dongtai Fazhan (Development of Urban Culture of Modern China), ed. Billy K.L. So (Hangzhou: Zhejiang University Press, 2012). 119–38.

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15. Cresswell, Tim, “Space, Place, and the Triumph of the Humanities,” GeoHumanities 1 (2015): 4–9 Google Scholar; for example, the Center for History and New Media (http://chnm.gmu.edu/about/) was one of the earliest research centers to exploit information technology and digital media to support research in history.

16. For example, in Gregory, Ian, Bennett, Chris, Gilham, Vicki L., and Southall, Humphrey, “The Great Britain Historical GIS Project: From Maps to Changing Human Geography,” The Cartographic Journal 39 (2002): 37–49 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17. For example, in Ian Gregory and Paul Ell, Historical GIS: Technologies, Methodologies, and Scholarship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2008); Amy Hillier and Anne Kelly Knowles, Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS are Changing Historical Scholarship (Redlands, CA: ESRI Press, 2008); and Anne Kelly Knowles, ed., Past Time, Past Place: GIS for History (Redlands, CA: ESRI Press, 2002).

18. Ian Gregory, and Richard Healey, “Progress in Human Geography”, 31 (2007): 638–53.

19. Chinese Historical GIS (CHGIS) at Harvard University http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~chgis/ (accessed December 29, 2015).

20. Great British Historical GIS project http://www.gbhgis.org (accessed December 29, 2015); also in Ian Gregory and Humphrey Southall, “Putting the Past in its Place: The Great Britain Historical GIS,” in Innovations in GIS 5: Selected Papers from the Fifth National Conference on GIS Research, ed. Steve Carver (London: Taylor & Francis, 1998), 210–21; and Gregory, Bennett, Gilham and Southall, “The Great Britain Historical GIS Project,” 37–49.

21. National Historical GIS project in the United States http://www.nhgis.org (accessed December 29, 2015); also McMaster, Robert B. and Noble, Pétra, “Reports on National Historical GIS Projects,” Historical Geography 33(2005): 134–58Google Scholar.

22. Holocaust GIS http://www.ushmm.org/learn/mapping-initiatives/geographies-of-the-holocaust (accessed December 29, 2015).

23. American Association of Geographers, Historical GIS Clearinghouse and Forum http://www.aag.org/cs/projects_and_programs/historical_gis_clearinghouse/hgis_databases (accessed December 29, 2015).

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27. Ng, Legal Transplantation.

28. Thornton, Patricia, “Mapping Dynamic Events: Popular Contention in China over Space and Time,” Annals of GIS 18 (2012): 31–43 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Not all these dimensions were directly addressed in the Republican Beijing project, although some of these dimensions were covered in the conference and the special issue of a journal associated with the project activities.

29. Ian Gregory and Alistair Geddes, eds., Toward Spatial Humanities (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014).

30. David Bodernhamer, John Corrigan, and Trevor Harris, eds., The Spatial Humanities: GIS and the Future of Humanities Scholarship (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010).

31. Cresswell, Tim, “Space, Place, and the Triumph of the Humanities,” GeoHumanities 1 (2015): 4–9 Google Scholar.

32. Dear, Michael, “Practicing Geohumanities,” GeoHumanities 1 (2015): 20 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33. Stephen Daniels, Dydia DeLyser, J. Nicholas Entrikin, and Douglas Richardson, eds., Envisioning Landscape, Making Worlds: Geography and the Humanities (London and New York: Routledge, 2011); and Michael Dear, Jim Ketchum, Sarah Luria, and Douglas Richardson, eds.,GeoHumanities: Art, History, Text and the Edge of Place (London and New York: Routledge, 2011).

34. Cresswell, Tim and Dixon, Deborah., “Imagining and Practicing the Geohumanities: Past, Present and Future,” GeoHumanities 1 (2015): 1–3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35. Matthew Gold, ed., Debates in the Digital Humanities (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012).

36. Geocoding refers to the process of assigning a geographic coordinate or a location given a description of the location in the form of, for example, (part of) an address, or a place name. Geotagging is the process of digitally tagging a location (often in terms of a coordinate) to an object identified or captured in space. For example, after taking the picture of a building using a location-aware enabled cell phone or camera, the location when the picture was taken can be assigned or tagged to the picture.

37. Cresswell, “Space, Place,” 4–9.

38. David W.S. Wong and Jay Lee, Statistical Analysis of Geographic Information with ArcView GIS and ArcGIS (New York: Wiley & Sons, 2005).

39. Cresswell, “Space, Place”; and Dear, “Practicing Geohumanities.”