Pub Date : 2021-01-19DOI: 10.1080/01615440.2020.1840469
Hülya Canbakal, A. Filiztekin
Abstract This article uses a novel database of Ottoman probates and examines some of the methodological difficulties that arise in very long-term analysis. Wealth statistics, spanning from 1460 to 1920 in the longest subsample, indicate approximately an inverted U-shaped pattern that may signal the limits of extensive growth. While plausible, severity of the drop on the right side of the wealth curve does not entirely match recent scholarship on the Ottoman Empire. Examining the effect of biases and changes in probate demography on wealth, we explore how real the observed wealth pattern is. We employ descriptive statistics, linear regression and Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, and find that demographic composition matters but does not alter the shape of the wealth curve. Explanation for the gap between probate findings and current historiography, therefore, must lie elsewhere.
{"title":"Wealth and demography in Ottoman probate inventories: A database in very long-term perspective","authors":"Hülya Canbakal, A. Filiztekin","doi":"10.1080/01615440.2020.1840469","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01615440.2020.1840469","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article uses a novel database of Ottoman probates and examines some of the methodological difficulties that arise in very long-term analysis. Wealth statistics, spanning from 1460 to 1920 in the longest subsample, indicate approximately an inverted U-shaped pattern that may signal the limits of extensive growth. While plausible, severity of the drop on the right side of the wealth curve does not entirely match recent scholarship on the Ottoman Empire. Examining the effect of biases and changes in probate demography on wealth, we explore how real the observed wealth pattern is. We employ descriptive statistics, linear regression and Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, and find that demographic composition matters but does not alter the shape of the wealth curve. Explanation for the gap between probate findings and current historiography, therefore, must lie elsewhere.","PeriodicalId":154465,"journal":{"name":"Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History","volume":"127 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133773442","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-10DOI: 10.1080/01615440.2020.1853644
Wolf-Fabian Hungerland, Christoph Altmeppen
Abstract We study the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC). Thousands of studies rely on disaggregated trade data, but the quality of these studies’ unit of analysis—bins of goods categories arranged in certain hierarchies—is rarely studied. It is often unclear what a product or a variety really is. Meanwhile, increasingly granular trade data from before the 1950s are lifted from the archives that require standardization. The SITC provides a framework for that. We make four contributions: First, we work out the specificities of each SITC revision, analyze how revisions are related, and provide improved correspondence tables between all revisions. We show that revision choice can affect the analysis of historical trade data. Second, we propose basic rules for translating historical, unstandardized trade statistics to the SITC. Third, we translate German product-level trade data from the first globalization to both SITC revisions 2 and 4 in order to find out which revision may be more applicable to historical data. Fourth, we then develop metrics to quantitatively assess our translation exercise. We argue that despite inevitable imperfections, applying the SITC yields useful results, even on a very disaggregated level.
{"title":"What is a product anyway? Applying the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC) to historical data","authors":"Wolf-Fabian Hungerland, Christoph Altmeppen","doi":"10.1080/01615440.2020.1853644","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01615440.2020.1853644","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract We study the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC). Thousands of studies rely on disaggregated trade data, but the quality of these studies’ unit of analysis—bins of goods categories arranged in certain hierarchies—is rarely studied. It is often unclear what a product or a variety really is. Meanwhile, increasingly granular trade data from before the 1950s are lifted from the archives that require standardization. The SITC provides a framework for that. We make four contributions: First, we work out the specificities of each SITC revision, analyze how revisions are related, and provide improved correspondence tables between all revisions. We show that revision choice can affect the analysis of historical trade data. Second, we propose basic rules for translating historical, unstandardized trade statistics to the SITC. Third, we translate German product-level trade data from the first globalization to both SITC revisions 2 and 4 in order to find out which revision may be more applicable to historical data. Fourth, we then develop metrics to quantitatively assess our translation exercise. We argue that despite inevitable imperfections, applying the SITC yields useful results, even on a very disaggregated level.","PeriodicalId":154465,"journal":{"name":"Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History","volume":"70 5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129163702","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-01DOI: 10.1080/01615440.2021.1893877
L. Cook, John M. Parman, Trevon Logan
Abstract This paper explores the existence of distinctively Black names in the antebellum era. Building on recent research that documents the existence of a national naming pattern for African American males in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Cook, Logan, and Parman, Explorations in Economic History 53:64–82, 2014), we analyze three distinct and novel antebellum data sources and uncover three stylized facts. First, the Black names identified by Cook, Logan and Parman using post-Civil War data are common names among Blacks before Emancipation. Second, these same Black names are racially distinctive in the antebellum period. Third, the racial distinctiveness of the names increases from the early 1800s to the time of the Civil War. Taken together, these facts provide support for the claim that Black naming patterns existed in the antebellum era and that racial distinctiveness in naming patterns was an established practice well before Emancipation. These findings further challenge the view that Black names are a product of twentieth century phenomena such as the Civil Rights Movement.
摘要:本文探讨了南北战争前黑人名字的存在。最近的研究记录了19世纪末和20世纪初非洲裔美国男性的国家命名模式的存在(Cook, Logan, and Parman, Explorations in Economic History 53:64-82, 2014),我们分析了三个不同的、新颖的战前数据来源,并揭示了三个风格化的事实。首先,库克、洛根和帕尔曼利用内战后的数据确定的黑人名字是解放前黑人的常见名字。其次,这些黑人的名字在南北战争前具有种族特色。第三,从19世纪初到南北战争时期,这些名字的种族特征有所增加。综上所述,这些事实为以下说法提供了支持:黑人命名模式在南北战争前就存在,而命名模式中的种族差异早在解放奴隶之前就已确立。这些发现进一步挑战了黑人名字是20世纪民权运动等现象的产物的观点。
{"title":"The antebellum roots of distinctively black names","authors":"L. Cook, John M. Parman, Trevon Logan","doi":"10.1080/01615440.2021.1893877","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01615440.2021.1893877","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper explores the existence of distinctively Black names in the antebellum era. Building on recent research that documents the existence of a national naming pattern for African American males in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Cook, Logan, and Parman, Explorations in Economic History 53:64–82, 2014), we analyze three distinct and novel antebellum data sources and uncover three stylized facts. First, the Black names identified by Cook, Logan and Parman using post-Civil War data are common names among Blacks before Emancipation. Second, these same Black names are racially distinctive in the antebellum period. Third, the racial distinctiveness of the names increases from the early 1800s to the time of the Civil War. Taken together, these facts provide support for the claim that Black naming patterns existed in the antebellum era and that racial distinctiveness in naming patterns was an established practice well before Emancipation. These findings further challenge the view that Black names are a product of twentieth century phenomena such as the Civil Rights Movement.","PeriodicalId":154465,"journal":{"name":"Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127069897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-29DOI: 10.1080/01615440.2020.1803166
Hannu Salmi, Petri Paju, H. Rantala, Asko Nivala, Aleksi Vesanto, Filip Ginter
Abstract The digital collections of newspapers have given rise to a growing interest in studying them with computational methods. This article contributes to this discussion by presenting a method for detecting text reuse in a large corpus of digitized texts. Empirically, the article is based on the corpus of newspapers and journals from the collection of the National Library of Finland. Often, digitized repositories offer only partial views of what actually was published in printed form. The Finnish collection is unique, however, since it covers all published issues up to the year 1920. This article has a two-fold objective: methodologically, it explores how computational methods can be developed so that text reuse can be effectively identified; empirically, the article concentrates on how the circulation of texts developed in Finland from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century and what this reveals about the transformation of public discourse in Finland. According to our results, the reuse of texts was an integral part of the press throughout the studied period, which, on the other hand, was part of a wider transnational practice.
{"title":"The reuse of texts in Finnish newspapers and journals, 1771–1920: A digital humanities perspective","authors":"Hannu Salmi, Petri Paju, H. Rantala, Asko Nivala, Aleksi Vesanto, Filip Ginter","doi":"10.1080/01615440.2020.1803166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01615440.2020.1803166","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The digital collections of newspapers have given rise to a growing interest in studying them with computational methods. This article contributes to this discussion by presenting a method for detecting text reuse in a large corpus of digitized texts. Empirically, the article is based on the corpus of newspapers and journals from the collection of the National Library of Finland. Often, digitized repositories offer only partial views of what actually was published in printed form. The Finnish collection is unique, however, since it covers all published issues up to the year 1920. This article has a two-fold objective: methodologically, it explores how computational methods can be developed so that text reuse can be effectively identified; empirically, the article concentrates on how the circulation of texts developed in Finland from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century and what this reveals about the transformation of public discourse in Finland. According to our results, the reuse of texts was an integral part of the press throughout the studied period, which, on the other hand, was part of a wider transnational practice.","PeriodicalId":154465,"journal":{"name":"Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129481633","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1080/01615440.2019.1698384
David A. Latzko
Abstract Township tax lists for 1783 and 1793 are used to examine the distribution of wealth and economic mobility in York County, Pennsylvania following the Revolutionary War. Measures of inequality are inconclusive, but the typical York County household was worse off in 1793 than in 1783: median wealth fell 5 percent. The poorest households recorded an increase in assessed wealth. Over 40 percent of households disappeared from the tax lists, with the least wealthy being the most likely to leave. Households that remained in the county were far more likely to see an improvement in their relative status than a decline.
{"title":"Wealth inequality and economic mobility in the post-revolutionary Pennsylvania backcountry","authors":"David A. Latzko","doi":"10.1080/01615440.2019.1698384","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01615440.2019.1698384","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Township tax lists for 1783 and 1793 are used to examine the distribution of wealth and economic mobility in York County, Pennsylvania following the Revolutionary War. Measures of inequality are inconclusive, but the typical York County household was worse off in 1793 than in 1783: median wealth fell 5 percent. The poorest households recorded an increase in assessed wealth. Over 40 percent of households disappeared from the tax lists, with the least wealthy being the most likely to leave. Households that remained in the county were far more likely to see an improvement in their relative status than a decline.","PeriodicalId":154465,"journal":{"name":"Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History","volume":"53 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131378511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-23DOI: 10.1080/01615440.2020.1823289
Martina Katalin Szabó, Orsolya Ring, B. Nagy, L. Kiss, Júlia Koltai, Gábor Berend, László Vidács, László Vidács, A. Gulyás, Zoltán Kmetty
Abstract The analysis of social discourses from the perspective of historical changes deserves special attention. Such a study could play a key role in revealing social changes and latent narrative of those in power; and understanding the underlying social dynamic in a given period. Until the recent years, such issues were analyzed mainly in a qualitative approach. In our paper we present a new way of revealing/discovering and interpreting social discourses using an advanced NLP method called word embedding. Based on word similarities we can understand the main structural frames of a given system and using a dynamic approach we can reveal the social changes in a historical period. In our study we created a large corpus from the Hungarian “Pártélet” journal (1956–89). This was the official journal of the governing party, hence it represents not just a media discourse of the era, but the official discourse of the government, too. One of the main focal points of our research is to study the evolution of the semantic content of some of the concepts related to the topics of agriculture and industry, which are two central notions of the examined era.
{"title":"Exploring the dynamic changes of key concepts of the Hungarian socialist era with natural language processing methods","authors":"Martina Katalin Szabó, Orsolya Ring, B. Nagy, L. Kiss, Júlia Koltai, Gábor Berend, László Vidács, László Vidács, A. Gulyás, Zoltán Kmetty","doi":"10.1080/01615440.2020.1823289","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01615440.2020.1823289","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The analysis of social discourses from the perspective of historical changes deserves special attention. Such a study could play a key role in revealing social changes and latent narrative of those in power; and understanding the underlying social dynamic in a given period. Until the recent years, such issues were analyzed mainly in a qualitative approach. In our paper we present a new way of revealing/discovering and interpreting social discourses using an advanced NLP method called word embedding. Based on word similarities we can understand the main structural frames of a given system and using a dynamic approach we can reveal the social changes in a historical period. In our study we created a large corpus from the Hungarian “Pártélet” journal (1956–89). This was the official journal of the governing party, hence it represents not just a media discourse of the era, but the official discourse of the government, too. One of the main focal points of our research is to study the evolution of the semantic content of some of the concepts related to the topics of agriculture and industry, which are two central notions of the examined era.","PeriodicalId":154465,"journal":{"name":"Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121838804","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-05-13DOI: 10.1080/01615440.2020.1760157
M. Wevers, M. Koolen
Abstract Recently, the use of word embedding models (WEM) has received ample attention in the natural language processing community. These models can capture semantic information in large corpora of text by learning distributional properties of words, that is how often particular words appear in specific contexts. Scholars have pointed out the potential of WEMs for historical research. In particular, their ability to capture semantic change might assist historians studying conceptual change or specific discursive formations over time. Concurrently, others voiced their criticism and pointed out that WEMs require large amounts of training data, that they are challenging to evaluate, and they lack the specificity looked for by historians. The ability to examine semantic change resonates with the goals of historians such as Reinhart Koselleck, whose research focused on the formation of concepts and the transformation of semantic fields. However, word embeddings can only be used to study particular types of semantic change, and the model’s use is dependent on the size, quality, and bias in training data. In this article, we examine what is required of historical data to produce reliable WEMs, and we describe the types of questions that can be answered using WEMs.
{"title":"Digital begriffsgeschichte: Tracing semantic change using word embeddings","authors":"M. Wevers, M. Koolen","doi":"10.1080/01615440.2020.1760157","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01615440.2020.1760157","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Recently, the use of word embedding models (WEM) has received ample attention in the natural language processing community. These models can capture semantic information in large corpora of text by learning distributional properties of words, that is how often particular words appear in specific contexts. Scholars have pointed out the potential of WEMs for historical research. In particular, their ability to capture semantic change might assist historians studying conceptual change or specific discursive formations over time. Concurrently, others voiced their criticism and pointed out that WEMs require large amounts of training data, that they are challenging to evaluate, and they lack the specificity looked for by historians. The ability to examine semantic change resonates with the goals of historians such as Reinhart Koselleck, whose research focused on the formation of concepts and the transformation of semantic fields. However, word embeddings can only be used to study particular types of semantic change, and the model’s use is dependent on the size, quality, and bias in training data. In this article, we examine what is required of historical data to produce reliable WEMs, and we describe the types of questions that can be answered using WEMs.","PeriodicalId":154465,"journal":{"name":"Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History","volume":"171 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115183709","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-05-06DOI: 10.1080/01615440.2020.1748151
J. Baeten, R. Lave
Abstract This article presents a novel geospatial approach to reconstructing and analyzing environmental change over extensive spatial and temporal scales, even in systems such as rivers and streams that are comparatively difficult to digitize. We used a drawing tablet and stylus to digitize features found on historical Army Corps maps across the spatially extensive landscape of the Lower Wabash River’s riparian zone, in Indiana and Illinois, USA. The methodology allows for an efficient reconstruction of sinuous and irregular environmental features, such as sloughs, and demonstrates the utility of digitizing historical maps to understand the evolution of surface water quantity and location across a landscape. We then compared these historical data to contemporary environmental datasets for the same study area to understand what changes have occurred over a 100 year period. This reveals that the hydroscape of the Lower Wabash River has been significantly altered by past human activity, notably through the reduction of swamps, wetlands, and sandbars, and the increase in drainage ditches and overall stream area. Notably, many of these historical alterations are not captured within current environmental datasets.
{"title":"Retracing Rivers and drawing swamps: Using a drawing tablet to reconstruct an historical hydroscape from army corps survey maps","authors":"J. Baeten, R. Lave","doi":"10.1080/01615440.2020.1748151","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01615440.2020.1748151","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article presents a novel geospatial approach to reconstructing and analyzing environmental change over extensive spatial and temporal scales, even in systems such as rivers and streams that are comparatively difficult to digitize. We used a drawing tablet and stylus to digitize features found on historical Army Corps maps across the spatially extensive landscape of the Lower Wabash River’s riparian zone, in Indiana and Illinois, USA. The methodology allows for an efficient reconstruction of sinuous and irregular environmental features, such as sloughs, and demonstrates the utility of digitizing historical maps to understand the evolution of surface water quantity and location across a landscape. We then compared these historical data to contemporary environmental datasets for the same study area to understand what changes have occurred over a 100 year period. This reveals that the hydroscape of the Lower Wabash River has been significantly altered by past human activity, notably through the reduction of swamps, wetlands, and sandbars, and the increase in drainage ditches and overall stream area. Notably, many of these historical alterations are not captured within current environmental datasets.","PeriodicalId":154465,"journal":{"name":"Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History","volume":"70 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122538743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-04-27DOI: 10.1080/01615440.2020.1754984
N. Bonneuil, E. Fursa
Abstract Seasonal components of infant probabilities of dying are disentangled from monthly death statistics by age and birth by articulating demographic equations and stochastic optimization. In the Don Army Territory, for the period 1872–1915, these components reflect respiratory diseases in autumn and spring, dehydration and waterborne diseases in summer, and cold stress in winter. During the warmer months, they were lower in cities. Summer heat had a lethal effect, mitigated by precipitation; illegitimate infants were exposed to the change of season; high winds increased mortality in late winter for 0–5 month infants and in summer for 6–11 month infants in cities. By the turn of the century, mortality had decreased, thanks to the gradual purification of water supplies and improved health practices.
{"title":"Seasonal components of infant mortality at the onset of the transition reveal the role of water-borne and air-borne diseases: the case of the Don Army Territory (Southern Russia), 1872–1915","authors":"N. Bonneuil, E. Fursa","doi":"10.1080/01615440.2020.1754984","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01615440.2020.1754984","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Seasonal components of infant probabilities of dying are disentangled from monthly death statistics by age and birth by articulating demographic equations and stochastic optimization. In the Don Army Territory, for the period 1872–1915, these components reflect respiratory diseases in autumn and spring, dehydration and waterborne diseases in summer, and cold stress in winter. During the warmer months, they were lower in cities. Summer heat had a lethal effect, mitigated by precipitation; illegitimate infants were exposed to the change of season; high winds increased mortality in late winter for 0–5 month infants and in summer for 6–11 month infants in cities. By the turn of the century, mortality had decreased, thanks to the gradual purification of water supplies and improved health practices.","PeriodicalId":154465,"journal":{"name":"Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124097243","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-04-21DOI: 10.1080/01615440.2020.1752344
David Escamilla-Guerrero
Abstract I introduce and analyze the Mexican Border Crossing Records (MBCRs), an unexplored data source that records aliens crossing the Mexico-US land border at diverse locations from 1903 to 1955. The MBCRs identify immigrants and report rich demographic, geographic and socioeconomic information at the individual level. These micro data have the potential to support cliometric research, which is scarce for the Mexico-US migration, especially for the beginnings of the flow (1884-1910). My analysis of the MBCRs suggests that previous literature may have inaccurately described the origin of the first Mexican immigrants. My findings diverge from historical scholarship because the micro data capture the geographic composition of the flow at the local level and across nine entrance ports, allowing me to characterize with precision the migration patterns during the 1900s. Overall, the micro data reported in the MBCRs offer the opportunity to address topics that concern the economics of migration in the past and present.
{"title":"Revisiting Mexican migration in the Age of Mass Migration: New evidence from individual border crossings","authors":"David Escamilla-Guerrero","doi":"10.1080/01615440.2020.1752344","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01615440.2020.1752344","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract I introduce and analyze the Mexican Border Crossing Records (MBCRs), an unexplored data source that records aliens crossing the Mexico-US land border at diverse locations from 1903 to 1955. The MBCRs identify immigrants and report rich demographic, geographic and socioeconomic information at the individual level. These micro data have the potential to support cliometric research, which is scarce for the Mexico-US migration, especially for the beginnings of the flow (1884-1910). My analysis of the MBCRs suggests that previous literature may have inaccurately described the origin of the first Mexican immigrants. My findings diverge from historical scholarship because the micro data capture the geographic composition of the flow at the local level and across nine entrance ports, allowing me to characterize with precision the migration patterns during the 1900s. Overall, the micro data reported in the MBCRs offer the opportunity to address topics that concern the economics of migration in the past and present.","PeriodicalId":154465,"journal":{"name":"Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History","volume":"25 ","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120873466","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}