Mapping the Third Republic: a Geographic Information System of France (1870–1940)
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HISTORICAL METHODS: A JOURNAL OF QUANTITATIVE AND INTERDISCIPLINARY HISTORY https://doi.org/10.1080/01615440.2021.1937421 Mapping the Third Republic: A Geographic Information System of France (1870–1940) Victor Gay Toulouse School of Economics (TSE) and Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST), University of Toulouse Capitole, Toulouse, France ABSTRACT KEYWORDS This article describes a comprehensive geographic information system of Third Republic Historical GIS; administrative France: the TRF-GIS. It provides annual nomenclatures and shapefiles of administrative con- boundaries; nomenclatures; stituencies of metropolitan France from 1870 to 1940, encompassing general administrative toponyms; France; Third Republic constituencies (departements, arrondissements, cantons) as well as the most significant spe- cial administrative constituencies: military, judicial and penitentiary, electoral, academic, JEL CODES labor inspection, and ecclesiastical constituencies. It further proposes annual nomenclatures N01; N43; N44; N93; at the contemporaneous commune level that map each municipality into its corresponding N94; Y91 administrative framework along with its population count. The 901 nomenclatures, 830 shapefiles, and complete reproduction material of the TRF-GIS are available at https://data- verse.harvard.edu/dataverse/TRF-GIS. 1. Introduction documents (e.g., Ostafin et al. 2020) suggest that this trend will likely intensify in the future. For the seven decades between the collapse of the But a fundamental element empirical researchers Second Empire in 1870 and the establishment of the typically need in order to process, map, and analyze Vichy Regime in 1940, France remained under a sin- spatially localized historical data is an underlying geo- gle political regime: the Third Republic. Despite the graphic frame of reference—a geographic information unprecedented stability of its institutions, France system (GIS). And contrary to the United States underwent dramatic socio-economic changes during (https://nhgis.org; Fitch and Ruggles 2003; Manson et this period. These were the result of several critical al. 2020) and Great Britain (https://visionofbritain.org. junctures, among which the Second Industrial uk; Southall 2011, 2012, 2014), a historical GIS of Revolution and the modernization of France administrative constituencies of France has not been – (1870 1914), the establishment of free, mandatory, produced thus far.1 This lack is especially problematic – and secular education (1881 1882), the Separation of for quantitative research in the context of Third the Churches and the State (1905), the First World Republic France, as statistics then were oftentimes – War (1914 1918), the economic and political turmoils produced by administrations operating at heteroge- of the 1930s, and the defeat by Nazi Germany neous and incompatible levels of aggregation. As a – (1939 1940). Research programs aimed at understand- result, it currently falls onto individual researchers to ing how these experiences shaped the French society complete this time-consuming, challenging, and yet, increasingly rely on empirical evidence, in part due to crucial task. Although departement-level historical the conjunction of two phenomena: the unprece- shapefiles are routinely produced for the needs of sin- dented production of administrative statistics under gle studies, these are generally insufficiently docu- the Third Republic (Desrosieres 1998 [1993]) and the mented and unavailable to the community. recent revival of quantitative history (Ruggles 2021). Furthermore, nomenclatures and shapefiles for more Ongoing advances in optical character recognition fine-grained administrative constituencies remain rare, (OCR) techniques applied to digitized archival and, when they exist, are hardly curated: they are CONTACT Victor Gay [email protected] Toulouse School of Economics (TSE) and Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST), University of Toulouse Capitole, Toulouse, France. Supplemental materials for this article are available at https://doi.org/10.1080/01615440.2021.1937421 ß 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC 2 V. GAY generally neither findable due to lacking metadata, The remainder of this article is organized as fol- nor accessible under appropriate licensing, nor inter- lows: Sec. 2 describes the construction methodology of operable with other GISs, nor reusable in machine- the TRF-GIS, Sec. 3 details the data records available readable format (Ruggles 2018).2 Overall, research in the database, Sec. 4 provides elements of technical endeavors in the context of Third Republic France are validation, and Sec. 5 contains supportive elements for bound to be hindered by the lack of a shared frame of end users, including a walk-through for reference that would not only ease researcher’s efforts map production. by generating economies of scale, but also improve reproducibility and interoperability across scientific 2. Methods studies (Wilkinson et al. 2016; Christensen and Miguel 2018). This section describes the general construction meth- To alleviate these issues and empower research pro- odology of the TRF-GIS (Sec. 2.1), its limitations (Sec. grams in this context, this article proposes a compre- 2.2), and provides historical institutional details for hensive geographic information system of Third each constituency described by the TRF-GIS Republic France: the TRF-GIS. This historical GIS (Sec. 2.3). provides annual nomenclatures along with shapefiles of administrative constituencies of metropolitan 2.1. General methodology France (mainland France and Corsica) from 1870 to 1940—901 nomenclatures and 830 shapefiles in total. The underlying structure of the TRF-GIS builds on It encompasses general administrative constituencies three datasets that are available under open licensing: (departements, arrondissements, cantons) as well as INSEE’s Code Officiel Geographique (COG), the the most significant special administrative constituen- Histoire Administrative des Communes (HAC) data- cies: military constituencies (military regions and sub- base, and IGN’s GEOFLA 2011 shapefile.3 divisions), judicial constituencies (courts of appeal and of first instance), penitentiary constituencies, 2.1.0.1. INSEE’s Code Officiel Geographique (COG). electoral constituencies (circonscriptions), academic INSEE’s annual COGs provide the official nomencla- constituencies (academies), labor inspection constitu- ture of communes in a given year (Lang 2016). They encies, and ecclesiastical constituencies (dioceses). The uniquely identify existing communes through a five- TRF-GIS further proposes annual nomenclatures at digit coding scheme. The first two digits of this cod- the contemporaneous commune level that map each ing scheme correspond to a commune’sdepartement municipality into its corresponding administrative while its last three digits correspond to a commune’s framework along with its population count. identifier within the departement, generally assigned The construction of TRF-GIS shapefiles uses a in ascending alphabetical order. For instance, the methodology that differs from the manual vectoriza- commune of Allonne in the departement of Oise (60) tion of georeferenced historical maps (as in, e.g., holds INSEE code 60009. This nomenclature was LARHRA 2011; Perret, Gribaudi, and Barthelemy first established in 1943 and has remained stable ever 2015; Ostafin et al. 2020): it first reconstructs the since, barring changes in communes’ territorial struc- administrative framework contemporaneous com- tures. To reflect these changes, the COG is updated munes were embedded in, then aggregates these units annually. The construction of the TRF-GIS uses the into relevant constituencies using current communes COGs 2005 and 2011.4 shapefiles. Despite some limitations, this method offers substantial advantages: it provides more precise 2.1.0.2. The Histoire Administrative des Communes results than existing outputs, helps circumvent the (HAC) database. The HAC database provides, for scarcity of annual historical maps, and alleviates the each of the 41,410 communes that ever existed substantial time and resource investments associated between 1801 and 2005, a unique record that contains with manual vectorization methods. By providing a the commune’s dates of creation and subsequent mod- comprehensively-curated common frame of reference ifications, the general administrative constituencies it that encompasses all aspects of the French society, the ever belonged to, its INSEE codification, the evolution TRF-GIS will help create the conditions for a better of its toponymy, and its population counts across cen- understanding of the dramatic socio-economic suses. These records are distributed through http:// changes that France underwent during the seven deca- cassini.ehess.fr (Motte and Vouloir 2007). Constructed des that lasted the Third Republic. by the LaDeHiS and INED (Motte, Seguy, and There HISTORICAL METHODS: A JOURNAL OF QUANTITATIVE AND INTERDISCIPLINARY HISTORY 3 2003), information in the HAC database relies on offi- and 1929. Hence, Voisinlieu is assigned to the cial administrative acts published in the Bulletin des departement of Oise in the base frames for the TRF- Lois from 1801 to 1931 and in the Journal Officiel GIS shapefiles 1870–1929. hereafter.5 Except for a few cases documented in the Commune-level polygons are then dissolved to cre- TRF-GIS source code, communes in the HAC data- ate general administrative constituency-level polygons. base are effectively