History and GIS: Railways, Population Change, and Agricultural Development in late nineteenth century Wales Robert M. Schwartz, Ian N. Gregory and Jordi Marti Henneberg 1. Introduction: Historical GIS and National Historical GIS databases Historical Geographical Information Systems, or Historical GIS, has become a rapidly growing field within historical research (Knowles 2005a; Gregory & Ell 2007; Gregory & Healey 2007). Historical GIS is an inter-disciplinary field that involves taking GIS technology, devised in quantitative, data-rich disciplines such as computer science and environmental management, and applying it to the study of history. A major impetus behind the growth of Historical GIS has been the significant investments made by a number of countries in National Historical GISs (NHGIS). Originally these databases would typically contain a country’s census reports and other data for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They contained the statistical data linked to cartographic representations of the administrative units they refer to, together with the changing boundaries of those units. Using a conventional database containing only statistical information, a researcher could search for aspatial patterns of variation and change. Using an historical GIS, however, the researcher is now equipped to identify patterns of change that occur simultaneously over time and across geographic space. Additionally, because all of the data are located in space, they can be integrated with any other data that are also located in space. With historical GIS we can get closer to complexity of change and historical reality. Among the countries that have built or are building NHGISs based on census data, the best developed include Great Britain (Gregory et al. 2002), the United States (Fitch & Ruggles 2003), and Belgium (De Moor & Wiedemann, 2003)i. Such systems are costly because they require not only the entry of census 1 information but also the researching and encoding of administrative boundary changes through time, not to mention myriad challenges along the way. Increasingly NHGISs hold more diverse data sources than censuses and other quantitative statistics. Gazetteers, information on settlement patterns, historical maps, dynastic information, travel accounts and literature are all examples of the types of material that are becoming increasingly common. In some cases, such as in the China Historical GIS (Berman 2005; Bol & Ge 2005) and the German Historical GIS (Kunz 2007), these have been the main emphasis from the start. In other cases it has involved extending a census-based NHGIS into a more diverse system as in the case where the British system when it was expanded to develop the Vision of Britain through Time websiteii (Southall 2006). Is all the effort and money expended worth the cost? This paper offers a strong affirmative answer in two ways. Using data from the Great Britain Historical GIS (GBHGIS) as an example of highly developed NHGIS, (comma) it brings together census data with a database on the development of the rail network derived from Cobb (2006), and a collection of agricultural statistics (Williams et al. 2001) to look at how the development of the rail network influenced population and agriculture in a small but diverse part of Britain, namely the principality of Wales. The paper illustrates the type of substantive results that historical GIS enables by bringing together disparate sources and exploring how the relationships within and between them change over space and time. Computer-assisted GIS is not the philosopher’s stone of course, but it is capable making new contributions to our knowledge of the past, all the more so when combined with other tools in the historian’s kit. 2. The development of the railways in nineteenth century Wales In nineteen century Wales, of what importance were railways in agricultural development? If this question seems “old hat” to specialists, it remains interesting nonetheless because of a gap in the literature. Specialists in railway history rarely give little more than passing attention to agricultural 2 developments, while those in Welsh and agrarian history usually give scant attention railways.(Barrie 1980; Baughan 1980; Collins 2000; Moore-Colyer 2000; Reay 1996; Simmons 1986; Turner 2000; Turnock 1998) In a good effort at bridging this gap, D. W. Howell brought to light interesting connections between railways and agricultural change. He offered telling examples of the great cost savings of rail transport over horse-drawn carting and suggested that such lowered costs stimulated trade and benefitted farmers. There were also negative consequences, he thought. A case in point was the demise of traditional markets, the result of railway agents and dealers purchasing directly from farmers. He concluded that railways reduced isolation and benefitted Welsh farmers in their basic enterprise of cattle raising by cutting the cost of marketing their livestock and thus increasing the volume of trade with English graziers, merchant-farmers who fattened store animals prior to their sale for meat. Railways, he added, also facilitated the migration of workers from rural Wales, and that served to improve the lot of those who stayed on the land.(Howell 1974-5) Both points in his conclusion deserve further investigation and revision. Here the use of GIS and newly available data on railways and agriculture makes it possible to give needed attention to geographic variation in describing the nature and timing of agricultural change. As we shall see, railways played a substantial role in helping Welsh farmers adjust to changing market conditions during the agrarian depression of the 1880s and 1890s. In addition, the effects of rail transport varied geographically, benefitting upland livestock farmers somewhat differently than their lowland counterparts. [Figure 1: The development of the railway network] The dawning of the railway age in Wales began in 1848 with the opening of a line from Chester, England, to the coastal town of Bangor in Caernarvonshire County. Built for a train known as the Irish Mail, whose purpose was to quicken the speed of communications between the capital and Ireland (Millward 2003: 211), the line was extended to Holyhead in Anglesey and south to Caernarvon in 1852. In the same year, 3 the South Wales Railway, which served the industrial districts of Glamorgan and Monmouth, reached the agricultural county of Carmarthenshire. (Howell 1974-5: 46-47). As the network continued to grow in the 1850s and 1860s, new lines served the northern lead and slate mining districts in Caernarvonshire and Merionethshire and others opened in the lowlands of Cardiganshire and along the Merioneth coast. On the southern peninsula, lines reached the main agrarian districts of Pembrokeshire in 1862, an advance that would prove a boon for the county’s dairy and livestock farmers. (BPP 1896: 373, 417, 438). This development is summarized in Figure 1. [Figure 2: Rail lines and terrain] [Figure 3: Elevation Profiles of Railway Lines] The advent of rail transport in central Wales proceeded more slowly, for there railway contractors and private finance faced the most challenging terrain yet to master, as is demonstrated in Figure 2. The line from Ruabon to the coast, for instance, exemplifies the engineering achievements that opened the remote, mountainous regions of the principality. From Ruabon near the border with England, it climbed to over 400 meters and then descended to the seaport of Barmouth. Figure 3 shows that compared to earlier feats of engineering know-how, the Ruabon line was a marvel. In 1859, the first lines in neighboring Montgomeryshire opened, connecting Newton and Llannidloes. Further expansion in the 1860s and early 1870s linked these and other upland agrarian districts with coastal towns such Aberystwyth and with the industrial areas south Wales via a line through Radnor and Brecknock to Glamorgan, and another line through Carmarthenshire to Swansea and Pembrokeshire. By the end of the 1870s, with the partial exception of Cardiganshire, the favored agrarian districts of southern, central, and northern Wales, now all with proximate rail service, enjoyed a level and pace of communication impossible to imagine only three decades before. 4 3. Agriculture in nineteenth century Wales In the 1840s, before the railways arrived, the majority of Welsh farmers engaged themselves in whatever mixed farming that their climate, terrain, tradition, and communications permitted. Although Wales was generally a grazing region, its rugged terrain and poor roads made transportation slow and costly, so isolation was a characteristic feature of rural life. Under these conditions, a considerable portion of the land was devoted to arable farming and cereal production in order to provide sufficient food for local household consumption and livestock over the winter. Trade and commerce were predominantly local in character and centered on market towns in each district. Stock raised for sale were known as store cattle and were taken on foot to feeding or “fattening” regions by drovers. Even as the growing market for food in the industrial southeast opened greater opportunities for Welsh farmers, transportation costs limited agricultural trade between the producing areas and the shops in Swansea, Cardiff, Newport, and Merthyr Tidfyl. The butter trade is a prime example. In the years before the railways, a farmer in Pembrokeshire or Camrathensire could send butter in one-horse carts to Merthyr , a distance of 50 to 70 miles, at the cost of £5 14s. a ton per 50 miles (2s. 3d. per ton-mile), plus a week of a laborer’s time and wages for the round-trip journey. (Howell 1974-5: 45) Railways fundamentally changed this situation. By rail, the same amount of butter could be sent to Merthyr within a day at the rate of 3 pence per ton-mile, less than a quarter of the cost of horse-drawn carting. (Howell 1974-5: 45). By reducing transport costs and greatly facilitating access to distant markets, rail transport helped alter farming practice and agricultural land use, accelerating a shift from cereal production to dairy and livestock farming throughout Britain and Western Europe.