A historiographic analysis of visual texts.
Reviewing information graphic methodologies as a means of historical argument.
The following originally appeared in The International Journal of the Book in March 2007. This is the sort of thing that happens when a graphic designer becomes a historian.
Abstract.
This presentation examines the use of visual texts as a medium of communication for historical argument, emphasizing methods for interpretation — including a thorough dissection of several example visualizations — and an analysis of successful visualization methods. The visual text — the visual representation of historical conditions, trends, phenomena, and hypotheses — has been used throughout history, but rarely in the service of it. The visual text can, however, be considered a more effective educational media than the written word; the visual text can not only transcend the overwhelming weight of quantitative data while emphasizing an associated historical thesis, but it can also transcend misunderstandings born of language and literary style to become a truly omnilingual transmission.
In defense of this thesis, a method of historiographic analysis will be proposed, augmenting the critical method used to measure written texts. A number of visual texts will be analyzed, using two classic visualizations — those of William Playfair and Charles Minard — as benchmarks for the comparison of several modern historical visual texts — those of Richard Bulliet, Élisabeth Carpentier, Jonathan Riley-Smith, and the National Geographic. This historiography draws from several historical categories in an attempt to demonstrate the visual text’s value as a means of historical argument and makes a case for the further utilization of information graphic methodologies in the practice of history.
“Information, that is imperfectly acquired, is generally as imperfectly retained; and a man who has carefully investigated a printed table, finds, when done, that he has only a very faint and partial idea of what he has read; and that like a figure imprinted on sand, is soon totally erased and defaced.”
— William Playfair, The Commercial and Political Atlas. [1]
What is a visual text?
The graphic visualization of ideas has been used throughout history, but rarely in the service of it. Copious figurative examples are found in the historical record: primitive cave artwork, pictographic alphabets, and millennia of decorative public artworks aimed at visually receptive masses—illiterate and linguistically diverse populations among them. [2]
And while historians may accept the relevance of the rice-paper map, the bas-relieved roman arch, or the luminous stained glass window as a primary source, a survey of existing historical literature finds that few likewise employ sophisticated graphic techniques for the communication of their own arguments.
Cave Painting, Lascaux, France c.15,000 BCE.
Book of the Dead, Egypt 200-100 BCE.
Arch of Constantine, Rome, Italy 315.
Stain Glass Window, Chartres, France 1150.
The absence of graphic methods from history is especially surprising when one considers two principal challenges of historical communication: the rendering of large volumes of interrelated data into a cohesive, thematic argument and the creation of historical narratives that are effective and—especially in education—memorable. And while many other disciplines employ graphic methods, and while much has been written on the history of quantitative visuals, no suggestion has been directly made for the application of graphic methods to the communication of historical problems. Historical theory does not emphasize such methodologies, typically focusing on the written word and ignoring alternative narrative techniques. Historians are unaccustomed to thinking and synthesizing historical arguments visually and unable to analyze visual texts critically.
A Visual Text is any thematic graphic used to make an argument in lieu of written language alone. This category includes a variety of abstractions in schematic form, including statistical graphics and thematic maps [3] that are “influential in creating and sustaining notions of historical situations.” [4] This expression is meant to combat two common criticisms of graphic media: first, that graphics are contextually inferior to their written counterparts and, second, that they are often inexpertly assembled and lack clear narrative voices. The end-user of the visual text is its Percipient, [5] a relative of the written text’s reader who combines literacy in language and graphic symbolism.
The visual text—the visual representation of historical conditions, trends, phenomena, and hypotheses—is as compelling and engaging a medium of argument as the written word. Indeed, the visual text can arguably be considered a more effective educational media than the written word, not only transcending the overwhelming weight of quantitative data while emphasizing associated theses, but it also transcending language and literary style to become a truly omnilingual transmission.
In defense of this thesis, a method of historiographic analysis will be proposed, augmenting the critical method used to analyize written texts with visualization-specific questions. Second, a number of visual texts will be analyzed, using two classic visualizations—those of William Playfair and Charles Minard—as benchmarks for the comparison of several modern historical visual texts—including works by Richard Bulliet, Élisabeth Carpentier, Jonathan Riley-Smith, and the National Geographic. This historiography will draw from several historical categories in an attempt to demonstrate the universal value of the visual text as a means of historical argument. It will also attempt to refute through example three common academic criticisms of thematic visualizations:
That thematic visualizations are boring;
that they are only for unsophisticated readers; and
that they are unscholarly.
Lastly, a case will be made for the further utilization of graphic methodologies in the practice of history.
A means of historiographic analysis for visual texts.
In this historiography, two genres of visual texts — and combinations thereof — will be reviewed: thematic time-series graphs and thematic maps.
Time-Series Graphs are the most widely used form of information graphic [6] typically representing multivariate data in a purely abstract way along X and Y coordinate scales. [7] As a medium for communicating historical arguments, the oldest extant visual texts are the biographical charts of Joseph Priestley and the economic charts of William Playfair. [8] Time-series graphs are
Thematic Maps are more complicated visual texts. While generals map locate geographic features for the purpose of observing their relative spatial relationships, thematic maps show geographic phenomena in the context of narrative themes — the number of possible themes being virtually unlimited, encompassing nearly every possible discipline from the social and economic worlds, geology and religion, population and disease. [9] First appearing as geological maps in the 1770’s, [10] thematic maps enhance the effectiveness of time-series graphics by adding spatial proportions, either in two or three dimensions.
Both time-series and thematic maps are distinct from other forms of visualization because they depict theses, explicit or implied, every bit as argumentative as their written analogues. As an author structures his or her language to present a textual argument, so too does the visualizer thematically portray variations in related classes of data “so that the pattern or structure of [their] distribution becomes apparent.” [11]
But the visual text, like its written counterpart, is a complicated medium requiring a sophisticated means of analysis. To critique such media historiographically, historians must start with the same questions they might use to judge written texts: What is the purpose of this visual text? What does it argue? Is this visual text based on new evidence or is it a re-conceptualization? How does it handle those sources? How is this visual text unique in its depiction of historical data and concepts? How well does it make its case when measured against graphic, rhetorical, and historiographic standards? What criticisms might be raised against it, both in terms of its argument and its methodology? What questions are left open?
But the critic of the visual text must also ask historiographic questions particular to the nature of the visualized argument. The percipient must judge whether the visual text’s creator has properly balanced statistical and thematic input, just as an author’s must balance sources and narration. The percipient must ask: Is the visual text a total graphic form — a concise information graphic blending all the multivariate elements to create a clear, visual whole readily understood and intellectually meaning ful? Is the percipient left disoriented or confused, unable to decipher the visual text’s intended meaning? [12] Is the visual text honest, representing the information and avoiding issues of deception by omission, by misrepresentation, or by design? Is the comparative context clear and appropriate? Might the sources impact visualization differently than textualization? Is the data set sufficiently large to justify graphic treatment or are graphic methods being used to disguise insufficient quantification? And, most critically, does the visual text “induce the viewer to think about the substance, rather than about methodology, graphic design, [or] the technology of graphic production,” [13] encouraging the contemplation of overall patterns and the examination of very fine details. [14]
By applying this combination of historiographic analyses, adapted specifically to suit the visual text’s distinctiveness while preserving the intent and relevance of textual criticism, the historian can measure historical visualizations and compare them to written texts.
A historiography of visual texts.
The use of thematic time-series graphs as historical tools has a long lineage. That it has not always been used to the greatest advantage, or that it is often simplified to the point of quantitative irrelevance, demonstrates a lack of concretely understood methodology. But that it has been used to great effect either as a component or the entirety of an historical argument will be shown in the following examples.
William Playfair was a graphic innovator hailed by contemporaries and modern analysts as one of, if not the, most influential graphic innovators of all time. [15] Playfair’s critical innovation was his use of multivariate data and the application of significant hypothesis to create thematic graphics — visual texts.
And while some of his graphic techniques enjoyed limited use beforehand, Playfair popularized various graphic methods, notably the horizontal chronological measuring of time, and establishing an approach to historical visualization that would be adapted and applied to subsequent historical arguments.
“Price of Wheat & Wages from 1565 to 1821”, William Playfair 1821.
These methods are demonstrated in Playfair’s classic 1821 visual text, “Chart, Shewing at One View The Price of The Quarter of Wheat, & Wages of Labour by the Week, from The Year 1565 to 1821.” In drafting this visual text, Playfair set out to address the economic relationship between grain prices and labor wages, visualizing trends in both pricing schemes over the span of nearly three centuries, asking the question: has the subsistence purchasing power of the English mechanic increased or decreased over time?
Playfair drew his data from available British government returns. Scrutiny of the chart shows labor wage data extending only to 1810 whereas quarter of wheat market data extends almost until publication, in 1821. His graphic methodology involves the re-conceptualization and comparison of three quantitative, parallel time-series to which he skillfully adapts different graphic methods: The price of a quarter of wheat is depicted as a histogram on a vertical 100-shilling scale across a five-year incremental horizontal timeline; the weekly wages of a “good mechanic” — “such as smiths, masons, and carpenters” [16] — is shown as a progressive line graph beneath the agricultural histogram along the same vertical and horizontal scales; and reigning English monarchs are set in alternating fashion across the horizontal time scale. Playfair’s intent is to create a quickly discernible historical argument that stresses the thesis: “never at any former period was wheat so cheap, in proportion to mechanical labour, as it is at the present time.” [17]
Th price of wheat. (Highlight buy the author)
Wages. (Highlight buy the author)
Reigning English monarchs. (Highlight buy the author)
But, contradicting the praise of much-enamored modern critics, Playfair’s economic argument is not flawless. In visualizing the relationship between wheat and wages, Playfair missed the opportunity to frame the data in a more appropriate context. Visually, his graphic is over complicated, utilizing unnecessary gradients and gridlines that confuse the image. Quantitatively, the separate ascending variables do not readily support Playfair’s conclusion. Certainly, the percipient can compare wheat and wage values at any moment in time, estimating the ratio of quarter per shilling, but if Playfair’s aim was to impress the diminishing cost of wheat, based on laborers’ wages, than this visual text fails to support that thesis. The “Chart” does not lend itself to direct, quantitative comparisons of historical data; the question is not one of direct but of relative cost. By combining raw wheat and wage data to create a buying-power ratio and clarifying whether or not this buying-power was in actual or adjusted denominations, Playfair could have more simply demonstrated his conclusion while addressing earlier periods of greater or lesser buying-power.
“Correlation of Historical Developments with Iranian Conversion Curve”, Richard Bulliet, 1979.
While Playfair’s work represent an economic quantification of history, Richard Bulliet’s visualizations in Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative History represent social quantifications. Indeed, Bulliet’s less complicated graphs are far more effective and elegant by comparison; Bulliet’ s time-series graphs more succinctly represent relative data and avoid unnecessary graphic complication.
“Correlation of Historical Developments with Iraqi Conversion Curve”, Richard Bulliet, 1979.
Like Playfair, Bulliet uses the time-series method to communicate his quantitative approach to medieval conversion to Islam in the period 646ad to 1058 ad. Bulliet’s analysis begins with the examination of a handful of Iranian biographical dictionaries and the detailed genealogies included with many of the entries therein. Tracing these genealogies back to their earliest, non-Muslim, Persian-named ancestors, he uses a set of assumptions to quantify conversion. The result is a sequence of time-series graphics that depicts multivariate data in a very simple, direct way: The quantity and rate of religious conversion is shown as a S-curve percentile graph divided into five distinct convert populations — Innovators, Early Adopters, Early and Late Majorities, and Laggards. Foreign and local regimes, periods of waxing and waning authority, revolutions, notable events, and classically recognized periods are then contextualized into this framework creating a more sophisticated historical picture. Having visualized Iranian conversion, Bulliet applies these same methodologies to five other Islamic territories: Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, and Spain, creating a series of visual texts for each.
This corpus of visual texts forms the basis of Bulliet’s conclusions. First, that regional dynasties were capable of raising armies and breaking away from the caliphate after only a third of the population converted to Islam; and, second, that medieval conversion to Islam was a slower process than documentary evidence suggests, slowing the establishment of Islamic society until the completion of the conversion process.
Bulliet’s reader is left, however, wondering how well this biographic sampling represents the entire population. And once Bulliet applies his Iranian technique to other Muslim territories, wherein similar genealogical data is lacking, his argument grows thin. Nor do his graphics acknowledge the non-Muslim populations in Egypt and Syria that resist conversion.
Playfair and Bulliet also fail to ask more important historical questions with their visual texts. What was the impact of related monarchical regimes on wheat and wages? How do periods of war and peace, famine and plenty, influence these values? What of the purchasing power of non-mechanical laborers such as artisans? These are all quantifiable questions that, if answered graphically, would greatly expanded the value of Playfair’s visual text. Likewise, for Bulleit, was the capacity of a territory to assert its independence against the caliph a factor of that territory’s conversion or of the caliphate’s bureaucratic decline and distance?
But both Playfair’s and Bulleit’s demonstrate an advantage the time-series approach offers the historian: ease of comprehension. Their visual texts facilitate quantitative comprehension even by those unfamiliar with historical methods, economics, and specific histories. Playfair recognized this means of clarifying statistically complex hypotheses otherwise obfuscated by complicated tables and lengthy text. Of his “Chart,” Playfair writes:
I first drew the Chart in order to clear up my own ideas on the subject, finding it very troublesome to retain a distinct notion of the changes that had taken place. I found it answer[ed] the purpose beyond my expectation, by bringing into one view the result of details that are dispersed over a very wide and intricate field of universal history ... I found the first rough draft g[a]ve me a better comprehension of the subject than I had learnt from occasional reading, for half of my lifetime. [18]
Thematic maps represent a methodological sophistication over their time-series counterparts. While thematic maps and time-series graphs are both means of multivariate abstraction and comparison, thematic maps allow for the expression of quantitative trends across the geographic plane, a perception tool directly relative to the physical world.
Charles Joseph Minard provides us with the classic model of a thematic map. His 1869 maps of Napoleon’s 1812ad Russian campaign and Hannibal’s 218bc crossing of the Alps not only dramatically depict their relative subjects visually, but also introduce a variety of visual methods.
With his Napoleon map, Figurative map of the successive losses in men of the French Army in the Russian Campaign 1812-1813, Minard attempted to demonstrate the devastating loss of life suffered by Napoleon’s Grand Army during its 1812 Russian Campaign, a human catastrophe that Minard felt was poorly communicated textually.
“Figurative map of the successive losses in men of the French Army in the Russian Campaign 1812-1813”, Charles Joseph Minard, 1869.
The graphic methods Minard employs are simple, elegant, and descriptive. In the Napoleon map, six levels of historical information are described in one powerful design — geography, time, temperature, the course and direction of the army’s movement, and the quantity of troops remaining with Napoleon’s force. The method Minard uses to demonstrate the diminishing human quantity — gold and black paths, their widths relative to the size of the army at a rate of one millimeter to every 10,000 men — relates directly to flanking movements, river crossings, battles, and, during the retreat, a time series graph of the plummeting winter temperatures. This combination of data creates a visual narrative describing how the 422,000-man French force set out from Poland in 1812, crossing the Polish-Russian border near the Niemen River, and how the 100,000 men that made it to a deserted Moscow, through battle, attrition, natural frontier, and the harsh Russia winter, dwindled so rapidly that by the time Napoleon’s Grand Army returned in 1813 only 10,000 men remained.
Geography. (Highlight buy the author)
Temperatures. (Highlight buy the author)
Invading population. (Highlight buy the author)
Retreating population. (Highlight buy the author)
Certainly, the loss of life Minard depicts was not unknown to his contemporaries. But it may have been underappreciated. A look at Minard’s sources for this map [19] reveals numerous sources that, while quantitative and honest, are ineffective in stressing the disaster’s totality. Minard’s visual text, on the other hand, was appreciated for its visual and humanistic effectiveness by both contemporary and modern
critics: Étienne-Jules Marey said that Minard’s Napoleon map “def[ied] the pen of the historian by its brutal eloquence” [20] and Edward Tufte described it as what “may well be the best statistical graphic ever drawn.” [21]
But Minard’s Napoleon map is even more striking when compared to two analogues: A modern, more conventional depiction of Napoleon’s campaign and Minard’s supplemental map of Hannibal’s march across the Alps.
“The Russian Campaign 1812-1813”, Jean Claude Quennevat, 1966.
“Figurative map of the successive losses in men of the army that Hannibal drove through Spain into Italy by crossing Gaul (according to Polybius)”, Charles Joseph Minard, 1869.
In Jean Claude Quennevat’s Atlas de la Grande Armée, the Russian campaign is depicted with an almost identical geographic scale but without any of the narrative. While such a map is routine in military histories, it lacks the thematic quality necessary to define it as a visual text — no relationships are proposed, no hypotheses are tested. The percipient is left with no appreciation of the loss of human life or of the impact of weather and geography. Only the mundane details of movement and siege are overlaid upon the map. Compared to Minard’s depiction of this same campaign, Quennevat’s graphic is an empty chart.
However, by comparing the Napoleon map to its companion, Figurative map of the successive losses in men of the army that Hannibal drove through Spain into Italy by crossing Gaul, the French disaster is even more vividly described and Minard’s graphic methodology justified.
In his Hannibal map, the diminishing-width visualization method is used again, depicting Hannibal’s 92,000-man force as it passed through Spain, Gaul, and Italy. Whereas the Napoleon map demonstrated the devastation of the Russian winter, here the percipient witnesses Hannibal’s force shrink from 46,000 to 26,000 over the course of its 14-day transmission of the Alps. But the Hannibal map’s argument, by itself, is a weaker one. Based on the extant works of Polybius and Larauza, [22] its argument is less dramatic and relies on its sources with less analysis. But when viewed together with the Napoleon map — as the Hannibal map was originally printed — and by juxtaposing the under-appreciated French disaster with the famous Carthaginian one, the Hannibal map reinforces the dramatic losses of the French Army.
Minard’s techniques — specifically the use of colored bands to proportionally represent migrant populations over time and distance — are a uniquely French thematic innovation rarely imitated since. [23] Perhaps this lack of imitation is a result of the technique’s inherent geographic inaccuracy. The oversimplified geography of eastern Russia is also problematic. So few details are present that many percipients unfamiliar with the region might lack clear understanding. The Hannibal map, by comparison, does an excellent job orienting the percipient both in terms of geography and compass direction.
Élisabeth Carpentier does not suffer such criticism in her much-cited thematic map “Essai de Représentation de la Pest Noire en Europe Occidentale et Centrale” (Representation of the Black Death in Western and Central Europe). This remarkable visual text portrays the spread of the Black Death as a component of her historical research concerning the plague and related problems in European history.
“Essai de Représentation de la Pest Noire en Europe Occidentale et Centrale”, Élisabeth Carpentier, 1962.
“The Spread of the Black Death in Europe”, William H. McNeill, 1976.
Carpentier’s map is based upon a systematic reexamination of chronicle sources augmented by a new methodological use of indirect documents, specifically looking at official texts and their descriptions of the “appearance and spread of the epidemic, reactions of the populations, attitude of the state, during and after the catastrophe, administrative disorganization, depopulation of the cities and countryside, price inflation and especially wages.”[24]
“The Spread of the Black Death”, James Burke, 1978.
Her visual methodology is typified by a series of dated, curved lines illustrating the spread of the Black Death across the European landscape at six-month intervals. Beginning with the plague’s 1347 arrival in Europe, the “Essai” details the cities and regions that were both infested and spared. And while this thematic map does not depict the variety of information seen in Minard’s examples, it displays a much more exhaustive and significant scholarship. The scale of geography and demographics analyzed in this classic Annaliste visualization make its impact all the more profound. At a glance, the percipient is quickly and easily able to gauge the continental phenomenon.
Reproductions and variations on Carpentier’s thematic map further demonstrate its communicative value, even if they do not always synthesize its elegance or detail.
William McNeill’s reproduction of this map in Plagues and Peoples loses little of the detail and preserves the original’s thematic narrative. Indeed, the only omission apparent in McNeill’s variation is a level of geographic complexity. McNeill does include those rivers that appear to have impacted the movement of the plague, but both Carpentier and McNeill miss an opportunity by omitting the Swiss Alps — an examination of the maps show a slower progress of the plague through this region that might relate to topography. They also omit mortality statistics. While regions that were spared the plague appear on both versions, the percipient is left to discover what mortality was experienced in those regions affected.
James Burke’s Connections variation of Carpentier’s map represents a departure from the original to the extent that the graphic is rendered historically meaningless. While Burke does add color and a suggestive use of gradation, he abandons nearly all of the geographic details. What is more, he adds scant detail to the spread of the plague, placing Stockholm and Iceland in the context of Carpentier’s research. The extension of the advancing plague through regions Carpentier clearly identifies as “partially or completely saved by the plague” [25] represents a costly subtraction and subsequent error. Even if Burke’s version could subsist in absence of geographic and urban detail, it clearly does not succeed in reference to this most flagrant revision.
Historians examining visual methods should not believe, however, that sheer quantities of data create sufficiently sophisticated graphics. Case in point is Jonathan Riley-Smith’s map, “Recruitment for the First Crusade, 1095–1103,” a visualization of copious quantification that nonetheless does not communicate a sophisticated visual argument.
“Recruitment for the First Crusade, 1095–1103”, Jonathan Riley-Smith, 1997.
Through an exhaustive look at charters, chronicles, letters, and literary accounts of the First Crusade, Riley-Smith builds a significant database of 791 certain, probable, and possible crusaders. His written text asks the questions: Who went on the First Crusade? Why did they go? By what means and with whom? But his visualization falls far short of answering these questions — indeed, only the first question is even partially answered by this graphic.
Pope Urban’s recruitment campaign route, Jonathan Riley-Smith, 1997.
Proposed combination of demographic map and Pope Urban’s recruitment campaign, by the author.
Riley-Smith’s map is a significant work in several respects: He forgoes the use of concrete political geography often vague in medieval cartography. Also, the percipient is able to rapidly determine crusader origins, urban and regional. But this graphic falls short of becoming a visual text by not including other data that might have answered other questions posed by the framing text. For instance, Riley-Smith discusses preaching campaigns for the crusade and their results but he does not graphically illustrate this relationship. Nor does he use the visualizations to depict the variety of the crusaders and their organization into various armies. This is surprising because his other works have addressed these related issues. A combination of these data sets could create a convincing thematic information graphic answering many of his established questions in one elegant historical visualization.
In The Atlas of the Crusades, edited by Riley-Smith, multiple recruiting centers and the recruitment campaign for the First Crusade are graphically depicted across a map of France. And while this map also falls short of becoming a rich thematic map, a simple combination of this information with the demographic scholarship depicted “Recruitment for the First Crusade, 1095–1103” would help build an argument for the impact of crusader recruiting. Of course, this example does not represent a perfection of the argument — many questions remain: that of crusader organization into armies, in particular. But already a visual text that combines large quantities of data with related variables to ask historical questions begins to develop.
As has been shown above, visual texts can depict complex historical phenomena quickly, easily, and with a high degree of clarity if they treat their multivariate content appropriately and with sophistication. The above examples also show various levels of discrete information: changes in population, economics and politics, movement across geography, changing areas of influence, the effects of combat, and variations of causality. Can a visual text, however thematic or detailed, communicate all of these variables in a single visualization?
National Geographic’s Battles of the Civil War is a sweeping visual text, encompassing the entirety of the war in a single thematic map and an overlaid time-series histogram. In terms of sophistication, this thematic map represents a significant improvement over the visual texts of Minard and Carpentier — by depicting a broader scope of military and human activity over a comparatively large geography while increasing, rather than decreasing, the amount and detail and data visualized.
“Battles of the Civil War”, National Geographic, 2005.
In a Southern regional context, the map displays a bewildering number of historical events and conditions: land battles, ranging from the decisive to the minor; significant naval engagements; land campaigns and armed pushes by both Confederate and Union forces; the dates and locales of captured Confederate territory; Confederate and Union areas of political control; and, perhaps most significantly, the human cost and strategic decisiveness of every significant battle of the war.
The result is an image of the Civil War that rivals any written text in terms of historical narrative while surpassing them in terms of the immediacy and ease of communication. At a glance, the density and size of numerous battle indicators shows the most disputed regions and the most significant conflicts. Similarly, the graphic depictions of major military campaigns and their impact on Confederate control are immediately apparent.
This visual text achieves its most profound conclusion in the coordination of the thematic map with the time-series of the human cost of conflict. As Minard showed the Russian winters impact on retreating French forces, so too does Battles of the Civil War reveal the human toll of significant battles indicated on the thematic map. By comparing the enormous quantity of lives lost by sides, the percipient, can discern Gettysburg’s sudden escalation in carnage and the enormous human cost of Grant’s strategies.
Map detail.
Human toll.
Perhaps only if the human cost had been directly incorporated into the geography might this thematic map better communicate the true cost of the war. Indeed, the source for the battlefield casualties and their significances is the same — the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission’s 1993 Congressional report — begging the percipient to ask why are these values were not depicted in tandem? A Minardian approach, that of a diminishing scaled paths representing individual armies, would not have been practical on a thematic map of this scale and complexity. But perhaps a more concise means of depiction is conceivable to help reinforce in a single graphic space the human toll and the strategic history of the war.
Such a complicated visual text is likely only possible because of its large format, 24 by 36 inches, computerized rendering, and high-quality printing. Nonetheless, this visual text, like those of Bulliet, Carpentier, Minard, and Playfair, makes a compelling case for the medium’s ability to present historical situations and arguments on the large scale and over the longue durée.
A case for the further utilization of visual texts in history.
This analysis of a handful of visual texts does not suggest that every historical subject is suitable for visual translation. But even critics of visualization must acknowledge the ability of basic information graphics to rapidly and easily communicate concepts otherwise only discernable through an extensive use of words. That a more sophisticated visual methodology exists, and has existed for centuries, should remind historians that alternative or supplemental argumentative mediums are available that can convey complex, multivariate, historical themes with rapidity and clarity.
Time-series graphics, such as those of Playfair and Bulliet, demonstrate a visual methodology suitable for the presentation of historical trends. Theirs are not simple line graphs or histograms — Playfair and Bulliet’s visual texts represent deceptively simple but accessible historical arguments that absolve both the historian and his or her reader from the tedium of impenetrable tables. Likewise, the thematic maps of Minard, Carpentier, and The National Geographic represent a more sophisticated approach that allows for the contextualization of theses into a real-world context. These are not simple maps, but rather sophisticated visual arguments overlaid on appropriate geography that are capable of communicating vast amounts of information in great detail.
With the advent and dissemination ever more sophisticated and user-friendly graphic-generation and presentation software, the stage is set for the proliferation of visual texts in the classroom, in journals, in texts, and as stand-alone theses. Consider the graphic potential overlooked by Eugen Weber in his dramatic introduction to The Hollow Years:
The 1930s begin in August 1914. For fifty-one months thereafter, 1,000 Frenchmen were killed day after day, nearly 1 of every 5 men mobilized, 10.5 percent of the country’s active male population. That was more than any other Western belligerent would suffer: The British counted half as many dead and missing ... About 1,400,000 French lost their lives; well over 1,000,000 had been gassed, disfigured, mangled, amputated, left permanent invalids ... Half of the 6,500,000 who survived the war had sustained injuries. Most visible, 1,100,000, were those who had been evidently diminished and were described as mutilés.” [26]
As eloquent as Weber’s language may be, a visual depiction could better show the relationships of French and British dead, highlighting the true nature of casualty. Consider the impact of such a thematic image: The percipient would be left with a vivid and clear understanding of what they had seen. Unlike Playfair’s “figure imprinted on sand ... soon totally erased and defaced,” [27] such a visual text might persist in the percipient’s imagination.
In crafting well-conceived visual texts, as in crafting well-planned written texts, the historians must, above all other considerations, show the data. Frame it in a thesis, a narrative quality, and let the visualization tell the story. They must use text, thematic maps, and time-series graphs to show relationships and describe trends. They must preserve balance, proportion, and scale without introducing unnecessary complexity — as the writer avoids superfluous language, so too should the graphic historian avoid unnecessary decoration. [28] As Edward Tufte succinctly describes this process: “What is to be sought ... is the clear portrayal of complexity. Not the complication of the simple ... to give visual access to the subtle and the difficult — that is, the revelation of the complex.” [29]
Challenges remain for the historian applying visual methods to their subjects. To visualize the whole spectrum of historical problems, historians must become innovative and careful, creating accurate depictions of the past without ideological bias. They must learn to think visually, both in term of quantitative values and abstract concepts defined neither by linear data or geography. “There are countless ways to see Time and History, and countless varieties of spatial shapes to be filled by those confusing names and dates.” [30]
This is not a repetition of the cliché, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” but instead a reminder that sometimes a thousand words are too many and, too often, unnecessary.
References.
Playfair, William, The Commercial and Political Atlas [microform], (London: No Publisher, 1786), 3.
Funkhouser, H Gray, “Historical Development of the Graphical Representation of Statistical Data,” Osiris, Vol. 3 (1937), 269-70.
Friendly, Michael and Daniel J. Denis, “Milestones in the History of Thematic Cartography, Statistical Graphics, and Data Visualization,” (June 19, 2005), http://www.math.yorku.ca/SCS/Gallery/milestone (accessed October 11, 2005), 2
Black, Jeremy. “Historical Atlases,” The Historical Journal, Vol. 37, No. 3 (September, 1994), 644.
Robinson, Arthur H. and Barbara Bartz Petchenik, The Nature of Maps: Essays Toward Understanding Maps and Mapping, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1976), 23.
The terms information graphic, common to the graphic design discipline, and visual text, a term suggested herein to describe such a graphic’s role in scholarship, are used interchangeably throughout this essay to decribe multivariate thematic graphics.
Tufte, Edward R. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, (Cheshire, California: Graphic Press, 1983), 28.
Costigan-Eaves, Patricia and Michael Macdonald-Ross, “William Playfair (1759-1823)” Statistical Science, Vol. 5, No. 3 (August 1990), 325.
Robinson, Arthur H. Early Thematic Mapping in the History of Cartography. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), 16.
Funkhouser, H Gray. “Historical Development of the Graphical Representation of Statistical Data,” Osiris, Vol. 3 (1937), 299.
Robinson, Arthur H. Early Thematic Mapping in the History of Cartography. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), 16.
Dent, Borden D. “Visual Organization and Thematic Map Communication,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 62, No. 1 (March, 1972), 81.
Tufte, Edward R. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, (Cheshire, California: Graphic Press, 1983), 13.
Ibid. 16.
Costigan-Eaves, Patricia and Michael Macdonald-Ross, “William Playfair (1759-1823)” Statistical Science, Vol. 5, No. 3 (August 1990), 318.
Playfair, William, A Letter on Our Agricultural Distresses, Their Causes and Remedies [microform], (London: Printed for William Sams, 1821), 29.
Ibid. 31.
Playfair, William, cited in Costigan-Eaves et al, 319-20.
Tufte, Virginia and Dawn Finley. “Sources for Minard’s Map of Hannibal’s Campaign Sources,” (Edward Tufte: New ET Writings, Artworks & News), http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/minard-hannibal (accessed October 11, 2005).
Marey, Etienne-Jules. La methode graphique dans les sciences expérimentales et principalement en physiologie et en médecine [microform], (Paris: G. Masson, 1878).
Tufte, Edward R. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, (Cheshire, California: Graphic Press, 1983), 40
Tufte, Virginia and Dawn Finley. “Sources for Minard’s Map of Hannibal’s Campaign Sources,” (Edward Tufte: New ET Writings, Artworks & News), http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/minard-hannibal (accessed October 11, 2005).
Funkhouser, H Gray, “Historical Development of the Graphical Representation of Statistical Data,” Osiris, Vol. 3 (1937), 301.
Carpentier, Élisabeth. “Autour de la Pest Noire: Famines et Épidémies dans l’Histoire de XIVe Siècle,” Annales: Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, Vol. 17 no5 (September-October 1962). Translation by the author.
Ibid. 1070-1. Translation by the author.
EugenWeber, Eugen. The Hollow Years: France in the 1930s. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1994), 11.
Playfair, William, The Commercial and Political Atlas [microform], (London: No Publisher, 1786), 3.
