historical political boundaries

[Peter Giencke]

All,

This might be somewhat off-topic, but the National Historical GIS Project
(nhgis.org) is doing this for historical (as far back as 1790) US
political/census boundaries (state, county, tract level). Much of this data
is already available (boundary data -
http://www.nhgis.org/data/getBoundaryfiles.shtml and aggregate data -
http://www.nhgis.org/data/getData.shtml).

-pete

PS the boundary application is my own :)

-----Original Message-----
From: UMN MapServer Users List [mailto:MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU] On
Behalf Of Tyler Mitchell
Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2005 11:51 AM
To: MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU
Subject: Re: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] historical political boundaries

Great idea Joe.  I'd love to find some keen students who want to learn
mapping or love history and have them scrape some boundaries out of historic
map images, e.g. from http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/index.html

Tyler


----- Original Message -----
From: Joe Bussell <joe at OTSYS.COM>
Date: Thursday, July 21, 2005 9:02 am
Subject: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] historical political boundaries

> Just for fun I was toying with the idea of playing history back for my 
> son by demonstrating the changing political boundaries.  Are there 
> data
> sets available for political boundaries for the ancient world?   
> How
> about pre-WW1 or WW-2?  How about military buildup like the position 
> of Napoleon's army over time, or the extent of Atilla's military reach 
> over time.  Or Phiilip of Macedon and later his son Alexander's land 
> acquisitions, and the later breakup as the satraps and princes 
> struggled for primacy and the resulting divided principalities.
> 
> Can you imagine watching the world's history playing out in an 
> interactive map application?  This would be very cool.
> 
> Has this been done before professionally or privately?
> 
> Cordially,
> 
> Joe Bussell
>