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Clio and computers: A survey of computerized research in history

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References

  1. NotablyHistorical Methods Newsletter: Quantitative Analysis of Social, Economic, and Political Development, published since Dec., 1967, by the history department of the University of Pittsburgh; and the newJournal of Interdisciplinary History, published by M.I.T. Press (1970- ).

  2. William O. Aydelotte, “Quantification in History,”American Historical Review 71 (Apr., 1966):803–25; Jacob M. Price, “Recent Quantitative Work in History: A Survey of the Main Trends,”History and Theory, Studies in the Philosophy of History, Beiheft 9 (1969):1–13; Richard Jensen and Charles M. Dollar,Quantitative Historical Research (New York, 1970); Don K. Rowney and James Q. Graham, ed.,Quantitative History: Selected Readings in the Quantitative Analysis of Historical Data (Homewood, Ill., 1969); and Robert P. Swierenga, ed.,Quantification in American History: Theory and Research (New York, 1970). The literature of comment is inCHum, Historical Methods Newsletter, Edmund A. Bowles, ed.,Computers in Humanistic Research: Readings and Perspectives (Englewood Cliffs, 1967), and the items cited above in this note.

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  3. A sound critique on the theoretical level is Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr.,A Behavioral Approach to Historical Analysis (New York, 1969). See also Dwight W. Hoover, “Political Behavioralism in American History: A Case Study,”Indiana Academy of the Social Sciences, Proceedings, 1967, Third Series 2 (1967):144–60; George G. S. Murphy, “Historical Investigation and Automatic Data Processing Equipment,”CHum 3, 1 (Sept. 1968):1–13; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., “The Humanist Looks at Empirical Social Research,”American Sociological Review 27 (Dec. 1962):768–71. New Left Historians have largely rejected the social sciences and the new statistical methodology but they have not yet published any major critiques. Urwin Unger, “The ‘New Left’ and American History: Some Recent Trends in United States Historiography,”American Historical Review 62 (July 1967):1262.

  4. Lance E. Davis, “‘And It Will Never Be Literature’: The New Economic History, A Critique,”Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, Second Series 6 (Fall, 1968):75–92.

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  5. William G. Murray,An Economic Analysis of Farm Mortgages in Story County, Iowa, 1854–1931. Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station, Research Bulletin No. 156 (Ames, 1933), pp. 361–424.

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  6. The initial results are reported in “A Statistical Analysis of the Parliament of 1841: Some Problems of Method,” University of London,Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 27 (1954):141–55; and “The House of Commons in the 1840's,”History, New Series 39 (Oct. 1954):249–62.

  7. Merle Curti, et al.,The Making of an American Community: A Case Study of Democracy in a Frontier County (Stanford, 1959), pp. 449–61.

  8. Allan G. Bogue, “United States: The ‘New’ Political History,”Journal of Contemporary History 3 (Jan. 1968):17.

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  9. Bernard Bailyn and Lotte Bailyn,Massachusetts Shipping, 1697–1714: A Statistical Study (Cambridge, 1959), pp. 135–41. The quote is from p. 135. The Hughes-Reiter study is the first computerized work in economic history, “The First 1,945 British Steamships,”American Statistical Journal 3 (June, 1958):360–81.

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  10. This fact is noted in Aydelotte, “Quantification,” p. 807, and Bogue, “‘New’ Political History,” pp. 14–20.

  11. Margaret W. Curti, “Intelligence Tests of White and Colored School Children in Grand Cayman,”Journal of Psychology 49 (Jan. 1960):13–27; Lotte Bailyn,Mass Media and Children: A Study of Exposure Habits and Cognitive Effects (Washington, D.C., 1959), and “Notes on the Role of Choice in the Psychology of Professional Women,” in R. J. Lifton, ed.,The Woman in America (Boston, 1965); Myrtle Kitchell Aydelotte,An Investigation of the Relation between Nursing Activity and Patient Welfare (Iowa City, 1960), pp. 41–123, cited in Aydelotte, “Quantification,” p. 815. I am grateful to Professors Aydelotte, Bailyn, and Curti for providing professional information concerning their wives.

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  12. Sam Bass Warner, Jr.,Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870–1900 (Cambridge, 1962).

  13. William I. Davisson, “Essex County Price Trends: Money and Markets in 17th Century Massachusetts,”Essex Institute Historical Collections 103 (Apr. 1967):144–85; “Essex County Wealth Trends: Wealth and Economic Growth in 18th Century Massachusetts,” ibid., (Oct., 1967), pp. 291–342.

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  14. Clyde Griffen, “Workers Divided: The Effect of Craft and Ethnic Differences in Poughkeepsie, New York, 1850–1880,” in Stephan Thernstrom and Richard Sennett, edd.,Nineteenth Century Cities: Essays in the New Urban History (New Haven, 1969), pp. 49–97.

  15. William O. Aydelotte, “Voting Patterns in the British House of Commons in the 1840's,”Comparative Studies in Society and History 5 (Jan. 1963):134–63.

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  16. Edmund A. Bowles, comp., “Computerized Research in the Humanities: A Survey,”ACLS Newsletter, Special Supplement (June, 1966), pp. 10–16.

  17. The publications, discussed below, are Robert P. Swierenga, “Land Speculator ‘Profits’ Reconsidered: Central Iowa as a Test Case,”Journal of Economic History 27 (Mar. 1966):1–28; Theodore K. Rabb, “Investments in English Overseas Enterprise, 1575–1630,”Economic History Review, Second Series 19 (Apr. 1966):70–81; Thomas B. Alexander, et al., “The Basis of Alabama's Ante-Bellum Two-Party System,”Alabama Review 19 (Oct. 1966):243–76. The dissertations are: Charles M. Dollar, “The Senate Progressive Movement, 1921–1933: A Roll Call Analysis” (Ph.D. diss., University of Kentucky, 1966); and Richard E. Beringer, “Political Factionalism in the Confederate Congress” (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1966).

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  18. Theodore K. Rabb,Enterprise and Empire: Merchant and Gentry Investment in the Expansion of England, 1575–1630 (Cambridge, 1967), p. 133.

  19. A brief discussion of computerized historical research in Europe is “New Ways in History,”The Times Literary Supplement, Apr. 7, Sept. 8, 1966. See especially the essays of J. Kahk, Louis Chevalier, and Keith Thomas.

  20. James J. Sheehan, “Conference on Quantitative Data in Western European History: A Report,”CHum 3 (Jan. 1969):114–16.

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  21. Duncan MacRae, Jr.,Dimensions of Congressional Voting: A Statistical Study of the House of Representatives in the Eighty-first Congress (Berkeley, 1958). The best manual is Lee F. Anderson, et al.,Legislative Roll-Call Analysis (Evanston, 1966).

  22. For partial results see “Parties and Issues in Early Victorian England,”Journal of British Studies 5 (May, 1966):95–101; “The Country Gentlemen and the Repeal of the Corn Laws,”English Historical Review 82 (Jan. 1967):47–60; “The Conservative and Radical Interpretations of Early Victorian Social Legislation,”Victorian Studies 11 (1967):225–36. Aydelotte's methodological caution flag is also waved clearly by George Murphy, “Historical Investigation,” pp. 4–5.

  23. The best known noncomputerized scale study, which probably exemplifies the limits to which sheer determined effort can carry roll-call research without mechanical aids, is Joel H. Silbey,The Shrine of Party: Congressional Voting Behavior, 1841–1852 (Pittsburgh, 1967).

  24. Sectional Stress and Party Strength: A Study of Roll-Call Voting Patterns in the United States House of Representatives, 1836–1860 (Nashville, 1967).

  25. Jensen's review ofSectional Stress and Party Strength is inLouisiana History 7 (Fall, 1967):393–95, reprinted inHistorical Methods Newsletter 1 (Mar. 1968):8–9. George Murphy raises an additional point concerning the randomness of Alexander's sectional pattern (Murphy, “Historical Investigation,” p. 4), and Robert Zemsky questions the comparability of scale scores over time (review inCHum 4 (May 1970):372–73).

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  26. Bogue's study is in progress. Preliminary findings are reported in “Bloc and Party in the United States Senate: 1861–1863,”Civil War History 13 (Sept. 1967):221–41, and “Senators, Sectionalism, and the ‘Western’ Measures of the Republican Party,” in David M. Ellis, ed.,The Frontier in American Development: Essays in Honor of Paul Wallace Gates (Ithaca, 1969), pp. 20–46.

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  27. John K. Folmar, “The Erosion of Republican Support for Congressional Reconstruction in the House of Representatives, 1871–1877: A Roll-Call Analysis” (Ph.D. diss., University of Alabama, 1968), pp. 407–08, andpassim.

  28. Jerome M. Clubb and Howard W. Allen, “Party Loyalty in the Progressive Years: The Senate, 1909–1915,”Journal of Politics 29 (Aug. 1967):567–84. The quote is from p. 583.

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  29. John R. Moore, “The Conservative Coalition in the United States Senate, 1942–1945,”Journal of Southern History 33 (Aug. 1967):368–76. The quote is from p. 373.

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  30. Sheldon Hackney,Populism to Progressivism in Alabama (Princeton, 1969), pp. 209–29, 345–61.

  31. Roger E. Wyman, “Wisconsin Ethnic Groups and the Election of 1890,”Wisconsin Magazine of History 51 (Summer, 1968):269–93. A book that arrived too late to include at this point is Paul Kleppner,The Cross of Culture: A Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics, 1850–1900 (New York, 1970).

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  32. See Samuel P. Hays, “New Possibilities for American Political History: The Social Analysis of Political Life,” in Seymour Martin Lipset and Richard Hofstadter, edd.,Sociology and History: Methods (New York, 1968), pp. 181–227; Michael F. Holt,Forging a Majority: The Formation of the Republican Party in Pittsburgh, 1848–1860 (New Haven, 1969), pp. 1–10, 304–13, andpassim.

  33. Hackney,Populism to Progressivism in Alabama, pp. 25–26.

  34. Thomas B. Alexander, et al., “Who Were the Alabama Whigs?”Alabama Review 16 (Jan. 1963):5–19; “Alabama Black Belt Whigs During Secession: A New Viewpoint,” ibid., 17 (July, 1964):181–97; “The Basis of Alabama's Ante-Bellum Two-Party System,” ibid., 19 (Oct. 1966):243–76. Only the latter essay benefitted from computer-aided computations.

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  35. John L. Shover, “Was 1928 a Critical Election in California?”Pacific Northwest Quarterly 58 (Oct. 1967):196–204; Charles M. Dollar, “Innovation in Historical Research: A Computer Approach,”CHum 3 (Jan. 1969):145–49.

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  36. Robert R. Dykstra and Harlan Hahn, “Northern Voters and Negro Suffrage: The Case of Iowa, 1968,”Public Opinion Quarterly 32 (Summer, 1968):202–15. A similar study by a political scientist is John L. Stanley, “Majority Tyranny in Tocqueville's America: The Failure of Negro Suffrage in 1846,”Political Science Quarterly 84 (Sept. 1969):412–35.

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  37. The best introduction to the literature is thePurdue Faculty Papers in Economic History, 1956–1966, Herman C. Krannert Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Purdue University Monograph Series, Vol. 4 (Homewood, Ill., 1967). The pioneers in computerized economic history are Jonathan R. T. Hughes, Stanley Reiter, and Lance Davis.

  38. Enterprise and Empire, viii-ix. Funding is a problem in computerized research that has received far too little attention. But see Samuel P. Hays, “Computers and Historical Research,” in Bowles,Computers in Humanistic Research, pp. 70–71.

  39. John J. McCusker in his review ofEnterprise and Empire inHistorical Methods Newsletter 2 (June 1969):14–18, accuses Rabb of committing a “fundamental statistical error.” The error was not in generalizing on the basis of the known (although incomplete) data—deleting data would only have accentuated the possibility of error—but rather in stating conclusions too confidently and without warning readers of the possible effects of the missing quarter of the data (see Rabb,Enterprise and Empire, pp. 143–45).

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  40. Robert P. Swierenga,Pioneers and Profits: Land Speculation on the Iowa Frontier (Ames, Iowa, 1968).

  41. Jack E. Eblen, “An Analysis of Nineteenth-Century Frontier Populations,”Demography 2 (1965):399–413.

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  42. Patrick L.-R. Higonnet and Trevor B. Higonnet, “Class, Corruption and Politics in the French Chamber of Deputies, 1846–1848,”French Historical Studies 5 (Fall, 1967):204–24. The quote is from p. 204.

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  43. City directories through 1860, now available on microfiche, number more than 1,600 volumes, according to Dorothy N. Spear,Bibliography of American Directories Through 1860 (Worcester, Mass., 1961). Clarence Peterson,Consolidated Bibliography of County Histories (Baltimore, 1961), lists more than 3,000 biographical dictionaries at the county and city level.

  44. Richard Jensen, “Quantitative Collective Biography: An Application to Metropolitan Elites,” in Swierenga,Quantification in American History, pp. 389–405.

  45. P. M. G. Harris, “The Social Origins of American Leaders: The Demographic Foundations,”Perspectives in American History 3 (1969):159–344.

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  46. Lamar Cecil, “The Creation of Nobles in Prussia, 1871–1918,”American Historical Review 75 (Feb. 1970):757–95.

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  47. The project is described in Stephan Thernstrom, “Computers for Social History: A Study of Social Mobility in Boston,”CHum 1 (Nov. 1966):84–90; and “Quantitative Methods in History: Some Notes,” in Lipset and Hofstadter,Sociology and History, pp. 71–74.

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  48. Preliminary findings of the study, which is to be published this year, are reported in: “Immigrants and WASP's: Ethnic Differences in Occupational Mobility in Boston, 1890–1940,” in Thernstrom and Sennett,Nineteenth Century Cities, pp. 125–61, and “Poverty in Historical Perspective,” in Daniel P. Moynihan, ed.,On Understanding Poverty: Perspectives from the Social Sciences (New York, 1969).

  49. Philip J. Stone, et al.,The General Inquirer: A Computer Approach to Content Analysis in the Behavioral Sciences (Cambridge, 1966). The adaptation is discussed in Ole R. Holsti,Content Analysis for the Social Sciences and Humanities (Reading, Mass., 1969), chap. 7.

  50. A brief summary of Merritt's study is “The Emergence of American Nationalism: A Quantitative Approach,”American Quarterly 17 (Summer, 1965):319–35. The larger work isSymbols of American Community, 1735–1775 (New Haven, 1966).

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  51. Robert Zemsky discusses this type of problem in “Numbers and History: The Problem of Method,”CHum 3 (Sept. 1969): 31–40. See also Lee Benson, “An Approach to the Scientific Study of Past Public Opinion,”Public Opinion Quarterly 31 (Winter, 1967–68: 558. An excellent brief critique of Merritt's book is in George Murphy, “Historical Investigation,” pp. 10–11.

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  52. Bogue, “‘New’ Political History,” p. 25.

  53. Thernstrom, “The Historian and the Computer,” in Bowles,Computers in Humanistic Research, pp. 76–77.

  54. Hays, “Computers and Historical Research,” in ibid., pp. 67–70.

  55. Michael B. Katz,The Irony of Early School Reform: Educational Innovation in Mid-Nineteenth Century Massachusetts (Cambridge, 1968), App. B, pp. 225–69.

  56. Ralph L. Biaco, “Social Science Data Archives: A Review of Developments,”American Political Science Review 60 (Mar. 1966):93–109; Stein Rokkan, ed.,Data Archives for the Social Sciences (The Hague, 1966); Richard L. Merritt and Stein Rokkan, edd.,Comparing Nations: The Use of Quantitative Data in Cross-National Research (New Haven, 1966), pp. 389–402, 419–40. On data archives in Europe see Sheehan, “Conference on Quantitative Data,” pp. 114–16, and Merritt and Rokkan,Comparing Nations, pp. 411–18.

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  57. Lee Benson, “Quantification, Scientific History, and Scholarly Innovation,” American Historical AssociationNewsletter 4 (June 1966):11–16.

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  58. Marshall Smelser and William I. Davisson, “The Computer and the Historian: A Simple Introduction to Complex Computation,”Essex Institute Historical Collections 104 (Apr. 1968):120–21.

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  59. Murphy, “Historical Investigation,” p. 12.

  60. The Jensen-Dollar textbook cited in note 3 is the first effort to meet this need. An example of the kind of problem historians face is the question of the appropriate correlation coefficient statistic for use in popular voting studies—either Pearson'sr or Spearman'sr s. See “Some Comments on the Use of Coefficients of Correlation” in Frederick C. Luebke,Immigrants and Politics: The Germans of Nebraska, 1880–1900 (Lincoln, 1969), pp. 194–96.

  61. Zemsky, “Numbers and History,” pp. 31, 39. Samuel Hays reached the same conclusion in “Quantification in History: The Implications and Challenges for Graduate Training,” American Historical AssociationNewsletter 4 (June 1966):8–11.

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  1. Kent State University, USA

    Robert P. Swierenga (associate professor of history)

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A brief version of this paper was presented before the Humanities session at the Association for Computing Machinery, New York, September 1, 1970. For substantive and editorial advice in its preparation, the author is indebted to Professors William O. Aydelotte, Allan G. Bogue, and Robert R. Dykstra.

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Swierenga, R.P. Clio and computers: A survey of computerized research in history. Comput Hum 5, 1–21 (1970). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02404252

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