HGIS, Ghost Acres and Translocal Commodity Histories

Jim Clifford, University of Saskatchewan
Cheryl Troupe, University of Saskatchewan
Stéphane Castonguay, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières

Commodity histories link together localities through trade. This provides an opportunity to map change at different scales and across vast distances. Building off research focused on Canadian timber exports to Britain in the nineteenth century, we are now looking at the history of industrial milling in London and Birkenhead as it relates to agricultural settlement in Saskatchewan, the development of the railways and grain handling port infrastructure in Montreal. We are mapping the process where Indigenous lands were sold or granted to settlers at the quarter-section scale and combining it with maps tracing the development of the Port of Montreal and existing GIS data on industrialization in London. We also have annual crop data for Saskatchewan from 1906 to 1939 and British trade statistics that trace the rapid increase in Canadian wheat imports. The paper will demonstrate how HGIS helps expand the abstract economic history concept of “ghost acres,” made popular by Kenneth Pomeranz, by mapping the actual environmental change and Indigenous dispossession resulting from British reliance on the Canadian Prairies to feed their highly urbanized population.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 49. HGIS at Scale