"Doing" Digital History

Throughout this project, I have been thinking about the implications of my work and digital history at-large on the historical field. What can this project bring to the table, in terms of both the treatment of the Coolie Trade by historians thus far as well as in terms of what role digital history can play in contributing to the historical profession and maybe more importantly, outside academia. 

A definition of digital history may be useful in weighing the goals and efficacy of this project. This definition from the AHA and William G. Thomas III frames the topic in a very comprehensive manner:

Digital history might be understood broadly as an approach to examining and representing the past that works with the new communication technologies of the computer, the internet network, and software systems. On one level, digital history is an open arena of scholarly production and communication, encompassing the development of new course materials and scholarly data collection efforts. On another level, digital history is a methodological approach framed by the hypertextual power of these technologies to make, define, query, and annotate associations in the human record of the past. To do digital history, then, is to digitize the past certainly, but it is much more than that. It is to create a framework through the technology for people to experience, read, and follow an argument about a major historical problem. (Source)

Within this definition, there is one point that I feel most closely relates to what I am working towards in this project. The "hypertextual power" to "make, define, query, and annotate associations" is, in my mind, the greatest strength of the new digital landscape as it relates to conveying history in a new manner.

There is a obvious need to provide history in a manner that is accessible without lowering the quality of the information historians have gathered and interpreted. While traditional approaches to history that are defined by long-form research articles or monographs are entirely necessary and will most likely remain the bedrock of the profession, there is a serious need for the profession to recognize the contributions of non-traditional methodologies that can yield important, albeit different in nature, insights.

In my project, the intent has been to make and annotate those "associations" referenced by Thomas. By bringing the data of the Coolie Trade into a public and digital setting, one can present this information in models that would be wholly impossible or at least not nearly as powerful in their reach and dynamism if they were left in their original form either as raw data or simple, static visuals. Historians and laypeople can both get meaningful knowledge from the data represented in a visual manner. For the historian, they may see a trend or anomaly that sparks further research. For the layperson, they may learn about a historical phenomenon that was previously unknown to them, either because of a lack of information available publicly or due to the way that information was presented previously (e.g. in a scholarly article rather than visuals on a website).

tl;dr Digital History adds an alternate manner of understanding and representing historical research that is sorely needed given the status quo of what is termed "authoritative" within the profession. It has the power to expand the audience of historical scholarship beyond the profession itself and engage the public more fully.