Portrayals of history are never complete, and each description inherently exhibits a specific view- point and emphasis. In this work, we automatically identified such differences by computing time- lines and detecting temporal focal points of written history across languages on Wikipedia. In particular, we studied articles related to the history of all UN member states and compared them in 30 language editions. We developed a computational approach that allows to identify focal points quantitatively, and found that Wikipedia narratives about national histories (i) are skewed towards more recent events (recency bias) and (ii) are distributed unevenly across the continents with sig- nificant focus on the history of European countries (Eurocentric bias). Thus, our work explored how colonial ties shape popular historiography on Wikipedia. We also established that national historical timelines vary across language editions, although average interlingual consensus is rather high. We hope that this work provides a starting point for a broader computational analysis of written history on Wikipedia and elsewhere.
Anhand von formalisierten Nachlasslisten aus den amerikanischen Kolonien bzw. Bundesstaaten South Carolina und Massachussetts sollte festgestellt werden, wie verbreitet Waffenbesitz in diesen Kolonien bzw. Bundesstaaten im 18. Jahrhundert war. Es wurden mehrere Untersuchungszeiträume ausgewählt, für die dann die Grundgesamtheiten der Inventare zusammengetragen wurden. Aus diesen Grundgesamtheiten wurden dann Stichproben gezogen. Die gezogenen Inventare wurden auf Nennung von Schusswaffen hin überprüft, die Ergebnisse statistisch ausgewertet.
"It was in the light of the above studies that the strategy for this project was devised. Originally, in the very early conceptual stages, I had intended to sample all years of the eighteenth century in Massachusetts and South Carolina, but it became clear that the "glorious profusion" of the probate inventories quickly becomes an embarras de richesse. One is faced with thousands upon thousands of such inventories. Thus, I decided to analyze a number of years instead of the entire century, finding the years between 1732 and 1791 particularly suitable and logical at the same time. 1791 was easily determined in light of the fact that the Bill of Rights, including the second Amendment, was ratified in that year. The starting point was much more difficult to define. South Carolina became a royal colony in 1730 after a period of upheaval and administrative chaos, suggesting that year as a significant caesura in the colony's history. In the end, however, the determining factor was the relative scarcity of probate records before that time. Only a handful of inventories have survived from the proprietary period and those for the interregnum number around 400. Only with the onset of the new record series of the Recorded Instruments of the Secretary of State in 1732 is there a solid base of sources available. With the timeframe 1732 to 1791 established, I decided to refrain from using equidistant intervals but rather to pick some years specifically. Particularly, I wanted to see whether the colonial wars of the period had a visible impact upon the amount of firearms listed in inventories. In addition, I chose a small 'control group' early in my timeframe by random selection. I handpicked the years 1752, 1759, 1765 and 1771, 1779, and 1786 to investigate the situation for the French and Indian and Revolutionary Wars, respectively, the longest and most destructive wars on the American continent during the eighteenth century. The random selection process of four more years from the first decade of my timeframe yielded the years 1735, 1739, 1740 and 1743. For these ten years, I wanted to analyze the probate inventories of Massachusetts and South Carolina for the presence or absence of firearms. Additionally, I wanted to be able not only to make inferences about the levels of arms ownership in the colonies and states in general, but, if possible, add a geographic dimension: Did, for example, inventories on the 'frontier' show more guns than those of Boston? Or did South Carolina inventories in areas with many slaves have a greater occurrence of firearms than those where slavery was less prevalent? As inventories frequently do not give the name of the place where the decedent lived, the counties were the only category available as a geographic determinant. In South Carolina, where probate was administered in Charleston for the entire province during most of the eighteenth century, no such determination was reliably possible for the years before 1785.[…]" (Michael Lenz; S. 83f)
Themen: Namen, Namenszusätze, Geschlecht, Staat, Regions-, Ortsverzeichnis, Jahr, Anzahl der Waffe(n), Art der Waffe(n), Anzahl Sklaven, Gesamtwert Vermögen, Fundort im Verwaltungsschriftgut, Bemerkungen.
