History

Seshat – Religion Variables

History, Religious History | government, historical-data, religion

This section of Seshat encompasses a wide range of variables, each offering valuable insights into the dynamics of religious coexistence, government policies, and societal attitudes. This comprehensive collection of variables allows for a multifaceted analysis of religions, shedding light on the complexities of interactions between governments, societies, and religious communities. Key variables include measures of syncretism, the prevalence of official and elite religions, and the frequency of violence, both governmental and societal, against religious groups. Additionally, the dataset explores government restrictions on religious practices, property ownership, and the circulation of religious literature. It delves into taxation based on religious adherence, governmental obligations for official recognition, and limitations on constructing religious buildings. Furthermore, the prevalence of widespread religions, including the most widespread and up to the fourth most widespread, provides a nuanced understanding of religious landscapes.

Data type: temporal

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Seshat – Social Complexity Variables

Economic and Social History, History | economics, government, historical-data, infrastructure, money

This section of Seshat provides a detailed exploration of the diverse aspects that characterize past polities' societal structures and advancements. It includes data on infrastructure like roads, bridges, and irrigation systems; administrative and governance systems such as courts, bureaucracies, and legal codes; and cultural and intellectual achievements, including writing systems, scientific literature, and sacred texts. This section also captures economic activities, including markets, trade emporia, and currency systems, as well as population dynamics and territorial extents. By coding these variables systematically, this section helps researchers analyze the development, complexity, and functionality of historical societies, offering a comprehensive view of how polities managed resources, facilitated communication, and maintained social order.

Data type: temporal

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Seshat – Warfare Variables (MilTech)

History, War Studies | historical-data, war, war and conflict, weaponry

This section of the historical database delves into the tools, strategies, and innovations that shaped military capabilities in past polities. It catalogs a wide array of military technologies, from basic weapons like spears, swords, and daggers to advanced systems like crossbows, composite bows, and gunpowder-based firearms. Protective equipment such as helmets, chainmail, and plate armor is documented alongside fortifications like stone walls, moats, and long defensive walls. This section also includes entries on transportation and battlefield support, such as horses, camels, and elephants, as well as specialized vessels for naval engagements. By coding these variables systematically, we aim to provide insights into the evolution of warfare, reflecting how societies adapted their military technologies to defend territories, expand influence, or engage in conflict. This serves as a valuable resource for researchers interested in the history of military technologies and the socio-political impact of war in human history.

Data type: temporal

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Protestants Behind the Iron Curtain: Religious Belief, Identity, and Narrative in Russia and Ukraine since 1945

Economic and Social History, History | Christianity, court cases, interviews, Latvia, Protestantism, Russia, twentieth century, Ukraine, USSR

This project examines the experience of Baptist and Pentecostal communities in the USSR.

Data type: audio, images, text

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Seshat – Economy Variables

Economic and Social History, History | culture, economics, Hierarchical relationship, luxury

This section of the database is dedicated to examining the production, provenance, and consumption of luxury items and goods across different strata of society. The data captures a wide array of luxury items such as precious metals, luxury fabrics, manufactured goods, spices, incense, and dyes, luxury drinks/alcohol, glass goods, fine ceramic wares, precious stones, statuary, and luxury food. These variables highlight the intersection of economy, culture, and social hierarchy.

Data type: temporal

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Participating in Search Design: A Study of George Thomason’s Newsbooks

Economic and Social History, History | books, Early Modern, England, manuscripts, media, non-fiction, pamphlets, seventeenth century

This website offers double rekeyed and fully searchable text of a selection of serials collected by seventeenth-century bookseller George Thomason. As is well known, the Thomason collection of newsbooks is a very significant body of texts. Though many bibliophiles from the period amassed impressive personal collections of contemporary books and pamphlets, none did so with Thomason's assiduity, rigour and care. Thomason regarded serials as a key component of a rich archive of printed and manuscript materials; he acquired around 7,200 of them, approximately one third of his total book collection, and, in placing them cheek-by-jowl with very different kinds of text, privileging the date he received a work above the status of the author or genre of a text, problematized distinctions between cheap unbound pamphlets and the more stable and respectable bibliographic category of the book.

Data type: text

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Piston, Pen and Press

Economic and Social History, History | England, fiction, music, nineteenth century, non-fiction, Scotland, working class

Here you can search or browse our records of industrial workers and literary culture across Scotland and the North of England. We have entries for individuals, for literary works (many including transcriptions of poems, songs or prose extracts), and for associations that sponsored literary activities and were connected to industry.

Data type: audio, spatial, text, video

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Mapping the Arts and Humanities

History, History of Science/Medicine/Technology | maps, research, twenty-first century, United Kingdom

There is significant arts and humanities research infrastructure in the UK, consisting of institutes, centres, hubs, research clusters and networks, and professional, learned and scholarly societies with a research focus. However, much of this infrastructure remains invisible, undiscoverable, and unconnected. This project seeks to identify and connect this complex research eco-system in the arts and humanities through the creation of an interactive, online, open access map. Along with a searchable database and application programming interface (API).

Data type: spatial

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Manuscript Pamphleteering in Early Stuart England

Economic and Social History, History | Early Modern, England, manuscripts, pamphlets, seventeenth century

This project aims to survey the vast hidden archive of early Stuart England's manuscript pamphlets. In collaboration with the British Library, this project will construct a database of manuscript pamphlet texts, bibliographic information, and digital images. This will allow users to search transcriptions of the pamphlets; analyze the distribution of copies through time and space; and see how such materials were presented: large and small, elaborate and plain, professional and amateur. The project will conduct additional research in the private papers of Francis Russell, fourth earl of Bedford, who was a major political figure of the early Stuart era as well as a reader and collector of manuscript pamphlets.

Data type: images, text

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John Foxe’s The Acts and Monuments Online

History, Religious History | books, Christianity, Early Modern, England, sixteenth century

This Variorum Edition concentrates on the four English editions of Foxe's martyrology published in London during his own lifetime: those of 1563 ; 1570 ; 1576 and 1583. There were, of course, many editions of the work published after Foxe's death in 1587 and, like any great and controversial book, the text acquired a dynamic and a history of its own. However, the objective of this edition is to recover Foxe's sources and strategy as he sought to collect and present his picture of the protestant reformation as a transforming experience in the religious history of England and Europe, and its pre-history within the broadest historical and doctrinal context that he could conceive of. It is the dynamics of the text during the twenty years from 1563 to 1583 which this edition seeks to recover.

Data type: images, text

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Glossary