Digitizing Exchange Banks, the British Imperial Matrix, India and the Global Economy and the Rise of Capitalism: The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation
John Curtin McGuire, University of Technology, Australia
Maggie Exon, University of Technology, Australia
m.exon@curtin.edu.au
Keywords: rise of capitalism; British colonial banking; Eastern Exchange Banks; India

While the development of capitalism has been variously described, there is a strong case to argue, as Marx has done, that Industrial capital began to impose itself on other forms of capital in the early nineteenth century, underpinned as it was by the rise of factories and the discovery of the steam engine. Yet, if the expansion of capitalism was driven by the transformation of the process of production, it was realized through the circulation of money capital. Of the various mechanisms that drove this circulation process the banking system was central. Of those banks that emerged during the nineteenth century, a British imperial banking system known as the British Colonial Exchange Banks filled an important function in facilitating trade between countries within and beyond the imperial boundaries. In so doing, they helped link India and associated areas in the Indian and Pacific Oceans to Britain and the imperial matrix as well as to the world economy more generally. In this paper we describe the second of two case studies in which we explore the links between the British Exchange Banks operating in the east and the rise of capitalism in India and elsewhere in the region. In this case study we take the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (hereafter referred to as HKSBC) and examine the HKSBC in terms of space, place, time and money in-so-far as these factors relate to the British Imperial Matrix. In this case study, we endeavor to construct the space within which the HKSBC engaged in the development of capitalism through the circulation of commodities and money capital. In doing so we have, as we did with our first case study of the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China (CBIAC), sought to specify a nodal point for the Bank.

eWilliamsburg: Mapping the Past and Present to Document an Eighteenth-Century Town
Jennifer Jones, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, USA
JJones@CWF.org
Lisa Fischer, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, USA
LFischer@CWF.org
Keywords: Williamsburg; Virginia; colonial period; GIS; census

Scholars at Colonial Williamsburg have been studying Virginia's eighteenth-century colonial capital for more than seventy years. Several generations of historians, architects, and archaeologists have examined the remains of the town and in the process have created a sizeable archive of texts and images that document Williamsburg throughout the colonial period. Much of this material was managed over the years by the Foundation's central library, but many manuscripts remained in the files of the individual researchers, largely inaccessible to others. In 2002, the Foundation received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to formalize information management practices among researchers at the Foundation and to create a GIS-based reference tool to improve access to the material for current and future generations of scholars. In addition to providing map-based Internet access to hundreds of documents and images, eWilliamsburg offers lot-by-lot information about property owners and house occupants in the eighteenth century. Issues of time and space complicated the task of associating information with places. Williamsburg's seemingly straightforward lot plan-established by 1710 and persisting throughout the century-turned out to be a constantly shifting pattern of aggregation and division that often could not be associated with historical information. Moreover, the defined research areas of twentieth-century historians did not always lend themselves to simple mapping techniques. The project team had to devise strategies to accommodate eighteenth-century change over time as well as associating modern research to an eighteenth-century landscape. This paper describes the challenges and methods used in creating a GIS for an eighteenth-century town.

Mapping the Silk Road: The International Dunhuang Projects New Map Interface
James Alexander, International Dunhuang Project, the British Library, UK
jamesa@mediatrust.org
Keywords: Silk Road; International Dunhuang Project; map interface; GIS; image collection

Chinese Central Asia contains a rich archaeological legacy of ancient cites, temples, forts and defensives dating from the heyday of the Silk Road in the first millennium AD. This material is dispersed in institutions worldwide and for the past ten years the International Dunhuang Project (IDP) at the British Library has been coordinating an international collaboration to conserve, catalogue, digitize and research this material and make it accessible via a multi-lingual web site. With over 90,000 images now online and sites in English, Chinese, Russian, Japanese and German, IDP is now looking to enhance the resources to make them more widely accessible and interactive. In 2001 IDP launched a map interface based on historical maps of Central Asia surveyed in the early 20th century and giving users access to site information and finds. This interface is now being completely rewritten to produce a more powerful and interactive tool for a wide audience, from schoolchildren and scholars to seniors. This will not only map the archaeological sites and their finds, but also show details of modern collections worldwide, and explorations of Central Asia from earliest times. IDP hopes to work together with other institutions to prepare an historical gazetteer of the Silk Road and to produce virtual reality modeling of the major Silk Road sites. IDP will give a preview of the new map interface and discuss its plans for future development and potential linking with other projects.

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