Sailing with the French - French transcriber

Faculty Member Name: Margaret Schotte
Faculty Member email: mschotte@yorku.ca
Department/School: Department of History
Project Title: Sailing with the French - French transcriber

Description of Research Project:

“Sailing with the French: Labour, Trade, and Mobility in the 18th-century Indian Ocean” is a comparative, transnational historical project that employs novel data visualization techniques to shed light on the understudied French imperial presence in the Indian Ocean world (IOW). The current phase of the project focuses on transcribing 18th-century French primary sources. The DARE Recipient will play a key role in preparing the data for analysis and dissemination.

The 18th century was marked by the inter-imperial rivalry of Britain and France, which played out across the globe. While this is a staple of scholarship on the Atlantic world, the French enterprise in the Indian Ocean world is much less well known. This project will help shift the conventional Euro-Atlantic focus in this history of Anglo-French competition and, therefore, will build a fuller picture not just of the IOW but of global history. Little is known about Europeans, Asians, and others who worked as skilled sailors and marines employed by the French East India Co. (FEIC), or how demand for this labour shifted over the century. What technical and navigational expertise did these men have? And what of other, often racialized, passengers on board these ships? This project will mine archival materials from France, England, and India to give voice to a wider range of maritime travellers, in turn complicating the narrative of French presence in the Indian Ocean.

To analyze and contextualize these understudied bureaucratic records, “Sailing with the French” uses a series of innovative methods. Both comparative and transnational, the project foregrounds the Indian Ocean as a realm of engagement rather than a barrier. Digital humanities (DH) tools will generate new knowledge about the French activities in the IOW. Drawing upon accounts of more than 1200 voyages from the FEIC (1719-1793), the project team has produced a historical GIS database. Mapping the trajectories of vessels, crew, soldiers, and passengers will reveal patterns relating to mobility, health, and the shifting multinational communities aboard these ships. This “blue DH” geospatial analysis will be paired with a narrative case study that delves into rich documents that fortuitously survive from one such voyage. This microhistory will showcase the tight connections among histories of commerce, labour, skill, science and race.

To carry out these ambitious archival and computing goals, the project will train research assistants in archival research, historical analysis, data visualization, and bilingual scholarly communication. This unique combination of methodologies will make our nuanced reinterpretation of the French colonial presence in the Indian Ocean World accessible to more researchers and readers. This is a five-year project, which is supported by a SSHRC Insight Grant. This summer project is phase 2B (building on phase 1 work, which included DARE student projects in summer 2022 and 2023). Now that the project’s database is up and running, this phase focuses on transcribing additional records that will enable us to develop our visualizations.

Undergraduate Student Responsibilities:

Phase 2B of “Sailing with the French” focuses on additional primary source transcription and analysis, now that the project has a relational database up and running. I am seeking an undergraduate research assistant with a strong reading knowledge of French. They will help with transcribing numerous 18th-century manuscripts (some in difficult, messy handwriting or on paper that is in poor condition. A small number of documents are in Spanish.) I will train the student in paleography (reading old handwriting), as well as standardizing and entering the archival material.

Additional tasks will include cleaning data, as well as doing analysis and visualization. The project team (myself, my collaborators, and the summer RA) are developing search queries to better identify individuals in the database, but these data will need to be verified and cleaned by the DARE recipient. We are also working on mapping the itineraries of ships and individuals. The student will also gain hands-on experience with best practices for DH visualizations.

Project tasks include:
1) Manuscript transcriptions. The student may also be asked to locate digitized archival materials to augment the database.
2) Data cleaning, coding, and cross-referencing. The project uses Google Sheets, Zotero, and MySQL.
3) Visualization: explore different methods and platforms for displaying this data, including Scalar and ArcGIS Online.

Depending on time, qualifications, and interest, the student may assist with preliminary data visualizations and maps, which will be created using Scalar, ArcGIS Online and/or Tableau (licensed for York faculty and students), with support from York’s Map Librarian and the Digital Initiatives Team.

The DARE student will have an opportunity to produce a project (poster, blog post, visualizations) on manuscript material or data of their choice. The DARE student will gain concrete skills in primary source transcription and analysis, and will also become familiar with digital humanities practices and programs. The student will also be included in virtual project team meetings, which will provide insights into how technical details and archival findings can be situated in their larger historical context as well as embedded into the diverse scholarship of the IOW (history, anthropology/archaeology, linguistics, and environmental studies).
This summer project builds on the preliminary data importation, cleaning, and analysis, which was completed in part by DARE Recipients in summer 2022 and 2023.

Qualifications Required:

This project requires a student who is an independent self-starter, comfortable with GoogleSheets, meticulous with data entry, and interested in solving paleographic puzzles. Ideally the student will have coursework experience and/or personal interest in several of the project themes: the Indian Ocean World, migrant or enslaved labour, maritime history, DH, HGIS. *Advanced reading knowledge of French is necessary* for this phase of the project. (Knowledge of Spanish is also an asset.)

Approximately 15-20 hours per week. Can be done remotely, with meetings, training, etc. via Zoom; therefore a stable internet connection is required.

---