Thomas Thévenin

Spatial History: Railways, Uneven Development, and Population Change in France and Great Britain, 1850-1914

A comparative spatial history combining historical narrative, geographical thinking, and spatial analysis of historical data offers new perspectives on railway expansion and its effects in France and Great Britain during the long nineteenth century. Accessible rail transport in the rural regions of both countries opened new economic opportunities in agriculture, extractive industries, and service trades, helping to revitalize rural communities and decrease their rates of out-migration. In France, long-standing economic disparities between the developed north and the less-productive south gradually reduced. These conclusions are based, in part, on the use of historical geographical information systems (hgis) and spatial statistics, illustrating a component of spatial history.

Mapping the Distortions in Time and Space: The French Railway Network 1830–1930

Abstract Accessibility is frequently used in transportation planning to measure the efficiency of new infrastructure in terms of travel time and population served. In this article, the authors apply accessibility concepts based on the geo-historical angle. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationships between population dynamics and the railway expansion from 1830 to 1930. Their approach considers a local scale composed of some 36,000 French communes for the demographic data and more than 28,000 kilometers for the railway network. The methodological framework of this database is based on historical geographic information systems completed by anamorphosis analysis. In this way, they are able to map the changing contours of accessibility from the local to the regional and national scales for historical time.