By itself, the statement ‘quantitative history does not exist’ (Floud, 1977) is riddled with issues, predominantly the fact that as a methodology, a quantitative approach has been implemented in all areas of history. Taken out of context, the opening comment from Floud gives the impression of ignorance, but this is not the case. In reality, Floud is an advocator of quantitative methods of historical analysis, just not isolation. His leading argument surrounds the insistence that quantitative methodologies are only of use when considered in and alongside contexts such as agency, emotion, and culture and not as a field in itself. With this in mind, it seems, therefore, that quantitative history both exists, and does not exist.

Interpreting statistical evidence in isolation is doomed to failure, as demonstrated by Fogel and Engerman’s infamously ill-fated investigation of the economic viability of American slavery. For decades, the academic world has stressed the importance of the individual, condemning the reduction of lived experience to numbers and tables. Quantitative history encourages the fall into traps of colonialising history and producing ahistorical narratives. However, Time on the Cross demonstrates the extremes of abusing quantitative methodologies; across all historical enquiry, some form of demography, prosopography or psephology will likely persevere, but must be acknowledged in a diverse and inclusive context to provide an invaluable additional dimension to historical analysis, and establish more in-depth conclusions of the past.

To translate this tangled web of Schrodinger’s method of historical analysis, it is worth looking at how quantitative history fits into the study of migration in the 19^th century. Economic push and pull factors are often perceived to be the dominating force of migration, with records on employment, marriage, birth, and death being central to determining how many people migrated and why. This information is significant as it demonstrates the overwhelming influence of the changing economy and some of the impact of the industrial revolution on a large scale. However, much is lost in this analysis. With agency, emotion and the lived experience of the individual being disregarded, the colonialization which plagues historical narrative threatens to permanently damage Digital Humanities. Ignoring elements such as these is outright ahistorical, leading to the development of inaccurate, exclusive, and one-dimensional conclusions. How can the subsequent developments of integration, marginalised communities and sub-cultures be understood without the consideration of agency or emotion? As with all historical study the causes and consequences of movement between hemispheres, countries and cities cannot by gleaned from statistics alone.

A study of statistics alone is not only useless but detrimental to scholarship, tainting perception and limiting understanding of the historical record, condemning historical actors to the obscurity of the past. Floud was right to say that, as an independent form of history, quantitative history does not exist. Instead there is something of an omnipresent methodology of source use and analysis which complements qualitative history in all its forms and lacks purpose in isolation.

Can citizen history be considered an act of citizenship?

An act of citizenship is defined by context. In the most traditional sense, citizenship and acts of citizenship are defined and restricted by boundaries of nation and language. This diametrically opposes the contexts in which citizen history resides: the internet, academia and history. We must consider what is means to be a citizen in the technological age and the world of academia; the conditions of history and the internet can shape what it means to be a citizen and, subsequently, what can be defined as an act of citizenship.

The internet and the academic world are transnational and multilingual, comprising of a multitude of geographies, languages and cultures, transcending the most fundamental element of traditional citizenship, nationhood. Citizen history goes beyond these boundaries, with access to projects being available worldwide. Within an academic context, the volunteers, experts and academics become part of an intricate network of historical communities which develop within and between research projects as well as within the wider world of academia. The work they do contributes to the scholarly world, benefitting a substantial population of the globe.

History is a shared commodity on a global scale and exists outside academia in a number of forms. In recent years, citizen history has improved the quality and access to historical records which contribute to those interested in family history and genealogy. Additionally, commemoration and memory has also been benefitted by citizen historians. This places citizen history in a national, if not local context. Projects surrounding genealogy or commemoration benefit communities on small but by no means irrelevant ways. Despite remaining unnoticed on a wider scale, genealogy and commemoration contribute to tradition and local culture. As discussed, traditionally acts of citizenship are defined by the benefitting of a nation; can this be reduced as well as expanded? In the same ways the internet age and academic world have allowed citizenship to stretch across the globe, the benefitting of an individual community can surely be defined as an act of citizenship.

Contribution is an interesting branch of this question. How important is contribution to the defining of citizenship in this context? In recent debate, it has been argued that a hierarchy exists within the umbrella term ‘citizen historian’. At the core of this is the concept that the unskilled volunteer cannot be defined as a citizen historian due to the lack of historical skills implemented in the methods of data accumulation, such as transcription. Does this impact what can be defined as an act of citizenship? The nature of citizen history is important in answering this question. The reliance on the wider public to accumulate a large, otherwise unmanageable, amount of data suggests the simple volunteer provides the foundation of a project, and contribution plays very little part in what makes something an act of citizenship.

Where does this lie in the ‘real world’? This takes us back to the most annoying question to ever grace this earth; why is history important? In the very least these citizens contribute to maintaining tradition through commemoration and improving localised historical records. More widely, however, these volunteers and experts are contributing to building the academic world in crucial ways on a global scale. So, in a historical academic context, citizen historians help widen the field, benefitting the developments of areas of history such as global history and the increasing interest in exploring how communities and people thousands of miles and years apart are connected. Many questions still remain in what defines an act of citizenship, for example, how important is intention? Does the individual volunteer submitting a draft of transcribed text have the intention of bettering a field of academia? Does the academic conducting a project acknowledge their contribution as an act of citizenship?

In the real world, the work of citizen historians may go largely unnoticed or undervalued but there is crucial work being done, ranging from commemoration to organising archives in a local or national context, to furthering developments in the academic world on an international scale.  

In theory, the digitisation of archives holds numerous benefits surrounding the central promise of Digital Humanities: accessibility. Making knowledge universally accessible has the potential to develop research across disciplines and enhance education of the past. However, dangers are persistent and are entrenched in the problems of colonisation which increasingly plague the Digital Humanities.

This colonialism lies most prominently in the presumption that the digitisation of ‘subaltern’ archives automatically transcends issues of discrimination along lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, nation, and religion. In reality, this assumption is a problematic aspect of shallow decolonisation, part of the attempt of postcolonial societies to create a narrative of inclusion and resolution. In other words, diversity does not equal de-colonisation.

The unrestricted tool of the digitisation of archives follows in the deep footsteps of colonial atrocities. The materials collected, or taken, from indigenous communities leads to artifacts being repurposed for uses and audiences not originally intended as part of a narrative which attempts to convince the world of disconnection from colonial pasts, an issue especially problematic in the United Kingdom where connection to the atrocities of empire are shrouded in ambiguity. Through the process of digitisation, archivists choose what to accept, accession, describe, catalogue, and document; this can be especially problematic when outsiders compile and interpret materials of indigenous communities. Pushed into the perspective of the Global North, the nature of the material is skewed and exclusionary.

With this in mind, digitisation must respect the cultural protocols and traditions of the multitude of cultures across the globe. In reference to both the content and the way in which the content is presented; when catalogued by outsiders, materials are threatened with being removed from their context, pushed beyond traditions of access, and end up reflecting the heritage of those who collected the material rather than those from whom it originated.

The benefits of the digitisation of archives have the potential to build connections between the past and the present regardless of location and can be vital to the development and enhancement of research and education. However, in the interest of both ethics and avoiding the persistence of false representation, the cultural protocols, and traditions of a diverse array of communities must be adhered to, a process which requires the involvement of community members. The Mukurtu archive provides an exceptional example of a platform which empowers communities to manage, share, narrate and exchange the heritage of people previously swept into generalisations, with their heritage often presented in disrespectful contexts to unintended audiences.

Digital Humanities has accessibility at its core and there is a potential for brilliance through the process of archival digitisation. Unfortunately, this potential is threatened by the persistent issues of exclusion, assumptions, and the problematic dominant-subordinate binaries of Eurocentric studies. This is slowly being overcome by projects which acknowledge these issues of colonialism and respect the traditions of indigenous communities, but there is long way to go as funding remains targeted and corrupt and archives remain presumptuous and ambivalent.