Task 5: Management and coordination

In charge: L. Charles and G. Daudin

Twice a year project meetings

Two internal workshops per year will be occasion to bring the team together and discuss problems and issues faced or envisaged during the project.

Our management of the project will give a large role to collective discussion and consensual decisions. For a large part, management will be tasked-based: we rely on each task leader to organize the work of his team. However, G. Daudin will implicate himself directly in most tasks and will maintain a constant communication between members of the consortium. In addition to this, we have scheduled regular general meetings in which members of TOFLIT18 will share the developments of their research.

Task 4: Going public

Aim: release the integrated database to the public

In charge: Béatrice Dedinger

Deliverable:    Integrated public datascape in the first semester of 2017

Result conference in the second semester of 2017

Long-term storage ready database at the end of 2017

We want to create a public datascape that will be a simplified version of the private one and will not include intellectual property from other projects. That should be done during the first semester of 2017. This public datascape will enable academic and a larger public to have access to visualization of significant aspects of the project and enable researchers to use the data and tools developed by the TOFLIT18 team.

To increase the publicity, we will also organize a “result” conference in the second semester of 2017, along with the publication of a book presenting the data. Most of the scientific production of the project, however, is destined to publication in peer-reviewed publications

Finally, we will prepare delivery to a long-term archive institution (e.g. TGE Adonis).

Task 3 : Interpretative program

Aim: To increase our knowledge of European trade and the European economy

In charge: Guillaume Daudin

Deliverables: Papers from the end of 2014 to the end of the project

The datascape built in task 1 and 2 will be used by the researchers to explore the database created during the project.

All the members of TOFLIT18 are committed to standard of high scientific quality of their output and to ensure optimal dissemination of their works. In order to achieve this aim, English will be the privileged working language for the papers/texts produced by our team and we will target the most visible journals. Besides the obvious generalist top journals and economics, we will target more specifically the Journal of Economic History Economic History Review, European Review of Economic History, Journal of Economic Growth, Journal of International Trade (Economics) and Annales Histoire Sciences Sociales, Journal of Global History, Past and Present (History).

Task 2 : From Data to Research

Aim: to design and produce a “private” datascape for the usage of the members of the project.

In charge: Pierre Gervais

Deliverables: Specifications of the private datascape in mid-2014 / First release end of 2014 / Final version of the private datascape in mid-2015 / Methodology conference at the end of 2015

In the process of adapting the data to research questions, we will have the occasion of putting this database in relation with similar external trade databases for other European countries/regions – Great Britain and the Austrian Netherlands – and also with maritime and merchant databases like MARPROF, NAVIGOCORPUS and the Sound Toll Register databases. To do that, we will have to tackle a number of difficulties regarding comparing merchandise names, weights and measures. The main datascape methodolgy has already been described (see p. 17).

We will start by setting up the specifications of the datascape. That should be done both by social scientists (with a preeminent role for Pierre Gervais) and digital method specialists (Paul Girard and the person we will hire at Sciences-Po). It should be achieved by mid-2014. This will provide at least preliminary solutions to the issues of the specification of the datasources; the way collaboration between social scientists will be organized (e.g. how to organize off-line work) ; what will be the preliminary classification strategies? ; How will links between individual and collective classifications be organized? ; What can of use do we want to encourage? What kind of visualisation tools will be developed?

The datascape will then be developed to allow for a first release to the members of the consortium in the second half of 2014. In 2015, the merchandise datascape team will have to import materials from the transcribed trade database and monitor the use of the datascape by social science researchers. That will lead to changes in the original project. We plan a final release of the datascape in mid-2015.

A workshop centered on the datascape and its potential uses will be organized at the end of 2015.

Task 1 : Collecting the data

Aim: Build up a national and regional database of French trade, from 1716 to 1821

In charge: Loïc Charles

Deliverables: Exploration of the archives and gathering of digital copies of all the documents: end of 2014 / End of transcription: mid2015

The constitution of the French database will include three sub-tasks.

Loïc Charles and Guillaume Daudin have collected and copied documents from some archives with independent funding. With adequate funding, this task may be done by mid-2014.

The transcription will begin in parallel with the above sub-task and with adequate funding, we plan to complete it and have a cleansed Excel file by mid-2015.

Loïc Charles will be assisted by a hired staff working at INED. The latter’s job will be to the sub-contractors through O’Desk and their output, that includes reading the transcripts of the original documents made on Excel, correcting them and import Excel files in the database software we will use.

OFCE special issue and May 23rd 2014 workshop

I am delighted to announce that the OFCE (http://www.ofce.sciences-po.fr/en/) has accepted to publish a special issue (in English) of its in-house Journal about “18th century European trade statistics, existing series and methodological issues ».

The Revue de l’OFCE is accessible online, referenced in Econlit and (for French scolars) in the CNRS ranking list, which makes it a very reasonnable outlet in terms of dissemination/reputation, especially as we will publish methodology papers that usually find no easy outlet.This will be the occasion to publish the papers and questionnaires prepared for past meeting of the 18th century trade group in Lille and various places. We hope this issue will establish itself as an important reference for all people interested in 18th century trade.
To prepare this issue, Loïc and myself would like to organize a one-day workshop to confront 18th century historian with statisticians working with current-day data (e.g. from the statistic department of the WTO). This will take place on May 23rd 2014 in Paris (with the firm belief that anything being organized in Paris in May can only gather crowds).

Meeting December 3rd 2013

Present : Loïc Charles, Guillaume Daudin, Béatrice Dedinger, Paul Girard

Points discussed :

– RICARDO advancement

– Link with the “Atelier de Cartographie” at SciencesPo and their Google project on representing flow data

– Long-term hosting of the database. Huma-Num seems more promising than the external alternatives. Maybe SciencesPo library in link with BE Quali ?

– Date choice for the 1st semester 2014 meeting (24/05/14)

– Discussion of the best way to do retranscribe the data. Waiting for some SMSI news.

– Discussion about how to include the primary data (pictures) in the datascape

– We will ask SciencesPo DSI for 150 Go of shared, backed up, server space for stockpile our data accessible by FTP.

– Planning of regular methodology meetings with at least Paul, Béatrice, Loïc and Guillaume : January 30th, March 6th, April 3rd, May 24th