Mining Dutch History: researching public debate in the nineteenth century

Dr José de Kruif

Researcher

Research Institute for History and

Culture

Utrecht University

Newspaper (1840)

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Pamphlet production

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Pamphlet production Low Countries 1800-1853

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Years

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ber

of p

amph

lets

Foreign affairs Politics Public Finance/taxes Law Education Public works/floodsPoor relief Defense Varia Colonies Personalia Local AffairsChurch Independence of Belgium Gunpowder ship King Medicine Agriculture and tradeBonaparte Bishop controversy Total

explosion of ship loaded with

gunpowder

Jubilee Reformation

Waterloo

1813 end of rule Napoleon

Bishop controversy 1853

February flood 1825

Cholera

Independence of Belgium

Schism protestant church

Second schism protestant Church

New Constitution

death of king William II, coronation William III

Pamphlet april 1853

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Text fragments considered typical

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We gaan naar den grond met die verdraagzaamheid, en verliezen onze eigene vrijheid terwijl wij zoo dolzinnig ijveren voor die van anderen. We zullen er de vruchten van plukken, als de inquisitie regt spreekt op onzen vrijen grond en de schavotten staan opgerigt voor ons en onze kinderen.“

“Tolerance will be our Waterloo. We will loose our freedom whilst devoting ourselves to the freedom of others. We will only recognize the fruits of our ignorance when the inquisition judges on our free soil and the scaffolds will be the fate of ourselves and our children.”

Bij gevolg kan elk middel, hoe snood , hoe onredelijk, hoe goddeloos ook, aangewend worden: staatkundige verdeeldheid revolutie, burgertwist, inquisitie, brandstapels, vergif, zede- loosheid , koningsmoord,... Ziedaar wapenen in handen der Jezuïten !

“Every means, however nasty, malicious or blasphemous can be used: inciting civil war, revolution, inquisition, burning at the stake, poison, murdering the king …are all weapons in the hands of the Jesuits.”

Digitizing, database

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Scan OCR Text

Database

Meta data

TextminingResults Documents

Access Database

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Extracted results

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Synonyms Jesuits

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Refining extraction results

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Actors 1853

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Text Link analysis definitions

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Opinions on the pope

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The liberal government could count on criticism as well…......

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Categories arguments

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Textmining node and anomaly

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Peer groups & outliers

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Group 1: History & civil disorder

Group 2: History & new constitution

Group 3: No history. Civil disorder

Group 4: Very moderate & 3 outliers

C & R Tree served as a source or not?

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Advantages

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-Gives insight into large number of documents. No need to use just a few and run the risk of not having a representative sample

-Combining advantages of text analysis with statistical techniques.

Possibility to enrich the dictionary of the software with specific domain knowledge.

- New approaches possible

Set-backs

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-The researcher will need some knowledge of the documents and their subject to be able to interpret the results.

-The approach is especially apt for broad research of large quantities of text. The more one zooms in, the less relevant the cluster results will become.

-Supplementing the lexical universe of the software with specific domain knowledge might be time-consuming.

- The researcher will have to be familiar, or will need to familiarize him or herself, with a number of statistic techniques (e.g. cluster analysis).

Mining Dutch History: researching public debate in

the nineteenth century

Dr José de Kruif

Researcher

Research Institute for History and

Culture

Utrecht University