Navigating the Netherlands of 1832 with renewed HisGIS: every plot of land has a story to tell

Delve into the Netherlands’ oldest land registry, containing information on some 3 million plots: who lived where, what land did people own, and what was it used for? Thanks to new funding, the HisGIS.nl platform has now been significantly improved in terms of transparency and user-friendliness, and made accessible to a wider audience. More than twenty years ago, the Fryske Akademy launched the HisGIS project; now, the KNAW Humanities Cluster, together with the International Institute of Social History (IISG), has further developed the platform within the national research infrastructure. On Tuesday 22 September at 10.00 am, the updated HisGIS will be launched at the usual address.

What is HisGIS?

HisGIS (Historical Geographical Information System) was launched over twenty years ago at the Fryske Akademy (Frisian Academy). The aim was to digitise the oldest land registry (1812–1832) for Friesland and the Northern Netherlands on a plot-by-plot basis, and to make additional historical and archaeological information visible on such a digital map, plot by plot.

By linking various datasets – ranging from professions, medieval gallows and the development of tenancy arrangements to income, social segregation and mobility in nineteenth-century inner cities, an infrastructure is being created for the analysis and presentation of historical geographical data for the Netherlands, based on the smallest geographical unit: the plot.

For the entire heritage sector

HisGIS.nl is relevant to the entire heritage sector: researchers, archaeologists, policymakers, museums and archives, local history societies and TimeMachine projects, education, and anyone with an interest in their own neighbourhood or family history.

But what can you actually do with it? What kind of research can be carried out into:

- biodiversity and landscape: by comparing nineteenth-century maps with current land use, ecologists can map how woods, heathland and streams have developed – crucial for nature conservation and archaeological research.

- socio-economic history: which neighbourhoods were densely populated and poor, where did urban smallpox epidemics strike hardest, and how were social inequalities reflected in who owned what land?

- genealogy and family history: individuals can look up which houses and fields their ancestors owned, simply from home on their own computer.

The basis of HisGIS

The basis of HisGIS lies in the 1832 Land Registry, which covers the whole of the Netherlands. The design of HisGIS stems from a project launched in 1988 by Hans Mol and Paul Noomen (Fryske Akademy): the Cadastral and Pre-cadastral Atlas of Friesland. This was an analogue publication, published in 17 volumes between 1988 and 2003.

In 1998, work began on digitising the Frisian sections of the 1832 Land Registry, a project that was not completed until 2005. Subsequently, numerous new maps and digital information layers were added. The methodology and design of the digital Frisian HisGIS were pioneering and based on the technical capabilities of the time. Between 2016 and 2019, work began on re-georeferencing the 1832 map so that it could serve as a basis for the 1887 Land Registry. The entire process of refinements ultimately meant that the map was ready by early 2020.

Other provinces

Once the province of Friesland had been successfully digitised, the other Dutch provinces were approached by the HisGIS project team at the Fryske Akademy. The province of Groningen was the first to be incorporated into the HisGIS system in 2010, followed by the other provinces: Utrecht (2011), Overijssel (2012), Noord-Holland (2013), Drenthe (2016), Noord-Brabant (2017), Gelderland (2018), Limburg (2019), Zeeland (2020) and Zuid-Holland (2020).

Due to the growing interest in Spatial Humanities, the success and significance of HisGIS were recognised by the KNAW, which proposed, in collaboration with the Fryske Akademy, to integrate HisGIS into a national digital research infrastructure. As HisGIS had, in the meantime, grown beyond the scope of the Fryske Akademy’s research remit through its expansion to cover all provinces, this proposal was warmly welcomed.

Transfer of HisGIS from Friesland to the national level

On 21 October 2024, the Fryske Akademy and the KNAW Humanities Cluster signed a cooperation agreement to confirm the integration of the Historical-Geographical Information System into the national infrastructure. The agreement was signed by Leo Lucassen (Director of the International Institute for Social History, on behalf of the KNAW Humanities Cluster) and Nelleke IJssennagger-van der Pluijm (Director-General of the Fryske Akademy).

With the transfer of the HisGIS data, software and code to the KNAW Humanities Cluster, further steps could be taken to roll out the infrastructure across the Netherlands and thus integrate it into CLARIAH, the national research infrastructure for the humanities in the Netherlands.

The HisGIS quality boost was made possible in part by funding from the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands/Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.

Driven by volunteers

The HisGIS.nl website would not exist without the tireless efforts of volunteers. Thanks to the funding, support for volunteers has been stepped up and there is now more scope for sharing knowledge amongst themselves, both during the annual volunteers’ meeting and on an ongoing basis via online video and chat channels. Many new volunteers have now found their way to the project. HisGIS is still actively seeking new people to improve the quality of the data and add new data. Anyone interested can sign up via the website.

This quality boost has been made possible in part by funding from the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands/Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. HisGIS is a project of the KNAW Humanities Cluster in Amsterdam, with the International Institute of Social History (IISG) — one of the three institutes of the Humanities Cluster — acting as the lead organisation. The project was developed by the Fryske Akademy and transferred in 2019 to the KNAW HuC, which has since been responsible for ensuring the project’s long-term sustainability, in collaboration with the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands/Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the Fryske Akademy.

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