Interactive Digital History of Antigua

Project Description

Originally colonized by England in 1632, Antigua is a Caribbean island with a profoundly revelatory historical landscape that includes, along with the other islands of the region, a legacy of centuries of enslavement, oppression, exploitation, and murder of Africans and people of African descent. Many scholars of the Caribbean, including Antonio Benitez-Rojo, have written about the plantation, specifically the sugar mill, as the primary symbol of the enterprise, of the machinery that created and sustained European colonization, empire, and economic prosperity for generations, while, at the same time, decimating black lives and bodies, contorted to support the production of sugar. The sugar mill factory was the technological implement of the Caribbean plantation and was the mechanism through which sugar, whose worth throughout the peak centuries of Caribbean sugar cane production was equivalent to the value of crude oil today. In contemporary times, the Antiguan landscape is marked with the physical markers of the brutal and perfidious realities of the plantation in the form of the remnants of the windmills that were used for centuries to process sugarcane on the island.

According to the 2013 report of the Museum of Antigua and Barbuda, there are more than 200 windmill bases extant on the island. While in Antigua with Bucknell in the Caribbean students during a tour with a local professor, we learned about the important work the Museum of Antigua and Barbuda has been engaged in documenting the sugar mills of Antigua. That encounter instigated the idea of digitizing, mapping, and historicizing each of the mills electronically for access to scholars and for lay people interested in studying Antiguan and Caribbean histories, as well as for tourists visiting the island. We would like to request the help of the CS students to create a platform for this project.

Goals

To preserve and promote learning about Antigua and the Caribbean region’s unique and particular histories;
To continue researching the specific histories of each sugar mill and its associated plantation, including familial etymologies, transfers of ownership, information about the lives and experiences of enslaved laborers, and a chronology of the plantations associated with each site;
To partner with computer science students to design and launch a digital, interactive map that will include not only each mill’s location, but artistic representations and/or photographs of each site, as well as the research findings regarding the histories of each location; (to see an example, visit the map for Washington’s Mt. Vernon, http://www.mountvernon.org/plan-your-visit/map-of-the-estate-gardens/)

Constraints

I am unaware of particular constraints for this project.

Impact

This project will create a “thick-mapping” interface that complicates our understanding of Atlantic World history through integration of maps, archival documents, and oral histories in ways that transcend traditional written histories of the region. The impacts of this project are wide-ranging and will involve the Bucknell community, as well as an Antiguan, and international participants and partners. I echo our primary goal, which is to preserve and promote learning about Antigua and the Caribbean region’s unique and particular histories through the creation of an interactive, digital map that will archive and provide essential, publicly available information for anyone interested in Antiguan history, anyone visiting the island who would like to visit these historic landmarks, and anyone devoted to the preservation of history, particularly the history of many enslaved Africans whose existence is not often recognized or acknowledged.

Resources

The primary task would be building the best platform to create the on-line map, and I believe that those resources exist. We do have a team of students who have been engaged in this research and have put all of the information in a database.

Group Summary

The history of Antigua mills are rich and valuable. Currently there are no resources that present the history of these mills in an aesthetically pleasing or engaging way. Essentially we want an interactive map of Antigua’s mill history including information of the historical events and people that relate to the mills. This would allow tourists and historians to easily access this information and to learn.

Identified Pains

No way to concisely present history of Antigua
Nobody wants to read a book- Want pictures
No way to identify possible points of interest
No aesthetically pleasing and easily accessible resources about the areas
No engaging/interactive presentation of the information. Pretty and readable

Proposed Problem Description

The history of Antigua mills are rich, but currently there is no resources that present the history of these mills in an aesthetically pleasing or engaging way.

Proposed Goals

http://www.mountvernon.org/plan-your-visit/map-of-the-estate-gardens/# do this.
Encourage people to be interested in studying the history of Antigua
Provide a resource to engage people to study the history of Antigua
Make it easy to use and add to

Contributors

Lucas Nicolois, Sienna Mosher, Allan La, Lukas Munoz, Matthew Rogge

Brainstorming

Bobby Cao, Thomas Ficcadenti, Lucas Gregory, Jingya Wu, Stefano Cobelli

Our takeaways included removing compass to allow rotation in all directions, interactive maps with moving structures that leads the conversation and actively interact with users.

BrainStorming Sheet