Mapping the geographies of early modern mining knowledge. A digital history of the foreign study tours of the Swedish Bureau of Mines’s, 1691–1826

Early modern mines were like subterranean roots from which fiscal-military states drew military, economic, and scientific power.

To improve this vital trade, fledgling European mining administrations encouraged travelling officials to tour foreign territories to collect new useful knowledge.

This three-year collaborative project between researchers at Uppsala and Stockholm University uses state-of-the-art digital methods to explore the collection of foreign knowledge of the Swedish Bureau of Mines through their system of study tours.For over 100-years – from the late seventeenth century until the early 1800s – the Bureau encouraged its officials to travel across Europe and beyond.

They meticulously documented these voyages, and over time produced numerous handwritten travelogues, which are preserved to this day in the Swedish National Archives.

Through, e.g., Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR), and Deep Mapping, we will turn the Bureau’s archive into an enriched dataset suitable for mapping the geographies of early modern mining knowledge, and understanding the practices of the travelling mining officials. Using this data, we will carry out a detailed, yet long-term, analysis of the circulation of mining knowledge.

Consequently, the project will provide new insights of how digital methods can be integrated in historical analysis, while also improving our understanding of the rise of modern science, state-making, and industrialisation.