Colonial heritage in Switzerland
Colonial heritage in Switzerland
Introduction
Switzerland had no colonies of its own - yet there were a number of Swiss involved in slavery, the slave trade, and colonialism activities between the 16th and the 19th centuries. Swiss trading companies, banks, city-states, family enterprises, mercenary contractors, soldiers, and private individuals participated in and profited from the commercial, military, administrative, financial, scientific, ideological, and publishing activities necessary for the creation and the maintenance of the Transatlantic slavery economy. In this project, focusing on the Caribbean Community member states, we are interested in discovering the trace of the colonial past of Switzerland.
Our primary source is the CARICOM Compilation Archive written by Hans Fässler, MA Zurich University, a historian from St.Gallen (Switzerland).
Motivation
Project Plan and Milestones
Step I : Information extraction with NLP tools(Stanford NER, NLTK)
Step II : Visualize the connection between Switzerland and Caribbean colonies
Step III : Highlight the material traces
Date | Task | Completion |
---|---|---|
By Week 4
(07.10) |
|
✓ |
By Week 6
(21.10) |
|
✓ |
By Week 10
(25.11) |
Step I
Step II
|
|
By Week 11
(02.12) |
Step I
Step II
Step III
|
|
By Week 12
(09.12) |
Step II
Step III
|
|
By Week 13
(16.12) |
Step II
Overall
|
|
By Week 14
(22.12) |
Overall
|
Methodology
Text Understanding tools: Stanford NER, NLTK
Results
Limitation
Links
Github repository: Colonial-heritage-in-Switzerland
Primary source: caricom archives
Secondary sources: Dictionnaire historique de la Suisse DHS, swissNAME3d