For the last couple months, I’ve been working to create spatial data of historical borders for given years. I was inspired by Natural Earth (and used their data as the foundation of my project). Their data, however, is the current situation (i.e. spatial data for 2018). If I wanted spatial data for 1833 for example, I would be out of luck. I’ve tried to find the data from other sources, but couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for. For example, I could find some data which included historical borders all in one shapefile. They were to be used with a timeline tool—you could scroll through the years and see the changes. The problem though is that the data I’ve found is pretty granular. They show large changes, changes of land from territory to state, land purchases, etc.) If I wanted to see the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, I could see that, but if I wanted to see the changes made in 1804 (creation of Massachusetts’ Southwick Jog, incorporation of the Yazoo lands into Mississippi Territory, etc.), I probably wouldn’t be able to see it. Scroll down to get the data, or keep reading to hear about how I made the data, how to use it, use restrictions (none!), and caveats.

Procedure

So, I started with the British colonies at the time of the Royal Proclamation of 1763, and changed the borders as they changed in the future. I used the wikipedia page Territorial evolution of the United States, the book Boundaries of the United States and the several States: with miscellaneous geographic information concerning areas, altitudes, and geographic centers by Franklin K. Van Zandt, and state constitutions and federal laws as well as international treaties describing the boundaries of certain portions of land (e.g. a state’s constitution for the original boundaries of a state, laws to determine changed boundaries, and international treaties to determine the nation’s boundaries, which double as one or more state boundaries.

Instead of creating a new shapefile for each border change, I decided that I would go year by year. Each year shows the situation at the very beginning of the year (i.e. the shapefile “1874” means 12:01AM January 1st, 1874). There is one exception I made: in 1812, the border changes a couple times in the area of Louisiana and Spanish West Florida. Since the border configurations are unique, I thought I might as well show the process of how they changed. In this case, I used a month instead of a year (i.e. “1812May” means 12:01 AM May 1st, 1812).

Data Format

The shapefiles have four fields, “name”, “type”,”note” and “admin”

The Name field is self explanatory. I included “territory” in the name of the feature as well as in “type”, because while people call states by their singular name, I don’t think I’ve ever heard territories referred to by their singular name (i.e. when talking about Oregon in 1855, it’s always the “Oregon Territory”). Some features have multiple names. Pacific Islands often have a native name and a colonial name. I often tried to favor the native name, but if the colonial name seemed to be very much in use, I’d include it as well (e.g. “Gardner Island (Nikumaroro)”).

The Type Field is where I describe what type of land the feature is. Most often the types are “state”, “territory”, or “disputed” (and who disputes the land claim). I’m really ignorant when it comes to the different types of land (dependency, territory, free association, (un)incorporated, (un)organized, etc). When in doubt, I usually went with “territory”. It’s probably wrong in some cases, oh well.

I tried to display disputed land as type:”disputed”. There have been so many minor land disputes between countries and more often states that I didn’t even try to include them all. Early in the nation’s history, there were tons of large overlapping land claims between colonies and states. I was able to skip over much of that issue by starting with the formation of the United States, but nevertheless, there are some early land claims that I simply didn’t show. I’m absolutely positive that I’ve missed lots of disputed land claims, but I hope I’ve gotten at least the major ones throughout history. I’ve also included shapefiles without the disputed land claims so as to show the states and territories without having to be broken up into so many pieces. I gave the claims to whatever state/territory claimed them, or whichever state it belongs to today (e.g. in the case of the Toledo Strip). In the case of disputed islands, I didn’t change the type because my point in getting rid of disputes is to keep entities as one feature (e.g. One Illinois Territory feature rather than three, two of them disputed); the islands aren’t split into multiple features, so I left them how they are. In other words, the “NoDisputes” shapefiles show what was claimed, disputed or not.

The Notes field is for anything that I feel like adding about the feature, but can’t fit it anywhere else. Sometimes I noted when territories were captured/recaptured, a more specific name of a region, etc.

The Admin field is for which country administers the feature. This is the field I’m least sure about. I sometimes showed who controlled the land in certain years; when American land was captured in a war, I put the capturing country as the “admin” entry. I’m sure I made lots of wrong entries though. Like in the Pacific: I’d bet that the US didn’t have all that much impact on the majority of inhabited islands it claimed (some of which are still technically claimed) in the Pacific, but maybe that’s enough to “administer” it? The only section where the admin section actually makes a whole lot of difference is during the civil war. I showed the confederate states by their “admin” entry (United States of America/Confederate States of America). Technically every confederate state should be disputed as well, however, I forewent labelling the individual states as disputed even though I suppose the Civil War is really the biggest of all US land claim disputes (actually, that title should probably go to the Revolutionary War?).

Use, Credits, Caveats

As with Natural Earth data, I’m putting this out in the public domain. Anyone can do whatever they want with this. You don’t have to, but if you want to give credit, you can credit either “Pachyderm Cartography” or “Ethan Oleson”. If you don’t know how to use this data, look into QGIS! Play around with the data and try to make a nice map! And before I get to the data, there’s one big caveat: I can’t positively guarantee the veracity of any of this information. I’m no historian, and I did this just for fun. I did what I could, but I’m almost certain I missed something, maybe made an error or two. By all means, use these shapefiles! Make some maps! Just don’t blame me if there’s a small error (or a big one, for that matter).

The Data

Although the screenshots are only of the contiguous US, the shapefiles are US’s worldwide land claims. I start with the nation (not the individual colonies) in 1763. There was a Royal Proclamation of 1763 that kept the eastern border of the colonies on the east side of the Appalachian mountains (i.e. the colonies can grow west until reaching another drainage basin). The thumbnails aren’t completely identical to the data, I made some last minute changes to disputed areas after making them. Click on the GIF to download all the shapefiles, or scroll down to download specific years.

All years’ borders





Individual Years’ Borders