Everyday mobility in the streets of 18th century Amsterdam

In the StoryMap, you will follow some locations within Amsterdam as geocoded from merchant registers of 1790 and notarial depositions of 1791. Through automatic recognition of the texts and transforming them into geolocations attributed to each individual, we can create virtual itineraries for hypothesizing about possible commutes within the streets. One cluster of locations were identified within attestations recorded in notarial depositions where witnesses described a conflict or offence they had witnessed. Because both the residential location of witnesses (but also often victims and perpetrators) and the location of events are given,we can patch together an enriched account of street-level experience. While this spatial data is useful for extracting detailed snapshots in the everyday life of ordinary people, there is one big gap: the affluent barely appear. That is where merchant registers come into play. The registers contain merchants’ names, trade activity, business location and (if separate) place of residence.