Introduction
Father Miguel Saderra Masó (1865–1939) was a Jesuit scientist who in 1910, as Assistant Director of the Manila Weather Bureau, compiled a catalogue of earthquake events in the Philippines since 1599. This digital humanities project explores his data set.
Miguel Saderra Masó (1865–1939)
Learn more about the figure behind the data set, and about the institutional, scientific, and political contexts in which he produced his 1910 Catalogue.
Mapping the Catalogue
How can the data contained in Miguel Saderra Masó’s Catalogue be mapped, in order to visualize the distribution of earthquake events across the Philippines between 1599 and 1909? How does his original map, printed to accompany the Catalogue of 1910, compare with a modern data visualization of the same information?
Timeline of Philippine Earthquakes
This tool visualizes the events described in Miguel Saderra Masó’s Catalogue by plotting the frequency of earthquake events over time. To what extent can earthquakes be reduced to a single “event”? What information is lost through the process of transforming complex historical and environmental processes into data points on a timeline, and how are timelines inherently selective in the histories they show?
Quantifying Earthquake Intensity
What are the challenges of transforming qualitative descriptions in historical documents into quantitative numbers on a scale?
Text Analysis
How does a tool like Voyant help to illustrate patterns in the qualitative column of the Catalogue?
Conclusion, Acknowledgements, Bibliography, Further Reading, and Image Credits
This section contains the conclusion and indications of potential directions for digital humanities research on natural disasters in the Philippines, acknowledgements of the help received in creating this website and the data visualizations, a bibliography of primary and secondary works consulted, further reading of a selection of Father Miguel Saderra Masó’s publications, and credits and links for the images used for this website.
Contact Information
Chase Caldwell Smith, PhD Student in History, UCLA
chasesmith[at]ucla.edu