{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2022,4,4]],"date-time":"2022-04-04T06:05:57Z","timestamp":1649052357227},"reference-count":26,"publisher":"Oxford University Press (OUP)","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2021,4,1]],"date-time":"2021-04-01T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1617235200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/academic.oup.com\/journals\/pages\/open_access\/funder_policies\/chorus\/standard_publication_model"}],"funder":[{"name":"Australian Research Council through its Discovery Project scheme","award":["DP180100537"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["DP180100537"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2022,3,23]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title>\n               <jats:p>This article uses statistical data gathered from digitized and indexed journals to quantify the identity, status, purpose, and impact of visitors to a series of Royal Commissions of Inquiry dispatched to the Cape and Mauritius from 1823. The 1819\u201338 Commissions of Inquiry were unprecedented in their scope and unparalleled in their impacts. They generated an archive spanning over 150,000 handwritten pages and recommended the complete overhaul of legal systems; colonial governance and systems of slavery on the basis of their findings. Yet, making sense of this enormous archive and understanding whose testimony shaped empire-wide reform remains a daunting task. Here, we focus on one small, but significant, portion of that archive: commissioners\u2019 journals of proceedings. By collating, analysing, and visualizing data on names, status, gender, and topics of inquiry, we test the value of these documents as a frame to navigate the wider archive and to explore patterns in who was attending commissions, how often, and how their testimony was received. In contextualizing this data, we identify different rhythms of inquiry within and between colonies and conclude that a quantitative approach enabled us to test hypotheses based on archival research and uncover previously hidden patterns leading to new lines of future inquiry.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1093\/llc\/fqab027","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,3,13]],"date-time":"2021-03-13T12:09:55Z","timestamp":1615637395000},"page":"185-201","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["A Commissioner\u2019s Day: Quantitative approaches to the study of evidence in royal commissions of inquiry"],"prefix":"10.1093","volume":"37","author":[{"given":"Naomi","family":"Parkinson","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Humanities and Languages, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Stephen","family":"Doherty","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Humanities and Languages, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Lisa","family":"Ford","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Humanities and Languages, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"286","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,4,1]]},"reference":[{"key":"2022032516085807400_fqab027-B1","volume-title":"Slaves, Freedmen and Indentured Labourers in Colonial Mauritius","author":"Allen","year":"1999"},{"key":"2022032516085807400_fqab027-B2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.1007\/978-1-349-24999-2","volume-title":"Slavery and Anti-slavery in Mauritius, 1810-33: The Conflict Between Economic Expansion and Humanitarian Reform under British Rule","author":"Barker","year":"1996"},{"key":"2022032516085807400_fqab027-B3","volume-title":"Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780-1870","author":"Bayly","year":"1996"},{"key":"2022032516085807400_fqab027-B4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.4159\/9780674972780","volume-title":"Rage for Order: The British Empire and the Origins of International Law, 1800-1850","author":"Benton","year":"2016"},{"issue":"1","key":"2022032516085807400_fqab027-B5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"13","DOI":"10.1093\/llc\/fqy033","article-title":"Digital tools in the humanities: some fundamental provocations?","volume":"34","author":"Bradley","year":"2019","journal-title":"Digital Scholarship in the Humanities"},{"key":"2022032516085807400_fqab027-B6","volume-title":"Royal Commissions of Inquiry: The Significance of Investigations in British Politics","author":"Clokie","year":"1937"},{"key":"2022032516085807400_fqab027-B7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.1353\/jwh.2021.0022","article-title":"Inquiring into the corpus of empire","author":"Doherty","year":"2021","journal-title":"Journal of World History"},{"key":"2022032516085807400_fqab027-B8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.1016\/j.eeh.2021.101390","article-title":"When cape slavery ended: introducing a new slave emancipation dataset","author":"Ekama","year":"2021","journal-title":"Explorations in Economic History"},{"issue":"4","key":"2022032516085807400_fqab027-B9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"379","DOI":"10.1080\/1362102032000134949","article-title":"The Fact so Often Disputed by the Black Man\u2019: Khoekhoe citizenship at the Cape in the early to mid nineteenth century","volume":"7","author":"Elbourne","year":"2003","journal-title":"Citizenship Studies"},{"issue":"3","key":"2022032516085807400_fqab027-B10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"245","DOI":"10.1080\/1031461X.2020.1781139","article-title":"What counts? Essays from the Prosecution Project","volume":"51","author":"Finnane","year":"2020","journal-title":"Australian Historical Studies"},{"issue":"2","key":"2022032516085807400_fqab027-B11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1177\/2059799118787749","article-title":"Sharing the archive: using web technologies for accessing, storing and re-using historical data","volume":"11","author":"Finnane","year":"2018","journal-title":"Methodological Innovations"},{"issue":"2","key":"2022032516085807400_fqab027-B12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"93","DOI":"10.1162\/JINH_a_00977","article-title":"The data revolution in African economic history","volume":"47","author":"Fourie","year":"2016","journal-title":"Journal of Interdisciplinary History"},{"issue":"1","key":"2022032516085807400_fqab027-B13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"142","DOI":"10.1080\/02582473.2014.891646","article-title":"The quantitative Cape: a review of the new historiography of the Dutch 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