Mapping Women’s Revolutionary Control of their Environment & Property in Marseille:
A Digital Humanities Project
My original impetus for this article focused on women and property rights in eighteenth-century Marseille by investigating revolutionary tax and census records to add to what we know from notary records and dowry agreements, and from court records, such as pre-revolutionary judicial petitions for separations de corps et de biens or separations de biens, and from divorce and family court records during the French Revolution. Tax records seemed very promising because of the rich socioeconomic and geographic data revealed in terms of women’s property income, their marital status, and the location of their property that would allow for interactive digital mapping. Mapping is a tool that I began exploring for better understanding the breadth and depth of women’s political engagement and how women from various social milieus used their familial, social, and economic networks to influence the development of revolutionary consciousness, culture, and practices in Marseille. The current project will be integrated into a larger, interactive digital humanities mapping project on women in revolutionary Marseille that unpacks their political, social, and cultural experiences in terms of change and continuity from 1789-1795. My goal is to expand the previous study of women and their influence on geopolitical space to include the revolutionary impact on women’s control of space in terms of property rights and household compositions.
Comparison of Total Population Recorded in Census
Percentage of Households Headed by Females
Percentage of Female Heads of Household recorded as Married
Percentage of Female Heads of Household recorded as Unmarried or with no listed marital status
Percentage of Households Headed by Female Singletons Living Alone
Percentage of Female Heads of Household recorded as Widows
Percentage of Female Heads of Household Listed as Bourgeois
Percentage of Female Heads of Household as Artisan or Skilled Trades
Percentage of Households Occupied by Sibling Pairs
new map
Average Age of Overall Female Population ? is this for Head of Households only?
Average Age of Widows
Primary Lessees and Property Owners
micro-level data

Image Credit
Base map: Plan routier de la ville et faubourg de Marseille.
Cartographer: Campen, 1791.
Engraver: Denis Laurent, 1792.
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Cartes et plans, GE C-9643.
Available online at Bibliothèque nationale de France.
GIS and Digital Mapping by Michelle Richards.