Gonzales Ave.
Shaping Nature:
The Pemberton Family's Construction of Victoria's Landscape
Home Surveying Gardening Play a Game Sources About Us
Introduction
The Pemberton Family
The Theory Behind This Site

































































Why was this project created?

Shaping Nature was created as a group project completed as a component of Dr. John Lutz’s class on “Micro-History and the Internet” (History 481, University of Victoria). According to the syllabus the basic objectives of the course were:  

1) To provide students with an understanding of the analytical framework and methods of micro-history.

2) To develop or refine research skills using primary documents and archival research.

3) To develop or refine presentation skills to allow students to present their research on the world wide web.  

Central to the course was the creation of a web site, the development of which would incorporate all of the before mentioned goals.  

The choice of topic was left up to the students, however, temporal and geographic restrictions were placed upon the work to a study of Victoria, BC or its immediate communities within the Victorian era.

Through the previous two times that this course had been offered there seemed to be a high number of sites which focused upon Victoria proper, with few sites expanding into its surrounding communities. In addition, 2006 was the centennial celebration of the municipalities of Oak Bay and Saanich, and it seemed appropriate to try and conduct work in one of these areas.  

Early in the class we had come across readings that had referred continually to the importation of european culture and values upon the Victorian landscape. This was perhaps most obvious through English forms of law, property relations, and architecture.   

It seemed to us that, while these forms of making Victoria more like “home” were certainly important, there were other ways that this could be explained. The physical manipulation of the earth through gardening, and the representation of space through cadastral mapping were two such ways that we felt one could go about discussing these issues.

In the case of J.D, John Jr., and Frederick Pemberton, these large themes coalesced. Not only were the Pembertons renowned for their spectacular gardens, J.D. Pemberton was the cheif surveyor on Vancouver Island from 1851 to 1858. In retrospect, this is how we have conceived our choice of topic. Only after the project topic had concluded did we realize that three of the four of our group members (Ben, Laura, and Eddie) had some family relations that were surveyors or cartographers!

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What Is Microhistory?
Micro-history emerged as a form of historical practice during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and had its strongest and most influential beginnings in Italian intellectual circles.  In many respects it was a reaction against more totalizing forms of historical representation.  Giovani Levi has argued that one of the few commonalities that unite the diverse forms of micro-history is its rejection of the “optimistic models proposed by the great Marxist or functionalist systems.”  Edward Muir makes a similar argument stating that the micro-historians’ work emerged to challenge the claims made by “quantitative” and “immobile” history, and in particular the method of the longue durée.

The most renowned work done by the Italian micro-historians has been that of Carlo Ginzburg.  In an essay titled “Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm”, he purposes that by reducing the scope and from of conjectural analysis one can use “infinitesimal traces” in order to come to a “comprehension of a deeper, otherwise unattainable reality”.  In this process Ginzburg pays homage to Sigmund Freud, the art historian Giovanni Morelli, and Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional character Sherlock Holmes, all of whom use small and seemingly irrelevant clues as a means to solve much larger mysteries.

To help create a more comprehensive definition of what mico-history is, Giovani Levi has provided three essential points in regards to the general characteristics of micro-history:

One: as the micro part of micro-history seems to indicate, it is based on a reduced scale or scope of historical observation. In addition Levi adds that this observation must require “intensive study of the documentary material.”  In our project we have concerned our selves with the intensive study of English Gardens through photographs and land surveying through cadastral mapping.  

 Two: although the scale is limited and fixed to describing a micro aspect of history, this micro description is always connected to lager issues.  For us, the study of these two micro examples has led to larger themes circulating around the transplantation of European ideas and values in North America.

Three: micro-historians need to create a transparent and self critical narrative. Levi argues that in a micro-historical work “the researcher’s point of view becomes an intrinsic part of the account.”  The sources, hypothesis, research process, and the problems confronting the author are placed within the text not “hidden away from the uninitiated.”  Web sites can, in this regard, offer unique possibilities. We have tried to use this section of our site as a way to influence transparency in the research and writing process. We hope that this will create a stronger link with our audience by making more information about the project available, and thus increasing the scope of topics open for debate.

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