h s t o r y g r a p h e r

Charts for the curious. Histories you can pin to a wall.

Browse the atlas How we draw

net edition·est. 1962-in-spirit·volume IV

1492 1543 1607 1689 1776 1848 1914 1969 Crossings Pacific charts Declarations Wires & rails N
01

Featured charts this fortnight

Three diagrams the editors keep coming back to. Hover a card to see what the staff pinned on it.

New

Eruptions, 1500–1900

Volcanic events charted across four centuries, sized by VEI. Compiled by the Lisbon volcanology club.

M. Aguirre 1,204 readers
Editor's pick

Voyage durations, Atlantic crossings

A connected scatter of average passage times from Bristol, Lisbon, and Cadiz, 1500–1850.

B. Okafor 2,830 readers
Trending

Dynastic overlap

A circular timeline of Eurasian dynasties — visualizing simultaneity rather than succession.

L. Sato 5,617 readers
02

An atlas of everything we have charted

Historygrapher began as a stack of butcher-paper diagrams pinned to the back wall of a community library. The network edition you are reading carries that same impulse: history is something you draw. We commission, peer-review, and publish charts in twelve subject areas, each maintained by a small editorial circle.

Every chart goes through three stages — sketch, annotation, and publication — and remains editable for a year after it goes live. Footnotes are first-class citizens here; so are revisions, marginalia, and the occasional confession that an earlier draft was wrong. We think a chart should age the way a printed map ages: visibly, with corrections in the margins.

Antiquity Industrial Maritime Diplomacy Vernacular Cosmography Cartography Ephemera Vernacular law Migrations Botany Wartime press
03

Editors of the fortnight

A roving group of historians, cartographers, and amateur cosmographers who keep the peer review going.

Mira Aguirre

"A chart is an argument with the wall it is pinned to."

Volcanology · Subject lead

Bayo Okafor

"The Atlantic is an archive. Read it sideways."

Maritime · Senior cartographer

Linh Sato

"Dynasties overlap; let your charts overlap too."

Eurasia · Editor at large

Pieter Voss

"Marginalia is the soul of any honest map."

Diplomacy · Annotations lead

Every history is a drawing waiting to be made.

  1. i.

    Sketch

    Block out the chart on paper or directly in the workbench. Decide what the diagram is arguing before you decide what it looks like.

  2. ii.

    Annotate

    Add footnotes, sources, and marginalia. Pull a peer reviewer; let them mark up the draft in the margins for a fortnight.

  3. iii.

    Publish

    Sign and date the diagram. Pin it to the network atlas. The chart stays editable for a year — revisions show in the margins, never overwritten.