GECEM Project Database: A digital humanities solution to analyse complex historical realities in early modern China and Europe

The GECEM Project Database stands out as a new Digital Humanities solution to accurately order and analyse the new historical Big Data gathered in Chinese and European historical archives. Traditional challenges such as capture, storage, analysis, data curation, searching, sharing, transfer, visualization, querying, updating, and information privacy are being tackled and solved within the design of this new multi-relational database. The implementation of this database has as its main innovative elements the capability of coding and cross-referring historical data in Chinese and Western languages. Thus, we present a new database as a digital solution to solve the long-lasting problem in historical research: the maximization and optimization of data collection when analysing historical sources and how to make use of a large amount of registers and information when developing case studies and work hypotheses for historical research. In this paper, we present a solution for data collection and analysis of probate inventories and trade records which is a relevant source when determining changes in patterns of consumption and global trade through the introduction of Chinese goods into Europe and vice versa during the early modern period.