Understanding history through networks: The Brazil case study

Abstract

In the 19th century Alphonse the Lamartine (1790-1869), a French writer, said that "History Teaches Everything, Including the Future." This is a very accurate statement; the definition of what makes whole nations, what characterizes patriotism, relates to the history of that particular place. This understanding about the importance of History has always been recognized by thinkers, philosophers and writers. However, historical facts are often source of controversies and debates. In this paper we have applied Network Science techniques to analyze a Social Network of the History of Brazil to create a rank of Historical Characters. To carry out such analyses we first have built a dataset based on Wikipedia text bodies using Natural Language Processing. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.