Regionalization of Africa as a Controlled Vocabulary for Data Analysis

These regions provide a basic geographic understanding of the continent and its peoples from perspectives rooted in African and African diaspora history. The centers on a geographic hierarchy that divides Africa into six broad regions that are sub-divided into 34 subregions, including major offshore islands.AfricanRegions.org is helpful for researching and teaching this continent’s complex history in broad, regional terms. This regionalization is created from primary sources and the scholarly literature following rigorous academic standards. They are primarily devised as a neutral guide to the continent with labels that are easy to input and translate for database construction and historical reconstruction. The intention is to avoid terms that might be confused with ethnolinguistic groups, the jargon of slave traders, colonial places, modern countries, and other perspectives. As a controlled vocabulary, regional categories can consolidate, link, and display larger datasets about people, events, and places in African and African diaspora history, which derive from archival collections, digitized primary sources, scholarly analysis, and other multimedia. The regional data was created in collaboration with Karl Grossner, Technical Director of the World Historical Gazetteer https://whgazetteer.org/. The interactive teaching resource www.AfricanRegions.org displays these regions for educational purposes.

这些区域以非洲及非洲散居群体的历史视角为依托，为认知该大陆及其族群提供了基础的地理分析框架。该区域划分体系以地理层级为核心，将非洲划分为6个一级区域，进一步细分为34个次级区域，涵盖主要离岸岛屿。AfricanRegions.org（非洲区域网）可用于从宏观区域维度开展该大陆复杂历史的研究与教学工作。该区域划分体系基于一手史料与学术文献构建，严格遵循学术规范。其设计定位为非洲大陆的中性地理指引，所采用的标签便于录入与翻译，可用于数据库构建与历史重构工作。该体系旨在规避易与民族语言群体混淆的称谓、奴隶贸易商行话、殖民时期地名、现代国家名称及其他带有视角偏向性的表述。作为一套受控词汇表，该区域分类体系可整合、关联并展示源自档案馆藏、数字化一手史料、学术研究及其他多媒体资源的非洲及非洲散居群体历史相关的人物、事件与地点大型数据集。该区域数据由世界历史地名录（World Historical Gazetteer）技术总监卡尔·格罗斯纳（Karl Grossner）参与协作开发，相关平台网址为https://whgazetteer.org/。交互式教学资源平台www.AfricanRegions.org专为教育用途展示上述区域划分体系。