iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Particular highlights were the drama around Liang Qichao’s alleged tumultuous visit to Oahu, and Sun Yat Sen’s fingerprints.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Just back from Honolulu where I spent a fantastic 2 weeks at the state archive researching the Chinese community’s thoughts on US annexation for the next book project.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

We're hosting the CHA this year at UPEI in June. It's going to be a blast. It overlaps with the ACSC and the CCHA. Our wee campus is about the become the historical profession's version of a clown car. I canvased hard locally to have this postcard from a family trip c.2001 on the programme cover.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

2/2 There's a second page here with the contact details applicants might actually need.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

Please circulate! The UPEI history department will be hiring for a TT position in Canadian and Atlantic history. See the attached post for more information. Come work with us in Charlottetown! The closing date is 13 March 2026. Queries and applications should be directed to Dr. Richard Raiswell.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

Some Mapping Historical Hong Kong updates: we've been continuing to share data with the HK Spatial History team at HKBU. Good level of fidelity between the two databases, which bodes well for future data sharing. Their extensive roadmap is also going to greatly speed up our work on earlier decades.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

Legally speaking, if the US signs a treaty with another country, and then, during a conflict in which they aren’t belligerents, steals said treaty from said country. Is said country still required to honour the terms of it?

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

🧵3/3 I've then combined the datasets so that all GPS points fall within the attributes table for the lots with which they align. The effect is that we can light up the lots that contain Carl Smith data and embed links to the archive, providing an alt. spatial/temporal means to search the index!

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

🧵2/3 Eric has also converted the dates into integer values so that we can isolate cards by date range, as many cover a few decades of history. I have then overlaid this data on the MHHK maps that fall within that date range (here's 1866).

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

🧵1/3 Exciting (for me) progress for this Friday's MHHK update. We've begun to experiment with integrating the Carl Smith Index Card collection for HK history. My colleague Eric Chow has been tokenizing the cards and appending GPS coordinates to recorded locations using the Google Maps API.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

Wasn't totally satisfied with last week's map transformations, so I've been playing around with Thin Plate Spline transformations on the larger maps this week using the same reference points. Instantly better look, with much more accurate coastlines for Hong Kong and Kowloon.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

Kowloon also appears to have been a rush job or afterthought in many of these earlier maps. Its shoreline is highly approximate, requires a lot of manipulation, and no two maps that I've found from the era are quite the same in where they place things.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

These maps have given me MHHK's first territory map. Ordnance Mapping of mid-nineteenth century HK proved really accurate to a point, but precision fell away once coastlines get involved. The result is that the maps have been easy to centre, but very difficult to precisely align along the shore.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

Spent bits of the last week correcting new maps pulled from the HKPRO. Some truly interesting ones of the development of The Peak and Cheung Chau. I've pulled a series that I'm excited about as well that surveys Kowloon, NT, and Sai Wan village lots (still to be processed).

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

Academic hack: if I split my time between PEI in the winter and HK in the summer, I can gain almost another month of forced vacation on account of weather.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

Coastline change, for comparison.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

This week's MHHK update. Stonecutter's Island, reclamation projects, and the villages to the west of Kowloon (1964). Not sure how accurate the source map was on rural lots and buildings, so will have to check these against the far more detailed large-scale surveys from the following decades.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

Today’s best archival find is Caleb Cushing trying to figure out a suitable Chinese name. He eventually settled on 顧聖, but I think 鼓聲 (drumbeat) should have stuck. Would have looked better on the Treaty of Wangxia and the dozens of red calling cards he had written up.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

Archives imitate life. “I am still in Washington and for most of the time we are sweltering in tropical heat”

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

This week's MHHK. So many lots to fill. Is the task hypnotic? Yes. Is it therapeutic? No. Have I watched two HBO miniseries while doing it? Absolutely.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

Today's MHHK work has really been more this week's MHHK work - to the detriment of the article I was supposed to be writing. Got sucked into building a road layer on this 1964 map of Kowloon. While it took forever, working backwards from this map should just be a process of subtraction.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

Added MHHK's first georeferenced base map for Kowloon today. Likely going to have to redo it though because I forgot to correct Stonecutters Island. Eventually the project will include the entire territory, but I can't say I'm looking forward to how long some of those maps are going to take.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

The attached photo taken at about 8 pm is of the smoke haze we’re experiencing in one of Canada’s easternmost provinces.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

Spent the last month wrapping up term and moving so I haven't found time to update about MHHK progress, but I've spent this afternoon tracking down source maps and wanted to share this 1958 one from the Hai Kwang Press. By far one of my favourites.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

Kellett Island (where the RHK Yacht Club pin sits on the map) was connected to the mainland through land reclamation projects in 1969. Comparing the contemporary map with the 1924 map shows the extent of Wan Chai/Victoria Park development which extended to the breakwater visible in the HPC photo.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

Still working on 1842 this week for the MHHK project. So instead I wanted to showcase one of my current favourite markers of shoreline change in Hong Kong: Kellett Island (photo courtesy of the @uobrishistory.bsky.social Historical Photographs of China project).

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

As a bonus, we also started tests integrating and displaying partner data on MHHK's base maps. This meant working with some cleaned sample data from Spatial History team at HKBU. The sample data (little red nodes) in question? Public Toilets... ☹️

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

This week's work with MHHK included finishing up the map of the 1920s and starting a new one on the 1840s as I continue to build out the starter kit. This has meant working with Adolphe Dubois de Jancigny's fantastic 1842 survey, which provides a very different profile of Hong Kong's shoreline.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

What a difference 20 years makes. Much of today's work with MHHK has been spent splitting lots in Hong Kong. The examples are from 1866 (first image) and 1886 (second). If the Land Registry website is anything to go by, this is going to quickly become tedious.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

In the midst of marking, so not much done with MHHK this week. So I thought I'd share one of my favourite parts of working on this series - the visualization of Hong Kong's land reclamation.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

In an effort to remind myself that there's more to life than panic-refreshing the news, I'm going to start posting weekly Friday updates on the Mapping Historical Hong Kong Project as we work to create c.156 interactive maps of Hong Kong throughout history.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

One of my favourite parts of academia that will never cease to be surreal. As an undergrad writing on republican China, I relied heavily on Henriot’s Virtual Shanghai platform, and now, this evening, I’ve just received in the mail his new edited volume which I had the privilege of contributing to.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

A nice surprise to wake up today to the news that Modern China in Flux is out online ahead of print, and that it's been made open access! Modern China in Flux collects essays that explore Chinese society through the underlying framework of network analysis, leveraging digital methods to do so.

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Thomas Larkin @thomaslarkin.bsky.social · 11/12/2023

New office, new school, same deep aversion to the cold. Currently sourcing barges to tow Prince Edward Island to the Caribbean.

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