We’ve been talking about having a GIS
student create some historical world boundary shapefiles.
They don’t seem to exist as shapefiles, only as a web
service. If we develop some, we could host the shapefiles
on our ArcOnline site, or we could host it on the Big Ten
Academic Alliance ArcOnline site (or both).
French West Africa is an area of interest
to us, something to consider. If your student does end up
making one before we get around to it, please encourage her
to share it! We will host it permanently and of course
plaster her name all over the metadata!
One question we ran into right away is,
whose version of boundaries do you follow? For world
post-1945 we’ll probably use United Nations maps as
reference. For French West Africa it makes sense to use
IGN, an easier decision.