KIYMETLİ TAŞLAR VE SÖMÜRGECİLİK: DİJİTAL VERİ MATERYALLERİNİN ANALİZİ ÖRNEĞİYLE

Abstract

In this study, the relationship of precious stones with political / social / military and similar events in the historical process was analyzed by N-gram. The discovery of precious stones is as old as humanity, and perhaps the first material that human beings notice in nature are gemstones. These materials, which are described as gemstone / precious stones today, were already used by the local people of the geography in which they were found, mainly ornamental material, in relation to their physical and chemical properties. With the geographical discoveries that started in the 15th century, Europeans began to carry these unique materials (mainly gemstones such as diamond and jade) of the new geographies they went to, or the precious metals such as gold / silver, which they consumed by exploiting in their main continent called the old world, to the main continent. These virgin lands, which have not encountered dense human populations before, have become an important attraction for the imperialist powers because of their important natural resources and precious metals such as precious stones and gold and silver, which have heavy value at light cost in commercial terms. Afterwards, all resources (agriculture, animal, human) of these geographies, especially the natural resources, became the focus of wild exploitation. The imperialist powers, who wanted to have these resources alone, entered into a struggle with the local peoples of the geographies as well as other imperialist powers that wanted to obtain the same resources. In this struggle, the local peoples of the exploited regions suffered the most, and they were exposed to bloody conflicts, massacres, genocides, ethnic, political and social disasters. In this study, precious stones and concepts related to imperialist activities were selected as keywords and N-gram analysis was performed for a period of approximately 250 years. With this study, the N-gram analysis of political and social events (civil war, etc.) associated with the discovery / exploration / operation of mineral deposits of precious stones, and their meaningful relationships with each other were determined. Therefore, it was concluded that N-gram analyzes by selecting appropriate keywords will make a significant contribution to the literature review, which constitutes an important part of scientific studies, and that N-gram analysis will allow the realization of deeper analysis as an auxiliary research method.