Visualizing the Collections: United States Treaties and Other International Agreements

If you are interested in international law and have browsed our foreign legal collections, you may have encountered our United States Treaties and Other International Agreements collection. These digitized documents, encompassing American history from 1776 to 1984, are split into two multi-volume categories.

The first and earliest documents in the collection were compiled by Charles I. Bevans, and span the years 1776 through 1949. The bilateral treaties (volumes 5-12) comprise 2,312 individual agreements over 125 individual jurisdictions. While those numbers sound overwhelming, I wanted a visual understanding of the scope of the collection. Each graphic will have a caption explaining the sizing and color choices, as well as what they represent.

The first model:

A network graph, spiral shaped, depicting the number of treaties between the US (central node) and other jurisdictions, based on the thickness of the edge and the node, as well as the color. Dark blue, thick edges with larger nodes indicate jurisdictions with more treaties, lighter turquoise, thinner edges with small nodes represent jurisdictions with fewer treaties. — One example of a network graph depicting the Bevans treaty collection; dark blue, thick edges and larger nodes indicate a higher amount of treaties with the United States, and lighter colored, thinner edges with smaller nodes indicate fewer treaties.

And the second:

A network graph, firework shaped, depicting the number of treaties between the US (central node) and other jurisdictions, based on the thickness of the edge and the node, as well as the color. Dark red, thick edges indicate jurisdictions with more treaties, while blue, thinner edges with small nodes represent jurisdictions with fewer treaties. Purple shows jurisdictions with a fair amount of treaties. All labels are in white and the same size, against a black background. — An alternative depiction of the network graph, where all the labels are the same size. This graph uses three colors – thin blue edges representing few treaties, medium purple edges representing a fair number of treaties, and thick red lines representing the largest amount of treaties.

Though these two graphics are quite different in nature, they help us draw a few important conclusions: the United States and the United Kingdom share the largest number of treaties, with Canada, France, and Mexico following behind. The first graphic helps us to focus on the jurisdictions with the most treaties, while the second draws our attention to the instances of fewer treaties.

Looking closely, we can see how the different nodes (the jurisdictions) reflect changes to political entities over time. For example, there are multiple, older treaties with present-day cities and provinces of Germany (ex. “Germany (Hanover)”), each represented as an individual jurisdiction. While we may associate these names with modern political boundaries, they represent former states with which the United States signed treaties. Others show supranational entities (“Central America Federation”; Belgium-Luxembourg Economic Union) while the individual jurisdictions might have their own node.

These models would certainly look different had Bevans compiled these treaties differently. In any case, we see an incredible variety in the United States’ international agreements over nearly 200 years from these graphics. This also gives us a helpful place to start – should you be interested in what the United States and the Two Sicilies agreed upon in the past, you can browse the volumes of Bevans’s treaties, arranged in alphabetical order by jurisdiction, and follow your curiosity.

Which graphic do you find more engaging? What visual elements inspire you the most?

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