Mid-19th century road network dataset for Galicia and Austrian Silesia, Habsburg Empire

Abstract Evolution of the transportation network plays an important role in development of regions [ 1 ] or transformation of the habitats [ 2 ]. In the 19th century, the role of the roads started to decrease due to dynamic railway network development [ 1 ]. However, the shape of the historical road network is an important indicator of spatial organisation of the area, clearly defining the centres and peripheries [ 1 , 3 ]. In order to analyse it, high-quality historical spatial data are needed. However, due to the time-consuming process of acquisition, they are usually not easily available. In this paper, we present the vector dataset of the historical road network of Galicia and Austrian Silesia (>80 000 km2) in the mid-19th century – two regions of the former Habsburg Empire, located in Central Europe. The data were acquired manually from 455 map sheets of the Austrian second military survey map (1:28,800) for the four main road categories, according to the map legend. All the road categories present the roads passable at any time of the year, which was strategic information from the military point of view and build a network of 15 461 km. Currently, the data can be used by various researchers studying migrations, regional development, but also human impact on the environment, like land use change, invasive species introduction or landscape fragmentation. The dataset presents the times just before the most dynamic economic changes of the 19th century, which had a great impact on the region. On the other hand, the road network presented here was developed in the conditions of one country, the Habsburg Empire, which collapsed after the First World War, triggering the rise of new states and remodelling the transport network connections in Central Europe. Additionally, the data are accompanied by the layer of towns and villages with more than 2000 inhabitants, based on the 1857 Austrian census data.