Create fast & light digital projects with natural markdown

Canopy provides a content-first approach to generating static websites and adding context to IIIF material from libraries, archives, and museums. There is no need to manage derivatives or complex backends. Just create markdown projects that are easy to build, maintain, and publish.

Build a static site from IIIF resources

Connect to cultural heritage material at any institution and generate a fully searchable, filterable, and browsable digital site highlighting items from IIIF collections and manifests.

canopy.yml

title: Art & Empirecollection:  - https://api.dc.library.northwestern.edu/api/v2/collections/7ac5769f-a1d9-4227-a350-bf8bd8b1cddc?as=iiif  - https://api.dc.library.northwestern.edu/api/v2/collections/94536627-cfdf-413c-852b-0cb16d986da3?as=iiifmanifest:  - https://iiif.vam.ac.uk/collections/O1267239/manifest.json  - https://iiif.vam.ac.uk/collections/O755793/manifest.json  - https://iiif.vam.ac.uk/collections/O136839/manifest.json  - https://iiif.vam.ac.uk/collections/O74660/manifest.jsonmetadata:  - Subject  - Date  - Language  - Genrefeatured:  - https://api.dc.library.northwestern.edu/api/v2/works/4bdb5a22-6c7f-498d-8e6e-e49ea9bc4778?as=iiif  - https://api.dc.library.northwestern.edu/api/v2/works/c26591b2-994b-4ba3-a87e-9124419fa91b?as=iiiftheme:  appearance: light  accentColor: gold  grayColor: gray

Miniatures on mica, [seated woman sewing]

Miniatures on mica, [seated woman at desk, writing]

Miniatures on mica, [crouching man with firearms]

Crossing by a sangha, near Jumnootree : mountains of Himalaya

Miniatures on mica, [seated man, metalworking]

Miniatures on mica, [seated man with baskets]

Report of the select committee, of the court of directors of the East India Company, upon the subject of the cotton manufacture of this country: with appendixes

Photographs India, 1867-1869, Kanara, Satara, Poona

A suttee : preparing for the immolation of a Hindoo widow

Miniatures on mica, [standing man with musical instrument]

Miniatures on mica, [seated man making lanterns]

A Bengal atlas: containing maps of the theatre of war and commerce on that side of Hindoostan. Compiled from the original surveys; and published by the order of the honourable the Court of directors for the affairs of the East India company

The great temple, Hurdwar, with procession of Hindu pilgrims at the grand annual festival on their way to wash in the Ganges

A man and woman of Hindoostan with a temple for Hindoo worship

Miniatures on mica, [standing man, profile]

Miniatures on mica, [standing man holding fish]

Indian spices for English tables, or, A rare relish of fun from the Far East : Being, the adventures of "our special correspondent" in India, illustrated in a series of one hundred and twenty sketches, and exhibiting, in all its phases, the peculiarity of life in that country

An Indian mausoleum in the Mysore, with a banyan tree

Miniatures on mica, [kneeling man with bell]

Miniatures on mica, [crouching man with pipe]

A collection of original drawings to illustrate the costume and manners of the Hindoos

Bombay Harbour : fishing boats in the monsoon

Mussooree and the Dhoon, from Landour : Himalaya Mountains, India

Easily author rich scholarly content

Write your narratives as markdown, add rich components in the same document, and quickly publish your ideas with interactive image viewers, maps, and timelines.

content/corporate-empire.mdx

### Corporate Empire and Cartographic Authority By the early nineteenth century, the East India Company had transformed from  a trading enterprise into a territorial power, exercising corporate sovereignty across much of the Indian subcontinent. Maps such as this one helped naturalize that expansion by translating diverse political landscapes into legible borders, routes, and regions that could be governed, taxed, and defended. The atlas format reinforced these claims by presenting Company influence as stable geography rather than contested rule. <Image  src="https://iiif.dc.library.northwestern.edu/iiif/3/f0e6bb1d-f5a4-4b20-ad08-1ee9db915c9f"  height="400px"  isTiledImage  alt="Map of Hindostan (1811)"  caption="“Hindostan” from Pinkerton’s Modern Atlas shows the Indian subcontinent through a British colonial lens. Its borders, place names, and measurements reflect imperial rule and East India Company influence."/> This cartographic vision also reveals how knowledge production and imperial power worked together. By privileging standardized measurement, European place-name conventions, and administrative divisions, the map frames the subcontinent as a coherent space open to managerial control. Such representations supported both practical governance and public legitimacy, offering metropolitan readers an image of order and possession that obscured local authority, resistance, and the uneven realities of Company rule.

Corporate Empire and Cartographic Authority

By the early nineteenth century, the East India Company had transformed from a trading enterprise into a territorial power, exercising corporate sovereignty across much of the Indian subcontinent. Maps such as this one helped naturalize that expansion by translating diverse political landscapes into legible borders, routes, and regions that could be governed, taxed, and defended. The atlas format reinforced these claims by presenting Company influence as stable geography rather than contested rule.

“Hindostan” from Pinkerton’s Modern Atlas shows the Indian subcontinent through a British colonial lens. Its borders, place names, and measurements reflect imperial rule and East India Company influence.

This cartographic vision also reveals how knowledge production and imperial power worked together. By privileging standardized measurement, European place-name conventions, and administrative divisions, the map frames the subcontinent as a coherent space open to managerial control. Such representations supported both practical governance and public legitimacy, offering metropolitan readers an image of order and possession that obscured local authority, resistance, and the uneven realities of Company rule.

What is Canopy?

Canopy helps researchers, libraries, archives, and museums create polished digital projects with intuitive tools that showcase IIIF resources. It lets scholars and digital humanists curate works from many sources and add context and narrative. Built on IIIF’s decentralized and interoperable APIs, Canopy provides a customizable modern front end that needs no backend or database, allowing quick setup and low maintenance. In minutes, users can generate fast, lightweight static sites that are easy to host and draw on IIIF’s rich metadata and media.

Builds a static web site directly from IIIF collections and manifests.
Generates a work page representing each IIIF manifest.
Indexes Manifest metadata automatically for search and filtering
Provides clear, reusable IIIF-based components for presentation.
Supports Markdown authoring for contextual and scholarly writing.
Runs entirely without an integrated database or backend.
Produces fast, lightweight, low-maintenance sites that are easy to host.

Have an idea for a project?

Get started Documentation

Highlighted items

This section features an organized selection of IIIF manifests referenced in this project. Each slider displays items matching the most common results for metadata labels such as Genre, Language, and Subject, linking resources across the project.