Volumen 40 (2022): Edición 1 (December 2022)
CENSUSES, STATISTICS AND DATABASES

This paper analyses the population censuses on the Polish area, particularly, the subject of censuses and their thematic scope. the study refers to the censuses in the 19th and 20th centuries (the study closes with the 1988 census). The paper consists of three parts. The first one presents the origins of censuses and the first censuses conducted in Europe in the 18th century. This part also shows the efforts of international statistical institutions to normalise and standardise national censuses. It allowed for building international standards to make national censuses comparable. The second part shows censuses in the 19th century, and the third part discusses censuses in the 20th century. A fundamental feature of the censuses is a set of questions common to demographic and social issues. This makes it possible to carry out comparative analysis in different regional cross-sections on a secular basis. It should also be provided that census categories are not always comparable, hence various conversions and estimates are necessary. The universality of the censuses have made them a huge organizational challenge each time. The greatest effort was borne by the statistical institutions responsible, not only for conducting the censuses, but also during the compilation and publication of the data.

In Germany, the recording of the causes of death has had a long tradition and goes back a long time in history, but remained unsystematic and nonuniform as it was an autonomous matter of the different German states. this article pursues the question of how the cause-of-death statistics developed in Prussia, the largest territorial state of the later German reich. it is asked how these statistics, organized by the Prussian Statistical Bureau, have been related to the nationwide health policy since the 1870s. The historical development of official statistics in Prussia reveals that it is neither self-evident which information was collected, nor the criteria according to which this was done. rather, the data actually recorded are the result of complicated negotiation processes between different actors, not only within the statistical offices, but also between the most diverse interest groups from science, politics and the state.

Providing valuable research on social history is, nowadays, impossible without the use of complex digital tools capable of providing, through appropriate interrogation, comprehensive answers to the researchers’ increasingly varied research questions. The development of Historical Population Database (HPDT) has brought us closer to other research problems that require the input of digital tools in order to be investigated as widely as possible. One of these is the process of medicalization of Transylvania, a historical topic about which there are relatively few and rather narrow approaches. On the basis of administrative and sanitary directories, various other sources referring to the allocation of doctors’ posts in the communes and the filling of these posts, medical reports, press, publications, statistics, parish registers and other sources related to the medical situation, we have built the Transylvania Health Database (THD), a research tool that is expected to be released for public use by the end of 2022. THD is a method-oriented database, built in MySQL, whose presentation can be used for the implementation of similar projects in the Eastern European area, which is still underdeveloped in terms of digital tools useful to researchers.

We can conclude that epidemics in the 19th century reached historical populations in a new way. Sources from this period increasingly show a growing proportion of childhood as well as the arrival of a new strong epidemic of the adult population. it was cholera that decimated the adult population of the european continent, primarily, in several waves. these epidemics can be studied on the basis of different types of primary and secondary sources. in this article, i will present the possibilities of analyzing the primary statistical sources created by churches and the state. reactions to the course of infectious diseases, applied measures or recommendations for treatment.

During the industrialization period of the city of Lodz, one of the most important industrial centres in the Kingdom of Poland (the former Russian Partition), experienced a dynamic population growth caused by migratory movement from rural areas to the city. The population registry cards for inhabitants of Lodz contained information on dates of birth (sometimes on dates of death), place of birth, religious denomination, nationality, and address of residence in the city, as well as the number of children born in a family. The aim of this paper is to present population registry cards of permanent and non-permanent residents of the city of Lodz deposited in the State Archives in Lodz, as a source for research on urban society during the period of industrialization. In this work, the use, quality, and reliability of population registry cards, as well as their research limitations for studies are discussed.

The present work introduces the scholarly community to a database containing information about the invalids, orphans, and widows of the First World War in Transylvania – the IOW database, which uses data extracted from the files relating to pensions awarded to these social categories as its main sources. these consist primarily of civil status documents, reports on the personal characteristics of the enrolled soldiers, data relating to war participation and testimonies proving disappearance or death in addition to medical records, as well as information regarding the situations of the beneficiaries’ families and the amounts of money they received, and evidence attesting changes in the status of pension beneficiaries. Next, the details were entered into a relational database that will enable multiple scientific investigations in the fields of humanities, social sciences, and legal studies, as well as medicine and history of medicine, and offer the possibility of having a social and cultural impact among the general public and local communities. the preliminary results, drawn from the table relating to widows, illustrate the negative consequences of war on the lives of men, women, and children in transylvania. Finally, the paper outlines further development of the database and future lines of research.

Population censuses have been organised sporadically since antiquity, but in the 19th century they acquired a universal character. These censuses are a good source of information on the rural population, but it was not until the introduction of systematic national agricultural censuses that a broader picture of the countryside and agriculture was obtained. In the censuses conducted after 1918 in Poland, there was a fixed catalogue of questions on the characteristics of farms, but each time new questions were also introduced to reflect the specificity of agriculture in a given historical period. The censuses were conducted on a fairly regular basis and, therefore, they provide valuable information for comparative analyses. Due to their universality and thematic scope, they also collect data on demography and socio-professional and economic relations that are not available in other sources.