Karl Theodor von Inama-Sternegg · 1886
Inama-Sternegg’s methodological article examines the sources of historical population statistics, chiefly for the later Middle Ages and early modern period. Taking J. Jastrow’s study of German urban populations as its starting point, it broadens the inquiry to other communities and European countries. Its argument combines confidence in historical investigation with criticism of the administrative records and assumptions underlying demographic calculations.
Die unleugbaren Fortschritte, welche die socialwissenschaftliche Forschung in den letzten Decennien durch die Ausbildung der historischen Methode gemacht hat, sind auch der wissenschaftlichen Statistik in reichem Maasse zu Gute gekommen.
English translation: The undeniable advances which social-scientific research has made in the last decades through the development of the historical method have also benefited scientific statistics in rich measure.
Historical inquiry expands statistics beyond contemporary conditions. Both disciplines investigate differentiated populations and their development, but their cooperation requires more than collecting old numbers. Records must be interpreted through the institutions and purposes that produced them. Inama-Sternegg frames this difficulty through a sharp distinction between modern statistical consciousness and earlier administrative practice:
Dass das Mittelalter und auch noch die nächstfolgenden Jahrhunderte gar kein Bewusstsein des Maasses gesellschaftlicher Massenerscheinungen, gar keine Vorstellung von dem hatten, was wir Statistik nennen, kann wohl als sicher angenommen werden.
English translation: That the Middle Ages, and the centuries immediately following as well, had no consciousness whatever of the measurement of social mass phenomena, no conception whatever of what we call statistics, may well be taken as certain.
The absence of a demographic purpose does not make earlier records useless. Siege provisioning in Nuremberg and Strasbourg could require comprehensive enumeration because authorities needed to compare consumers with grain reserves. Practical incentives could therefore support completeness:
Es sind also alle Einwohner in die Listen aufzunehmen gewesen und das Interesse der Bewohner wie des Rathes sorgte dafür, dass dies auch wirklich geschah.
English translation: All inhabitants were therefore to be entered in the lists, and the interest of the residents as well as of the council saw to it that this actually happened.
Fiscal and ecclesiastical sources require equally close attention to inclusion and exclusion. A prescribed enumeration is not proof that it occurred, and an administrative category cannot automatically be treated as a demographic one.
The third section examines estimates that convert recorded taxpayers, households, or hearths into total populations. Such calculations depend on coefficients that often cannot be established historically. Adult taxpayers do not reveal the number of children without reliable knowledge of age structure; fiscal hearths may designate assessment units rather than inhabited households. Household size varies with property arrangements, wealth, domestic service, and urban building patterns. Modern comparisons demonstrate variability rather than supply universal multipliers. Inama-Sternegg prefers contemporary evidence and allows informed historical judgment where mechanical calculation would disguise uncertainty.
The fourth section applies this reasoning to estimates based on births, marriages, and deaths. Early urban mortality cannot safely be assimilated to modern rates, while registration practices alter the apparent relationship between vital events. Recording stillbirths among deaths but not births, for example, changes the resulting figures. Epidemics require separate consideration. Parish registers nevertheless offer especially valuable evidence, and the article advocates their systematic inventory, noting work already initiated in Austria.
The accumulation of assumptions sets a further limit to reconstruction. Laurent’s estimate of Hamburg’s population from annual admissions to citizenship depends on uncertain admission ages, survival durations, and ratios between citizens and inhabitants. The fifth section extends this criticism to military contingents, food consumption, agricultural output, and occupational numbers. These quantities may bear different relationships to population across periods and places. Agreement with an independently obtained total does not itself validate an estimation method. Chroniclers’ large figures likewise demand scrutiny.
The final section distinguishes reconstructing total population from investigating population structure. Records insufficient for a comprehensive count may still illuminate sex ratios, marital status, occupations, migration, or vital events, provided their selection does not distort the characteristic under examination. Genealogical registers can be valuable because of their continuity, particularly for studying generation length, but small samples, omitted infant deaths or female descendants, and changing conditions limit generalization.
Historical population statistics thus corrects the restricted observational horizon of modern statistics. Extending evidence across centuries can challenge supposedly universal demographic types and confident projections. The article joins this enlarged research programme to methodological restraint: numerical precision is warranted only when the historical meaning and coverage of the evidence sustain it.
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