Kovacsics József: A történeti statisztika forrásai (Budapest, 1957)

Angol nyelvű összefoglaló

The Theresian regulation uniformly fixed the amount of feudal services: statute labour, nona (the ninth part of the production), "presents" and money payments; it also fixed the size of the appertenances of the serfs' tenements and regulated other questions arising from the relation between serf and landlord. In the course of this process, in every village concerned a detailed inquiry was taking place in order to clear up the existing conditions and to fix the feudal obligations of the peasantry to be performed in the future. The data thus gathered were almost completely preserved in the archives of the Council of the Governor-General. They contain the answers of the serfs on a questionnaire consisting of nine points; the material of former urbarial conscriptions; the data concerning non-urbarial land (vineyards, clearings) in the possession of the peasants; the new, uniform urbaria completed by local data; the urbarial tables, as annexes showing personal data of the serfs; reports on the introduction of the new urbaria; and, finally, the summarised data of the county. The statistical value of this collection is considerable. In the course of all the long centuries of urbarial system, the Theresian regulation represented the only opportunity to register almost simultaneously (i. e. between 1767 and 1774) and following uniform directives, the urbarial conditions nearly throughout the whole territory of the country. Generally speaking, the method of the inquiry may be considered as thorough and reliable. From their material much information may be gained regarding the number of peasants living under urbarial conditions, their nationality, migration movement, property and juridical status, the extent of land under their cultivation, as well as the branches, methods and stage of development of their farming. Besides, the material is suitable to compute the extent of urbarial land in the possession of the landlords concerned. This rich source of statistical material, the usefulness of which is proved by many examples presented by the author, has notyet received the attention deserved by its significance. It would be desirable if students of historical statistics gave more attention to the subject in the future. THE CENSUS OF POPULATION OF 1784—1785 AND THE REGISTRATIONS OF POPULATIONS BASED THEREON. The population conscriptions ordered by Joseph II were most carefully analysed by Dr. Gusztav Thirring. They consisted of the census of population which took place in 1784—1785, and of the registrations and revisions carried out in the subsequent years. The 1784—1785 census may be considered, according to its main characteristics, comparable to modern population censuses. Its main achievement was that it answered to the requirement of universality: for Hungary it was the first conscription of the whole population, including also the nobility and the non-taxable poor. The conscription was carried out with the register method and individually; its success was secured — in spite of the resistance of the nobility — by the military force of absolutistic State power. The census had but two main deficiencies, first, that the collected data were not correlated with a common point of time and secondly, that it overweighted the military points of view, with the consequence that concerning the female population it contains only the global number, and that the classification of the data remained incomplete. Substantially, the material of the census may be divided into three parts: 1. demographic data (sex, age, class structure, occupation, family status); 2. analytical part and 3. questions concerning absentees and aliens of the community. The data of the census were verified by the revisions carried out in 1786 and 1787. One of the most important of these data is the number of population which