Volume VII, Issue 1, 2013
Abstract
Since the mid 18th Century a significant amount of colonial censuses for the Portuguese overseas empire is available. Yet so far, scholars have not studied this information in a systematic way, neither from the normative perspective nor for demographic analysis. This paper tries to highlight the importance of the Portuguese colonial census as an important tool in the construction of Modern Portugal within the frame of Political Arithmetic. The production of vital statistics for the Portuguese colonies corresponds to a long process of persistence both from the central and local administration in order to establish a statistical culture. We will briefly outline the normative framework of these population statistics and pay attention to the information gathered in these censuses. A special importance will be given to the royal orders of 1776 and 1796-97 that standardized the process of data classification among the overseas settlements. A set of appendixes with the sources description and classification of the major Portuguese overseas domains will also be given.
Keywords
Portuguese Empire, colonial population, census-taking in the 18th and 19th Centuries colonies, population statistics framework.
Abstract
This study deals with a neglected topichomicide rates in Old Kingdom Romania at the end of the 19th Century and the first years of the 20th Century. Starting from demographic and medical statistics that included information about the causes of death, we shall reveal what was a probable evolution of homicide rates both at a national level and for some of the most important cities as well. The data will be compared with that from other European countries/regions. Furthermore, homicides will also be examined in relation with other causes of death affecting the Romanian society.
Keywords
homicide rates, Old Kingdom Romania, homicides, causes of death, medical statistics, demographic statistics.
Abstract
The starting point of our essay refers to the listing of the main theoretical and disciplinary currents in the studying of migration, having as background the aim of integrated approach (Sociology, Demography, Economics, Legal Science, Political Science, Anthropology, and Social Psychology). The disciplinary onesidedness that dominates most of the migration analysis is partially solved by a few theoretical currents and examples oriented towards interdisciplinary trends the theory of cumulative causality, the institutional theory, the theory of world systems (Sociology, Demography and Economics) -, and furthermore unifying theoretical orientations such as the theory of migration systems and the multidisciplinary approach. Although not herein detailed, the analysis of Romanian external migration makes reference to these theoretical trends and to their corresponding migration patterns. They are very useful for explaining, from various points of view, the tendencies of contemporary migration, through their multi-factorial essence and furthermore for the preliminary statistics analysis (pilot) regarding permanent emigration, by comparing the situation in two counties Cluj and Suceava. This represents the foundation for a more complex research that is on the verge of being performed. Although the permanent migration phenomenon displays certain immediate benefits (economic and social interests of remittances, and, to a certain extent the cultural loan from Western countries, in the form of patterns of social and economic progress as well as of diversity), its long and medium term demographic and social and economic effects are rather negative, especially caused by the decrease of the young and active population as well as by the brain drain phenomenon. Finally, we approach recent tendencies in the manners of studying the international migration phenomenon relying on specialized literature.
Keywords
International migration, transnational migration, multidisciplinary, macro, medium and micro-social approach of migration, tendencies of migration, migration structural factors.
Abstract
The existence of an intimate linkage between a regional society and its physical environment was a constant theme of much French historical writing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a feature exemplified in the work of Pierre Goubert and Paul Vidal de la Blache. In societies in which the great bulk of the population was rural, agriculture was by far the most important industry, and transport costs were unavoidably high, it was natural to approach the understanding of social and economic life in this manner. As de la Blache showed in La France de lEst, however, the industrial revolution involved changes which rendered the assumptions underlying regional studies invalid. A new and different unit of study was needed. There are instructive similarities between the difficulties produced by the advent of the industrial revolution for French regional history and the comparable difficulties which it produced for the assumptions of the classical economists in Britain. Several of their key assumptions proved untenable as the industrial revolution gathered momentum.
Keywords
Region, pre-industrial world, industrial revolution, appropriate unit of study
Abstract
The existence of an intimate linkage between a regional society and its physical environment was a constant theme of much French historical writing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a feature exemplified in the work of Pierre Goubert and Paul Vidal de la Blache. In societies in which the great bulk of the population was rural, agriculture was by far the most important industry, and transport costs were unavoidably high, it was natural to approach the understanding of social and economic life in this manner. As de la Blache showed in La France de lEst, however, the industrial revolution involved changes which rendered the assumptions underlying regional studies invalid. A new and different unit of study was needed. There are instructive similarities between the difficulties produced by the advent of the industrial revolution for French regional history and the comparable difficulties which it produced for the assumptions of the classical economists in Britain. Several of their key assumptions proved untenable as the industrial revolution gathered momentum.
Keywords
Region, pre-industrial world, industrial revolution, appropriate unit of study
Abstract
The author visited Pierre Goubert in Paris in 1972 and invited him to participate in the first international conference that he organized at his University, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, on Historical Methods applied to Social Sciences. The French historian accepted the invitation and his contribution had important consequences on the Spanish historiography, since his path breaking methodological historical approach was adopted by an entire generation of historians in the 1970s and 1980s, and in Galicia prior to other places in Spain. For twenty years, as an economic historian and social demographer, the author kept strong academic contacts and visited Goubert in Paris every year.
Keywords
Methodology, Goubert, Beauvais, Beauvaisis, Spanish historians, Early Modern History, Galicia, Rural society, Economy and Demography.
Abstract
Pierre Goubert (1915-2012) has been one of the most important French historians and his studies had a great influence in Spain. His path breaking books were translated in Spanish in several countries Argentina, Mexico, Spain and Spanish students received very well their exciting content and adopted Gouberts methodology and approach; in particular, his major doctoral thesis on Beauvais et le Beauvaisis de 1600 a 1730. Contribution a l’histoire sociale de la France du XVIIe siecle (1960) and his two books on the French society during the Old Regime (1969 and 1973).
Keywords
Pierre Goubert, Spanish historiography, rural history, historical demography.
Abstract
This essay intends to express, with some emotion and retrospective happiness, what our master, Pierre Goubert, brought to me and to a generation of fellow historians, through his teaching and books. He was one of the great historians of early modern peasants during the reign of Louis XIV, thanks to his researches in archives and his pioneering studies in historical demography, not to mention his talents as a writer, portraying and giving life both to humble people and to some well-known characters, including Louis XIV and Mazarin!
Keywords
Ancien Regime, Beauvaisis, Parish Registers, Peasants, Province, History, Annales School.
Abstract
The first academic tribute to Pierre Goubert, historian (1915-2012), famous author of Beauvais et le Beauvaisis de 1600 a 1730. Contribution a lhistoire sociale de la France du XVIIe siecle, Paris (1960), was by a workshop at the Archives of Oise Department, 5 March, 2012 in Beauvais. At this panel, his son, Jean-Pierre Goubert, himself historian of medicine at EHESS, Paris, presented a personal evocation of his fathers life course and childhood memories of post-war family life.
Keywords
Pierre Goubert, Beauvais, Beauvaisis, Annales School, post-war France, historical demography, parish registers