Why are historical estimations so terrible?

[Arilou]

Yes I get it they where burned or got degraded with centuries but we ignore something here the church. They had an certain census on married and baptized people they where recorded so they knew who was married with who how many children they had with who they had so forth.
Oh and also record death's also.

But they weren't neccessarily kept ina centralized way (at least not until the 1500's or so) nor neccessarily saved. (and even after 1500's, the quality of the recordkeeping varies immensely depending on how interested the priest in question is in keeping the records)

 

[sleeperul]

Yes a merchant could do that. Even after parish records began to be kept they didn’t send copies to a central location to be compiled and searched for multiple marriages. It was a serious crime though so he had better hope no one finds out.

A landed knight probably knew how many tenant families he had. He may owe service to his liege lord for a certain number of men and it was up to him to round them up. None of this really required written records and certainly not ones compiled on a national scale.

When large scale conscription became more common this changed. The first modern censuses pretty much happen for the very purpose of raising the larger armies of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Okay the Spanish flu was at the same time more or less with WW1 and I know for sure the great power of that time conscripted an lot of troops from their colonies. Would they not need to do an census so they know how many men are available, where are they what is their age how many are men and adults their marital status their children and so forth.

 

[Abdul Goatherd]

Is it recorded who was legible for the poll tax? Every man, woman and child, every free person, every free person with property? I just don’t see the Roman tax farmer counting every beggar in the streets.

Censi weren't carried out by tax farmers, but by census takers. Every man, woman and child was counted.

Tax farmers and collectors operated by estimates of how many people were (estimated to be) in a locality. Usually a total tax bill was presented to a village, and the village had to cough up the sum. How they actually went about doing so in practice is up to them. But the sum must be delivered. If someone tries to escape payment, then their neighbors must pay more to make up the difference. So there's an incentive to make sure everyone pays their share. Pleas of poverty exceptions and requests for solidarity were negotiated by the villagers among themselves. The collector doesn't care how they sort it, so long as they deliver the right sum.

Of course, it was pretty common - indeed, almost expected - for wealthy patrons to step forward and just voluntarily pay the entire tax bill on behalf of the poor. Noblesse oblige and all that.

 

[Geriander]

Okay the Spanish flu was at the same time more or less with WW1 and I know for sure the great power of that time conscripted an lot of troops from their colonies. Would they not need to do an census so they know how many men are available, where are they what is their age how many are men and adults their marital status their children and so forth.

The colonial troops weren’t generally conscripted in the same manner as European citizens. Arbitrary conscription or voluntary recruitment was used.

 

[sleeperul]

The colonial troops weren’t generally conscripted in the same manner as European citizens. Arbitrary conscription or voluntary recruitment was used.

I do not know what arbitrary conscription is but lets go to voluntary recruitment. When that person went to war are you telling me the place he went from had no source of administration who by the way took taxes that had no census to know from how many it can take taxes from who to take taxes or who is dead and can not pay taxes?
The colonial administration had no census at all?
How did they dealt with taxes in the colonies was there no such thing people payed when they wanted if they wanted as nobody knows they exist?

 

[Xeorm]

There's also the habit to make a range out of multiple methods. Easy to have one method that's pretty accurate and get the actual number, while also using and reporting methods that give the upper and lower bounds. Methods that look only at finding the upper and lower bounds can be pretty off, but are still useful, and can lead to some very high ranges.

 

[sleeperul]

There's also the habit to make a range out of multiple methods. Easy to have one method that's pretty accurate and get the actual number, while also using and reporting methods that give the upper and lower bounds. Methods that look only at finding the upper and lower bounds can be pretty off, but are still useful, and can lead to some very high ranges.

I do not get it can you exemplify?

 

[Xeorm]

I do not get it can you exemplify?

The nature of estimations is to use incomplete data to produce other data you find useful. Here's an example: I know how many houses are in a county, but I want to know how many people live there. A fairly accurate estimation is to take the known average number of people in a house and multiply it by the number of houses. You'd get a pretty good idea of how many people live there. Let's say that number comes out to 15,363 people.

Then there are other methods. I know that to be a house, it requires one person living there, so I know that there's at least 1 person in each house. The lower bound is therefore the number of houses. Say, 566 people. Take the same housing data, and look at maximum capacity and you'd arrive at the maximum bound for the population living in the county as, say, 43,987.

Both of the later methods are terrible at finding how many people live in the county, but are useful in providing a bounds of how many live there. Question is, how do I simplify the data and present it? A third party comes along and can be completely accurate and give the answer 566-43,987 people, to give a large range, but not go into the accuracy of the numbers.

Does that make more sense?

 

[Geriander]

I do not know what arbitrary conscription is but lets go to voluntary recruitment. When that person went to war are you telling me the place he went from had no source of administration who by the way took taxes that had no census to know from how many it can take taxes from who to take taxes or who is dead and can not pay taxes?
The colonial administration had no census at all?
How did they dealt with taxes in the colonies was there no such thing people payed when they wanted if they wanted as nobody knows they exist?

Arbitrary as in not done on a common basis. You may conscript every prisoner in a jail or ask a village for a certain number.

Local governments may have had some records depending on place. Nothing that was compiled for the whole Empire on a regular enough basis to do more than guess at the effect of the Spanish flu. With estimates for the population of Europe varying by 42 million in 1929 its hardly surprising that we don’t have exact figures for Africa.

 

[sleeperul]

Arbitrary as in not done on a common basis. You may conscript every prisoner in a jail or ask a village for a certain number.

Local governments may have had some records depending on place. Nothing that was compiled for the whole Empire on a regular enough basis to do more than guess at the effect of the Spanish flu. With estimates for the population of Europe varying by 42 million in 1929 its hardly surprising that we don’t have exact figures for Africa.

So that was the problem nobody wanted to compiled all the censuses made by local administrations, local governments, the church, the army itself. There where so many sources that took censuses I exemplified them but nobody wanted or was worth centralizing them.
So lack of will or lack of worth right?

 

[Geriander]

So that was the problem nobody wanted to compiled all the censuses made by local administrations, local governments, the church, the army itself. There where so many sources that took censuses I exemplified them but nobody wanted or was worth centralizing them.
So lack of will or lack of worth right?

Well yes. If they sent out officials to evey town and village to ask whoever was in charge, they would be able to get quite accurate records. The effort was huge and the British only managed it once. For your purpose it would need to be done twice in quick succession and causes of death would need to be recorded as well.

 

[Semper Victor]

Is it recorded who was legible for the poll tax? Every man, woman and child, every free person, every free person with property? I just don’t see the Roman tax farmer counting every beggar in the streets.

The universal purpose for censuses all across human history has been a fiscal one: to record the numbers of taxpayers, for obvious reasons (if you don't have them listed, it's practically impossible to run a centralized tax system, and you have to rely on "feudal" systems). In the case of the Roman Principate, there were two major direct taxes: the capitatio, which was a poll tax paid at different rates for men, women, children and slaves (their owners had to pay for them) and the iugatio, which was also paid by every cultivator. Italy was exempt from these taxes, as well as cities across the empire which were Roman colonies of enjoyed the ius italicum; Roman citizens were also exempt from them anywhere they resided within the empire.

The Romans certainly conducted censuses of taxpayers in each province, which were run by provincial legates and praefecti or by imperial procuratores sent directly by the emperor; as usual Egypt has yield a rich trove of fiscal papyri several of which make use of (and make reference to) data provided by censuses. The most famous case of one of these censuses is the one that according to the Gospel of Luke forced Joseph and Mary to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and which some scholars think that could be a reflection of the provincial census conducted by the Roman legate of Syria Publius Sulpicius Quirinius and which is recorded by Flavius Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews.

 

[sleeperul]

Well yes. If they sent out officials to evey town and village to ask whoever was in charge, they would be able to get quite accurate records. The effort was huge and the British only managed it once. For your purpose it would need to be done twice in quick succession and causes of death would need to be recorded as well.

Could they not use the records from 1906 and them make one in 1921 an get far more accurate estimation?

 

[Geriander]

Could they not use the records from 1906 and them make one in 1921 an get far more accurate estimation?

They could tell how the population had changed. Cause of death would of course require more info. They didn’t do so and we are left guessing death counts.

 

[sleeperul]

They could tell how the population had changed. Cause of death would of course require more info. They didn’t do so and we are left guessing death counts.

I assume that the theoretical census that happened in 1921 would include causes of death or what the people that made the censuses then think it was. Pretty sure records that where made included causes of death at that point in our history.

 

[Arilou]

The universal purpose for censuses all across human history has been a fiscal one: to record the numbers of taxpayers, for obvious reasons (if you don't have them listed, it's practically impossible to run a centralized tax system, and you have to rely on "feudal" systems). In the case of the Roman Principate, there were two major direct taxes: the capitatio, which was a poll tax paid at different rates for men, women, children and slaves (their owners had to pay for them) and the iugatio, which was also paid by every cultivator. Italy was exempt from these taxes, as well as cities across the empire which were Roman colonies of enjoyed the ius italicum; Roman citizens were also exempt from them anywhere they resided within the empire.

The Romans certainly conducted censuses of taxpayers in each province, which were run by provincial legates and praefecti or by imperial procuratores sent directly by the emperor; as usual Egypt has yield a rich trove of fiscal papyri several of which make use of (and make reference to) data provided by censuses. The most famous case of one of these censuses is the one that according to the Gospel of Luke forced Joseph and Mary to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and which some scholars think that could be a reflection of the provincial census conducted by the Roman legate of Syria Publius Sulpicius Quirinius and which is recorded by Flavius Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews.

The thing with roman censuses specifically, IIRC, is that we only have access to some of them (Egypt is pretty good) and we don't know how often, when, or even if, they were carried out elsewhere, and you can't neccessarily just extrapolate from Egypt.

 

[Arilou]

I assume that the theoretical census that happened in 1921 would include causes of death or what the people that made the censuses then think it was. Pretty sure records that where made included causes of death at that point in our history.

They'd have to do census for causes of death that happened several years back, during a major epidemic. That's not particularly easy (*especially* during epidemics, because chances are the peopel who kept the records died too, leaving gaps)

 

[Arilou]

Tax farmers and collectors operated by estimates of how many people were (estimated to be) in a locality. Usually a total tax bill was presented to a village, and the village had to cough up the sum. How they actually went about doing so in practice is up to them. But the sum must be delivered. If someone tries to escape payment, then their neighbors must pay more to make up the difference. So there's an incentive to make sure everyone pays their share. Pleas of poverty exceptions and requests for solidarity were negotiated by the villagers among themselves. The collector doesn't care how they sort it, so long as they deliver the right sum.

Yeah, that's how taxation worked just about everywhere. It tells you remarkably little about the demographics. (since we usually don't get the records of whatever negotiations the villagers did) at best we get the estimates from the tax collectors (and those might be innacurate, outdated, or fiddled with for all sorts of reasons)

 

[Semper Victor]

The thing with roman censuses specifically, IIRC, is that we only have access to some of them (Egypt is pretty good) and we don't know how often, when, or even if, they were carried out elsewhere, and you can't neccessarily just extrapolate from Egypt.

Yes, that’s right. It’s quite adventurous to extrapolate from Egyptian evidence (Egypt was a very urbanized province with a very well structured administration down to village level inherited from Ptolemaic times), but it’s still quite sure that if the Romans wanted to conduct direct taxation directly by the state, they needed to have censuses of taxpayers made (and when I mean “taxpayers” I mean “taxable units”, conducting censuses for statistical purposes would have probably seemed ludicrous to the Romans). Under the Republic this was not a problem because direct taxes in the provinces were farmed out to private corporations of publicani, but Augustus ended this system (which continued for indirect taxes until Hadrian’s times, though). Also, the reorganization of the tax system under Diocletian, with its complex system of asessment for the land tax (which was a great improvement from the previous system) needed also some kind of centralized register at a provincial level.

 

[Kovax]

First, there's the issue of who gets counted, and that varies by culture, sometimes by locale. Did they count all of the men, just the landholding men, the fighting men, those required to pay taxes, or all men, women, and children? How accurate is your census if part of your kingdom uses one method, and another part uses a different one?

Second, there's the interest in NOT providing accurate data, either to avoid being counted and taxed, or for tax collectors to pocket some of the funds from people "missed" by the official census. In the army, regular unannounced "inspections" were sometimes used to prevent officers from inflating their payrolls with enlisted men who didn't exist except on paper, and pocketing their pay; parades are a way of insuring that the military formations are actually composed of the proper numbers of trained and drilled soldiers, and not inflated by a handful of last-minute conscripts or stand-ins in uniforms who don't even know how to march.

Third, there's the difficulty in gathering and compiling all of the individual local counts, which was RARELY done. In most cases, the local tax collectors and local officials had a pretty good idea of who actually lived there, but the only thing that was required of them was to send "x amount" of money based on the general economic vitality of the region and "guesstimated" population, not a detailed list of who paid it. They sent the money, and kept receipts, but no written records were kept of the population details.

Many local parishes kept birth, funeral, and marriage records, but those deteriorate over time, are lost, burned, or waterlogged, etc. Some public records are destroyed in wars, fires, the closing of churches, or through other incidents and accidents (a decade or two ago, we struggled to find records in various small village churches of our ancestors from around 1900; it was difficult even when we knew exactly what we were looking for, and only partially successful). Many older town records were probably thrown away after some lapse of time, simply not being considered relevant anymore. In essence, all we can do is try to make broad assumptions based on the few cases where we actually do have data.