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This book is a history of an illusion. It is also a history of the dream that preceded the illusion. The book discusses statistics as the field of tension between the scientific claims of neutrality and universality on the one hand and the political and economic reality of the conflicting interests of nation-states on the other. The various paths of state- and nation-building that European countries traversed in the nineteenth century are recognisable in the objectives of government statistics and are reflected in the topics selected for statistical study and in the categories used in the research. Each congress was clearly dominated by the specific interests of the country in which the statisticians convened. The book shows in each case how the organisation of government statistics and national concerns influenced the international agenda. It describes the perceptions, goals and dilemmas of the protagonists and their contact with each other, and in so doing unravels the complex relationships between science, government and society, wherever possible from their point of view. The genesis of international statistics was inspired by a desire for reform. Belgium's pioneering role in the European statistical movement was informed both by its liberal polity and the special status of statistics within it, and by Adolphe Quetelet's key position as an intellectual. The consolidation of the Grand Duchy of Baden, a new medium-sized state in the Rhine Confederation and later in the German Confederation, offered great opportunities for the development of official statistics.
This chapter looks at the tensions surrounding agricultural statistics in the context of 'Progressive' and 'anti-Progressive' white politics. Livestock and crop enumeration could evoke strong sentiments in the Cape Colony in the late nineteenth century. Statistics on livestock and crop production were at the centre of debates on livestock disease legislation, the development of the railway network and even the nature of political representation in the Cape. As farmers developed their understandings of agricultural practice based largely on their own observations, agriculture was an environment in which the opinions of scientific experts were particularly vulnerable to criticism. The prominence of rationality and expertise in the Progressivist ethos made the construction of public discourse of scientific knowledge on the colony an urgent project. The proponents of 'progressive' farming were as convinced of the 'ignorance' and 'backwardness' of many of the colony's farmers as they were of the 'benefits' of scientific agriculture.
society would conform to the same laws as nature … For a while there was hope that statistics would make objective policy and unchallenged state intervention possible. This testing of the boundaries of science and politics was a circuitous process that led to new definitions (remember Engel’s 180 definitions of statistics), new terminology (sociology, demography) and new explanations for socio-economic changes (class struggle). In the end, 189 afterword 9.indd 189 02/12/2009 12:16:52 States and statistics in the nineteenth century statistics did not emerge the big
-lived popularity. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the dividing lines between scientific disciplines were still vague, or positioned differently than we would expect today. The fate of statistics would be tied to political economics one day and geography or ethics the next. If statistics was not the science of the century, then at least it was the chameleonic manifestation of a procession of sciences that emerged and disappeared throughout the nineteenth century. Statistics was a field with as many practitioners as definitions. Statisticians all shared a desire for
colonial reform and conservatism complicates the traditional idea that the Church of England was overwhelmed by the social, political and demographic forces that transformed Britain’s empire of settlement in the last three quarters of the nineteenth century. Statistics of the Church’s presence in colonial communities do paint an image of an institution that was struggling to keep up with migration and the
’une table pour faciliter les observations statistiques et politiques et de l’esquisse d’une carte statistique. Remarkably, this seems to sum up nineteenth-century statistics. The third international statistical congress in Vienna continued along the course set by the Paris congress. As before, the preparatory commission put several topics on the agenda which received special attention from the assembled statisticians. The advantage of this procedure was that it precluded the need to address the entire international statistics project. On the other hand, it gave Austria
, using the euphuism, of killing their babies before they were born, they have on the other hand killed and discarded them after they were born more often than the English and Welsh, Northern Irish or Scotch.25 Those who compiled the nineteenth-century statistics attributed the excess of offences against infants in Ireland to the existence of different paternity laws operating on the two islands.26 The annual figures recorded in the parliamentary Judicial Statistics of Ireland reveal that 36.3 per cent of the infant murder and concealment of birth cases reported from
addressed him as his ‘maître’ – it is questionable whether they were in complete agreement on the nature and function of statistics. Even if they did agree that statistics was the foundation of good government, they must have realised that applying this idea to the Prussian and Belgian government systems and cultures would most likely lead to very different outcomes. In the nineteenth century, statistics was both a social science and an instrument of government. Nevertheless, every handbook opened with a different definition of statistics and every country had its own way
-century successor saw a society that was guided by order despite the irrational nature of the human beings living in it. Eighteenth-century political probability theory evolved into nineteenth-century statistics, but underwent a radical metamorphosis along the way.8 Science was not solely responsible for this transformation. The French 41 chap2.indd 41 02/12/2009 12:13:50 States and statistics in the nineteenth century Revolution paved the way to a well-ordered state, which may not have been immediately evident in practice, but the blueprint was there. In 1789–1790 the
your brains’. But he did not restrict himself to picking Farr’s brains. Dr Farr later acknowledged that the prince had digested much more than the one report he had sent him. Albert’s speech was his own work.2 That speech may have marked the highpoint of nineteenth-century statistics. Never before had any member of a royal court or government spoken with such authority about statistics. Albert began by focusing on the congress’s public and national character, which was entirely consistent with the high intensity of political life in Britain where every important