The Golden Age of State Enquiries
Rural Enquiries in the Nineteenth Century. From Fact Gathering to Political Instrument
Edited by Nadine Vivier
The heart of the nineteenth century was the golden age of state enquiries in Europe. This international comparative study highlights the importance of transnational cultural tranfers and the enquiries as a means of construction of the nation state.
Any state intervention in society requires a high degree of knowledge. This is usually given by a state-sponsored enquiry. Some of these surveys can be traced back to Antiquity, but by the nineteenth century enquiries proved to be different because the nature of the state and the distribution of political influence had changed, and the scientific and financial means to investigate had progressed. This new context prompted states to launch large enquiries to assess transformations in the rural world: new techniques, opening to long distance trade. The heart of the nineteenth century was the golden age of state enquiries. Inspired by the nascent sociology, they fulfilled the desire for scientific knowledge accessible to everyone and the search for innovative solutions for the improvement of agriculture and rural life. Most of those enquiries about the countryside are well known by historians who have built their work on the vast data collections. In a different approach, the present volume does not focus on their content; it examines the origins and functioning of the enquiries as new and important objects of historical research. Fourteen studies are gathered from across twelve countries. The main focus is on Western Europe, with broadening perspectives to the East (Ottoman Empire) and West (Canada and Mexico). The International comparative perspectives highlight the importance of transnational cultural transfers in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world. French and British methods were considered models of progress and of a civilized state. Statistical methods and the needs of the administration were discussed and adapted in each state according to their conception of state power, in the context of the construction of the nation state.
- Edited by Nadine Vivier
Other Titles in this Series
Agriculture in the Age of Fascism
Authoritarian Technocracy and rural modernization, 1922-1945
Volume 13
Contexts of Property in Europe
The Social Embeddedness of Property Rights in Land in Historical Perspective
Volume 5
Inheritance Practices, Marriage Strategies and Household Formation in European Rural Societies
Volume 7
Agrosystems and Labour Relations in European Rural Societies
(Middle Ages-Twentieth Century)
Volume 3
Rural Societies and Environments at Risk
Ecology, Property Rights and Social Organisation in Fragile Areas (Middle Ages-Twentieth Century)
Volume 9
Property Rights, Land Markets and Economic Growth in the European Countryside (13th-20th Centuries)
Volume 1
The Formation of Agricultural Governance
The Interplay between State and Civil Society in European Agriculture, 1870-1940
Volume 19
Integration through Subordination
The politics of Agricultural Modernisation in Industrial Europe
Volume 8
From Breeding & Feeding to Medicalization
Animal farming, veterinarization and consumers in the 20th c. Western Europe
Volume 17
Similar Books
Gelebtes Europa
Die innereuropäischen Beziehungen der altkatholischen Kirchen der Utrechter Union 1945 bis 1989
Military Healthcare and the Early Modern State, 1660–1830
Management – Professionalisation – Shortcomings
The Color of Choice
The Armenians and the Politics of Race in the United States and Germany (1890–1945)
Volume 2
The Mobilization at the Periphery
Universal Conscription as A Modernizing Factor of the Habsburg Empire from 1868–1914
War and Remembrance II
World War II and the Holocaust between Tabooization and Competing Narratives in Post-Socialist Europe
Volume 15
Bevölkerungsgeschichte eines mitteleuropäischen Übergangsraumes
Tirol – Südtirol – Trentino (1880-2010)
Der industrialisierte Krieg
Studien zu Unternehmen, Wirtschaft und Forschung im Ersten Weltkrieg
Volume 2
Die Spanische Grippe und die Habsburgermonarchie
Gesundheitspolitik, multiple Krisen und Staatszerfall
Erinnerungen einer ungewünschten Generation
Besatzungskinder und ihre Nachkommen auf der Suche nach den eigenen Wurzeln
Helden eines Landes, das es nicht mehr gibt
Die Transformationen des Gedenkens an gefallene sowjetische Soldaten und Veteranen des Zweiten Weltkriegs in der Ukraine
Krise, Neubeginn und nationale Konkurrenz
Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtskultur in Schlesien nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg (1918–1933)
Pioniere einer Europaarmee
Die Planung integrierter europäischer Streitkräfte im Militärausschuss der EVG-Konferenz März 1951 bis Mai 1952
Quellenpublikationen der Gesellschaft für Rheinische Geschichtskunde
Rahmenbedingungen, Genese und Rezeption im wissenschaftshistorischen Kontext
Vermessung einer Zeitenschwelle / Surveying a Time Threshold
Die Bedeutung des Jahres 1918 in osterreichischer, europaischer und globaler Perspektive / The Importance of 1918 in an Austrian, European and Global Perspective. Beitrage des Internationalen Symposiums im November 2018
Volume 9
Adelspolitik in der späten Habsburgermonarchie
Kulturen des Entscheidens in der Nobilitierungspraxis Kaiser Franz Josephs I. (1848–1916)
Das lange Gedächtnis des Josef Ackerl
Erinnerte und vergessene ZeitSchichten eines von ZeitGeschichte(n) durchlöcherten Menschenlebens
Il nemico tra di noi
La sinistra internazionale di fronte alle repressioni sovietiche (1918-1957)
Volume 478
