Two upcoming online programs you can view on the National Archives youtube channel. Friday, october 30 6 00 p. M. Hr mcmaster will tail asked about his recent book. Has Current National security threats to the United States and provides a Clear Pathway to improve strategic confidence. Joining the conversation will be nicholas coddington, director of the National Archives office of education and public programs. Tuesday, november 10 at 3 00 p. M. David winkler, the smithsonian air and space museum Charles Lindbergh fellow and Aerospace History will discuss his recent book tribute to a generation Aiden Williams and the building of the world war ii merial i hope you will join us for tse programs. Apri2020 the United States embarked on its 24th decennial population census, the 10 Year National count is mandated by article 1 section 2 of the United States constitution and also part of a tradition of counting people that goes back to at least three millennia and now spans the globe. The census forms collected throughout the centuries are more than justnumbers. They represent people. As they seek familconnections in the past and some the people data scientistsand your whippy traces remarkable history of the census in so doing he states that his aim has been to show how the institution of counting people has evolved, how it is changed and society has changed and how it some me has changed those cieties in turn. Most recently Andrew Whitby worked in Development Data group of the wor bank. Where he was coeditorf the atlas of the Sustainable Development goals. I will turn you over to Andrew Whitby, thank you for joining us today. Thank you for the introduction. Its really wonderful to be able to contribute to this series in the National Archives. At least virtually. Because this is really the second home of the United States census. The first home of course as the Census Bureau itself. The folks at the Census Bureau plan and run the census. To catch up to date with where we are in 2020, they have been collecting responses for about six months and they finally stopped just around two weeks ago. Now they will be busily checking and processing the data. , december they will release the first results to determine each states representation in congress. That is the critical original constitutional reason for the census. After that, they will progressively release more detailed results over the next few years, which will be used for all kinds of state and local government purposes by businesses for planning, by researchers, by teachers, and by students. After all that initial activity has died down, the original census the halfdozen questions each of you hopefully answered sometime in the last six months will not be destroyed, instead once the Census Bureau is finished with the record they will pass them over to the National Archives. There they will wait protected under a rule they cannot be disclosed publicly for 72 years. But, 2092 the 2020 census response will begin a second life as a historical record of what kind of people lived in the United States in the year 2020. If today is any guide, they will be consulted by historians, by genealogists, perhaps by your children or grandchildren or greatgrandchildren. Its for that reason this is the perfect venue in which to tell you about my book the sum of the people how the census has shaped nations from the ancient world to the modern age. Census taking is really an ancient institution, as my title suggests. We can find evidence of Something Like it and really the earliest recorded history and even earlier 3000 or 4000 years ago at least. So my book is a kind of woven tour through th history through the development of the idea from the earliest counts right up to 2020. But today i want to give you a sample of just for a particular but quite important censuses. And because this is a talk about archive, ive started each one with written documents themselves. I dont want to give away everything yet but to give you an idea of the historical stand of this talk, here are the dates of the censuses that are recorded in these documents. If you look closely at the news, you see a kind of evolution in the way the census has been taken and the way they been used. But its not necessarily a straight line. Lets talk about the first census, actually the first set of censuses we will look at. Of the four documents i showed you, this is the oldest and the only one that is not housed in some countries National Archives and i think it shows. This is a photo from the 1970s of a much older inscription in marble and as you can see, theres a big chunk missing. The marble in question is located in this roman temple, the temple of augustus in rome, located in modernday athe capital of turkey. 2000 years ago wh the temple was built this was the capital of the roman province of gladio, and had recently been conquered by the first roman emperor, Caesar Augustus. There he is on the right looking imperial. But the key thing for us is the word that ive highlighted, one of the ones you can pick up from the undamaged part of the marble. You can see the resemblance of the english word census and thats because we take our word census from the romans. Lets step back bit to see the context of this instction. The following description is much larger and suffer significant damage over the centuries. What im showing you here is 1 19 ntury transcription which gives clear view of the whole thing including the undamaged and e damage section. This document has come known as awith means the deeds of the divine augustus. Its aind of autobiographical obituary of augustus think of it li the president ial memorial around washington dc, the lioln memorial or the fdr memorial. The story goes that austus wrote these rds and left instruions in his well that they should be inscribed upon pillows outside his mausoleum in rome. Thatsot exactly how modern american president ial memorials haveome about, if it seems a bit egotistical, we can be thankful for that. Because while originally rome was longlost, copies were made and distributed throughout the empire in at least two other partial copies have also survived also in turkey. In addition, the anchor is copied in latin and greek. Between all the copies historians can piece together the entire text. The section of the text i want to focus on today is this its the eight of some 35 talk points that list th achievements of caesar gustus, thats what makes it the rest. Heres what this point says in latin and because i cant read latin and i presume many of you cant either, heres the englh translation. I meant to read the whole thing. In my six consulship and made a census of the people, i performed after an interv of 41 years in this lustration 4,3,000 roman citizens were entered the census role. The word their loss registration refers to animal sacrifice that took place after the completion of the roman census, tohe romans the cens was imbued with a kind of ceremonial quality andhas hence the animal sacrifice and over time t word came to review to the nsus itself and in a period of five years which is how often the romans took their cens. As the text goes on augustus continues and describes tw other ceuses he performed. An interesting thing to note is numbers increase quite dramatically for about 4 million to nearly 5 million roman citizens. Its a kind of propaganda an you can be sure that austus and the population as a sign of the health and vality of the society with which he ruled. Thats an attitude of population that is being common in lots of historical periods and still quite common toy. The other reason that i find the cens of augustus particularly intesting is that it comes up in the ble in new testament. Our says ter 2 1b that. In those days Caesar Augustus sued a decree that census should be taken of the entire roman world. This is the first census that took place while radius was govern of syria. And everyone went to their own town to register. Joseph also went up into the town of nazareth in galilee, d the town of david because he be long to the house of david. Even a lot of nochristians would beamiliar with what happens next. Mary and joseph reach bethlehem and there amongst animals in a manger mary gives birth to a boy,jesus of nazareth, who we now know as jesus christ. The traditional location o that manger is now the church of t nativity in bethlehem, what you see here. While this is probably the mt famous census of all time, it probably didnt happen at least the way luke describes it but i market to go into at today. I want to mention it becauset gives a connection through time and may have inspid another census a thousd years later, ousands of miles away and then fairly insignificant british isles. That census was the doomsday inquest, this is a spread from its most famous artifact doomsday world. Its a compilation of the people and places of early enand, some 300,000 people who were enumerated around 20 or 30,000 of whom by name. Today doomsday book, which is actually in two volumes. Its kept in the National Archives in the united kingdom. So how did the survey come to be . In 1066 william of normandy a french jew crossed the English Channel invading and conquering england and in the title we know about him today william the conqueror. There he is on the right dng some conquering, he maintained control of england. So at christmas of 1085, nearly 20 years after his conquest william found himself in gloucester, former roman city in the west of england. The anglosaxon chronicle, the most Important Role historical record of that time, during that time in gloucester he found himself in very deep consultation with its counsel about this land, how it was occupied and by what sort o men. By the middle of january 10 86, that curiosity had become the doomsday survey. What we dont really know williams reasons beyond curiosity, which is surely not enough of a reason for conducting the survey, one theory is that it was to support tax collection in order to prepare an army against a possible danish invasion. And another theory it was designed to cement in writing e land reorganization that had taken placin the abover the previous 20 years. But the theory that i liked most is that perhaps william was sitting in a church in gloucester on Christmas Eve of that year and the priest read from luke chapter 2, which mentioned the seasons of caesar god augustus. William seeing himself as an impressive ruler in his own right was perhaps inspired by that. Certainly doomsday was unlike modern census, to the extent that some scholars dont consider the census at all. It primarily recorded plots of land with people a secondary focus. It certainly didnt count everyone. In addition it noted some 2000 churches, 6000 mills, 45 vineyards, abin fact, the chronicle or of the anglosaxon chronicle observers there was a lot of abnot a single hide or yacht of land it sink shameful to tell that or ashamed to do it, not even an ox nor a cow nor swine was left but that was not put down. The expansive nature of the survey kind of reminds me of the American Census in the late 19th century which at that time was also expanding to engulf agriculture and mining and industry in the same way. Personally, im quite happy to call the doomsday survey a census. My favorite tiny human detail in the book is from this page which is part of the record from aani highlighted the passage. It reads in the breviated latin used at doomsday but a man left a certain woman on the landnd he took her in marriage and afterwards he held that land without the kings grand and without wiry to him and his successors. We know nothing else about this man. Or about the woman he loved or what became of them. Is just a tinydetail in the rich pestry of anglonorman england that sketched out in the survey. Probably no good to em, no good came to them, being recorded in th fashion because while doomsday was eful for the king and his treasury to plan better taxation and useful to the futile land and crops that could use it to buttress the claims and to the parcel of land theyight own. It probably wasnt much good for ordinary peasant farmers. Is was a time en the last that you are king the feder government the better. That didnt begin to change in europe until the 18th century. I use this document as the beginning of that chan. People often ask me what was the first census, thats a question i hate trying to answer because earlier csuses are in china and has hard to be precise about how or when they occurred. They are often first mentioned inwriting centuries after they allegedly occurred and then they involve fantastical and mythological people and events at least in the first instance is. If you ask when the first modern census as this one, ab itsbvious that this is a more modern organized document than the doomsday book. Wears pages of doomsday are arranged in paragraphs and text, this is a clear tabular structures with rows and columns. So what prompted ts careful census of eland . This is iceland. Is is me and iceland in 2017 and you can probably tell its not particularly hoital environment for people. Ateast two things make iceland hostile to settlement, he has dozens of volcanoes. Since thvikings first arrived a thousand years ago, 18 have erupted, stroying villages and burying farm like hawaii, iceland one big volcano. But second, quite unlike hawaii, iceland is really far north so reykjavck the capital is far north as alaska with the veryop of the iceland in the arctic circle. These two environmental habits together means that iceland s always mainal punctuated by outrightisaster. Thats exactly the situation the icelanders found emselves in in 01. At a point of starvation of sheer desperation they sent an emissary by boat to copenhagen across the ocean to petition King Frederick the fourth of denmark, who was the ruler, to help. Frederick the fourth is generally regarded, so ive read, is a pretty enlightened king. He wasnt about to let these people who owe their leaders to him abbut at the same time, if he was to help he needed a better sense of the scale of the problem. Frederick appointed two men, magnuson and ato travel back to iceland and conduct the census. Date of this over the winter of 1702, 1703, which then became known in icelandic history as the census winter. You may be thinking, i did when i first became interested in this topic, that the u. S. Census was maybe not the first but robbie the first modern census, right . Its true the u. S. Census is important and we will get to that, but its in technical terms this is 1703 icelandic census for nearly a century earlier, is better in every way. It counted nearly everyone. I mean, everyone. Wears ancient census, those in the bible or roman times tended to count only military age men or citizens of something of that sort. King frederick instructed magnuson that no person should be left off. 50,366 people were counted including amodern scholars have managed to identify just one farm that seems to be missed our. To give you an idea of how good that is, if a u. S. Census would result like that in a good year, but officials would be ecstatic. 2020 has not been good year for the census. With a couple other reasons i find the claim to be the first modern census a really compelling one, it was conducted for the benefit of its people. Whereas so many older sensors that were motivated by or even entire larry dedicated to the task of inscription or tax collection, doesnt seem frederick was intending to instruct anything from ice the icelanders. It wasnt much to extract. We think he was planning to help them. There is benevolent purpose means the census has more in common than censuses today than william the conqueror surveyed. The final reason i like it is someone with statistical training is a careful complete way each persons details were recorded. Each person is listed by name, with their occupation, the sex of every person is known and the agent is known for all but 357 people. Let me give you an example. This is the first page othe section of the census record that deals with the inhabitants of abthe figure of land at juts out to the west just level with iceland in. This first block of names are the residence of the afirm the first name, the one i highlighted is that of a 62yearold man forced listed as alerk, carpenter, and builder. The other names of those of his wife, their three childr, the maid, his brotherinlaw, and each of those also listed with their ages. This is from 1703 so by comparison it wasn until 1850 that all white people in the United States were listed by name in this way. It wasnt until 70 after the civil war that all black americans, including former slaves, were listed by me in the ceus. Before that they were just numbered. Nave americans were inadveently included until th20th century. I had some luck he. Earlier eupean colonies in north america took censuses around the same time or earlier, this 1566 census of new france, these were increasingly common through the 18th century but an end to this atlantic effort. Mostly by geography iceland had no native people who mightve been excluded or did was discriminated against so they related count everyone in e territory and that is perhaps the single defining rule of what i census is today. There was some luck but still im willing toive iceland this a defend the 1703 census as the first modern one. Unrtunately for iceland, this information gathering exercise ultimately went nowhere. The census abperhaps somewhat distracted by the death of his second wife. The icelanders were left to defend for themselves. Lets return to the shores and considerhe first census of the United States 1790 anthe contributions it did ma. This should be very familiar. The constitution of the United States drafted three years earlier in 1787 this copy, from the National Archives, is eight pages long. The slidhows just the first word of the first page but you can get a sense of how integral this census is in the governance of this country by looking at where the frame is introduced in the text. Its here in article 1, article 1 section 2 paragraph three. Im going to read some of this because although i want to point out two major innovations the u. S. Census introduced my also have to acknowledge the problems with this clause as it was written. So it says, representives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states whichay be included within this union according to the respective numbers which shall be determined by adding the whole number of free persons including those bound to serve a term of years and excluding indians not taxed,. Those last six words 3 5 of all of the persons refer to enslaved people. For the purposes apportionment. Each enslaved person would count as only 3 5 as much as a free person. The reason for this, and the consequences of it are a bit more complex than they first appear. Enslaved people can vote in any case. So the effectiveness was to disempower slaveholders and slave states. Relative to a situation which everyone mightve counted equally. In fac by the end of the Constitutional Convention it was the northern states pushing for the 3 5 ratio wears reesentatives from the Southern States wouldve preferred enslaved people to count the same as free people. Giving their weight in congress. Nonetheless, these words are a stain on the otherwise good idea thats were presented here of time, representation, directly to population. Its one of those places where slavery was written into the constitution and into the very fabric of the nation and thats a pity because the basic idea of a rresentative government made sense and was a nove application of census taking and would grow in importance at e time. Support that idea and Historical Context the British Parliament at the time didnt pretd to be representative, in fact, especially from a probm that was known as pocket burrows which were districts with tiny populations maybe a dozen or few dozen people that abwhere heould vote on equal terms with members that representative far larger districts of thousands of peop and of course famously those living in the colonies of britain had no representation in parliament at all. Before we leave this paragraph its worth looking at how the 14th amend t change that. Because for all th we condem the 3 5 compromise its worth celebrating to its ultimate demi. Section 2 reads representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to the respective numbers counting the whole number of persons in each state excluding indians not taxed. The whole number of persons in each state, not the whole number of voters, or whole numb of adults or whole number of citens or even the whole number of free persons but the whole number of persons, everyone, with the exception of indians not taxed, a status that was eliminated in the 1920s. That is whthe census has counted ever since, everyone who lives here regardless of their status and every congress sense has been apportioned on that basis. So thats the first innovation i would say e American Census gave to the world. It gives account the immense political weight. It was kind of a doubleedged sword because its also the reason that the census today is often politically contentious as it has been the last two years its contentious precisely because it determines who has power in america. For the second innovation we have to read on. The constitution continues, a within every subsequent term of 10 years, abthey shall by law direct. This meant that, United States word as a constitutional requirement take a census every 10 years. Regular repeated census taking wasnt completely unknown in the world so sweet and had been taking a census every three years in the 1750s but embedding it in the constitution this way guaranteed it would happen into the future and the fact thats work, even in times of war or as we seen this year during a global pandemic, the census has gone ahead on schedule every 10 years. In the 19th century progressed this idea of decennial census every 10 years was adopted as National Recommendation for all countries. Thats the second major innovation from the American Census just as the constitution had promised, they went ahead in august 1790, the count was organized by u. S. Marshalls who appointed some 650 assistants to do the house to house. As you might expect for the first such event in the nations history itasnt completely without flaws. This is one of them actually. This is a census schedule from rocket street in philadelphia. This shows the general format of all the 1790s schedules. A name, had his aas head of household, and five numbers and the numbers in order are the count of the different types of People Living in the household as mentioned in that paragraph in the constitution. Already you can see the social hierarchies at the time embedded in the structure of the schedule itself. White men are divided into two age categories while white women are not. No white people are not divided by age or sex they just lumped together. What i was writing the book i went to this page in particular because its where Benjamin Franklin had lived in market street. Franklin was kind of a hero of the census, he wrote a paper back in the 1750s. But a little sadly, franklin ed in april 1719, having been using the modern abhe wouldve been counted but then the census day was actually in august so he wasnt. However, his daughter inherited his house and continued to live there so she is included in the census. Probably. I say obably because of another mysterious thing about this entry. This is it highlighted as was a aits not listed under he name but under her husband, the head of the household. The interesting thing the stery about thiss that we know how many people were in that family, this was the daughter and grandchildren of Benjamin Franklin. But it seems like there were two women missing from account. Between us we couldnt come up wi any obvious reason why they would be absent whethe traveling or Something Like that. My best guess is that two of frankls female grandchildren re simply overlooked by them. You might find that a little hard to believe but even today the Census Bureau finds at young children, the one of the groups they routinely undercount. I think its not a coincidence that women were missed rather than men. Regardless of these errors and probably many others like them, the various subtotals were sent back to washington but aggregated into the results you see here. In fact, historical ahave gone back and looked at 1790 census numbers and they consensus seems to be is probably accurate overall, despite the imperfect process that led to it. But even at the time, washington thought it was an underestimate and jefferson was known for passing around copies of the population tickets to others amended in red ink to account for his own estimates. The important thing is that despite these suspicions it was accepted as the true population of the United States. In 1792 based on these figures, congress for the first time reapportioned itself and its a good thing it did. The first and Second Congress had been apportioned on rough estimates within the constitution during the convention. It turns out those estimates were quite far off. For example, in those first two congress is north and South Carolina each have the same number of seats, five. But in the third congress, which reflected the new numbers that came from the census, North Carolina had doubled its representation to 10, while South Carolina increased by only one, 26. Representative of the census count could really work if put into practice the idea of the american Representative Government and established democratic tradition that continues to this day, and as the constitution and federal law demand it will happen again next year based on this years census. Thats where i will leave the story of the American Census today. If you want to find out what happened next i recommend another book the American Census. The message of my book and the one i really want to leave you with today is the story of the American Census is just one chapter of a grander story of census taking in general. Not only in this country but all around the world not only over these past b,230 whatever thousands of years. The story of this institution is one of constant change reflecting the emboldened relationship between people and their governments but also a story of continuity this year the Census Bureau described the reason for the census in this way. The census directs federal funds in hospitals roads public works businesses use census data to decide to wear to build factories and stores. Local governments use the census for Public Safety and emergency preparedness. It turns out you can find very similar description of tax from almost 2000 years ago by a chinese abhe wrote handsets from population figures variety of affairs i have arrived ordering the payment of tributes and taxes manufacturing implements and utensils abit goes on to ask, does the significance of population figures by just in checking the numbers of people. The answer i given my book is one that agave in 1882 before the census of moscow. He wrote. The entrance and significance of the census for the community lie in this and finishes with a mirror into which willynilly the whole community and each one of us gaze. That to me is what is so fascinating about it. Thank you. Tonht at 9 00 p. M. Eastern on after words, political scientist and author deborah stone talkabout her book counting how we use numbers to decide whatmatters. Shes interviewed by data scntist and author kathy oneill. The good thing about numbers is at, trying to measure things but the system whether an algorithm or a simple list of inditors is that the exercise of trying to measure things forces us to think about what we value, what we care about, whats important. Watch booktv on cspan2 tonight. Here is a look at some Publishing Industry news, former president barack obama released the first of his twopart memoir this week, the book a Promised Land covers president obamas early political career, his road to the white house and part of his first term. The books publisher Crown Division of Penguin Random house is printed 3. 4 million copies for north america and in additional 2. 5 million for the international market. Publishers weeklys book to editors, agents, and other publishing executives about many suggested he would seek in advance that rivals the 65 billion that former president and first lady obama received for their respective memoirs. In other news, New York Times White House Correspondent Maggie Haberman is writing a book on her 20 years of covering president trump. Book will be published by Penguin Press and will be available in early 2022. Also in the news, several of americas larger publishers repaired sales gains for the Third Quarter of the year that ended september 30, simon and schuster saw a 20 increase while abrose by 15 percent, harpercollins saw a 13 jump in sales. Mpd bookscan announced that James Patterson was the bestselling author of the last decade with 84 million print and ebook sold, his total sales were higher than stephen king, David Baldacci and john grisham combined and made up for one in seven books sold in the thriller genre. Booktv will continue to bring you new programs and publishing news. You can also watch all of our past programs any time at booktv. Org. Hello everyone, thank you for joining us, my name is Benjamin Quinn on behalf of Harvard Bookstore im so excited to welcome you to tonights event deborah willis, john stauffer, sarah lewis discussing their book to make
vimarsana.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.