ABSTRACT
Historical studies in the twentieth century have been profoundly influenced by the introduction of quantitative analysis. For premodern periods this is particularly evident in the insistence of the Annales school on the fundamental importance of statistics in establishing the contours of demographic, economic, and social life. Crunching the numbers has been central to all levels of analysis, from the longue durée to short-term trends. Not all historians, even within the Annales school, have been receptive to such quantification, which is essentially an application to history of methods derived from the social sciences, and some have criticized the possibility that statistics may be used to give history the air of a natural science and thus fundamentally misrepresent its character.1 Provided that excessive claims are avoided, however, probably few historians today would deny the obvious point that some types of historical questions can be studied only with a quantitative foundation.
