ABSTRACT
In a Europe in economic crisis, the administrators needed to take stock of population size and development after revolutions and wars, using the cheapest method possible: constructing aggregate statistics from residence level upwards, but few nominative census manuscripts. According to theory of enumeration as a dialectic process between state power and social power, choosing the numeric census method without listing individuals gave the state control over the categories, while protecting the interests of local elites who did not want to render control over their subjects’ identity to the central level.
In 1815, the first country to assemble census aggregates after the restoration was Norway with its poor state finances – it also became a poor census. The US continued its numeric censuses each decade as prescribed by the Constitution. Great Britain consistently continued the practice started in 1801, taking numeric censuses one year later. Other nations such as the losers of the Napoleonic wars, France and Denmark, only in the 1830s managed to restart full-count nominative censuses. From 1834 to 1867, the German Customs Union coordinated censuses in order to share revenues, using various methods, although the nominative method was gaining ground.
