The Values of Precision

M. Norton Wise

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780691016016, 9780691037592
• eBook ISBN: 9780691218120
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Science History
• Index: History

The Values of Precision examines how exactitude has come to occupy such a prominent place in Western culture. What has been the value of numerical values? Beginning with the late eighteenth century and continuing into the twentieth, the essays in this volume support the view that centralizing states--with their increasingly widespread bureaucracies for managing trade, taxation, and armies--and large-scale commercial enterprises--with their requirements for standardization and mass production--have been the major promoters of numerical precision. Taking advantage of the resources available, scientists and engineers have entered a symbiotic relationship with state and industry, which in turn has led to increasingly refined measures in ever-widening domains of the natural and social world. At the heart of this book, therefore, is an inquiry into the capacity of numbers and instruments to travel across boundaries of culture and materials.


Many of the papers focus attention on disagreements about the significance and the credibility of particular sorts of measurements deployed to support particular claims, as in the measures of the population of France, the electrical resistance of copper, or the solvency of insurance companies. At the same time they display the deeply cultural character of precision values. Contributors to the volume include Ken Alder, Graeme J. N. Gooday, Jan Golinski, Frederic L. Holmes, Kathryn M. Olesko, Theodore M. Porter, Andrea Rusnock, Simon Schaffer, George Sweetnam, Andrew Warwick, and M. Norton Wise.

PART ONE

ENLIGHTENMENT ORIGINS

ONE

QUANTIFICATION, PRECISION, AND ACCURACY:

DETERMINATIONS OF POPULATION

IN THE ANCIEN RÉGIME

Andrea Rusnock

THE IMPULSE to count, measure, and calculate quickened dramatically in eighteenth-century Europe. Recently baptized the “quantifying spirit” by historians of science, this movement has been most closely associated with the development of new scientific instruments such as the barometer and electrometer¹ But the quantifying spirit was not confined to scientific instruments: it spread to other domains as well. In this essay, I examine the quantification of population in eighteenth-century France and argue that the methods of measuring population, like other scientific instruments, became increasingly accurate and precise, especially after 1760.²

The concept of population gained saliency in early modern Europe, in large part due to the consolidation of centralized monarchies during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Historians locate the origins of the modern nation-state precisely during this period, when definitions of the royal state came to include population as well as territorial extent. The emphasis on population by the monarchies of the sixteenth century had a clear basis in taxation: monarchs such as Francis I in France and Henry VIII in England sought to devise new ways to finance increasingly costly and sizable wars.

By the seventeenth century, discussions of population had become commonplace in political and economic writings and notably new voices called for quantified accounts of population. Foremost among these new voices was Sir William Petty who made the numerical determination of population an integral part of his political arithmetic. Petty’s French contemporary, Marshal Vauban, the leading military engineer during the reign of Louis XIV, also underlined the importance of measuring population. In a memoir written in 1693 and addressed to the King, Vauban noted that “. . . the king and his ministers do not seem clearly to have seen that the greatness of kings is measured by the number of their subjects. The obvious proof of this truth is that where there are no subjects there is neither prince nor state, nor any domination at all.”³ Throughout the eighteenth century, discussions of population abounded, in part because population came to be defined as a measure of government—not just of a king’s strength as the mercantilists had advocated, but of the goodness of government. Rousseau articulated this new definition when he asked, “And what is the surest evidence that they [i.e., members of a political association] are so protected and prosperous? The numbers of their population.”⁴

In the first section of this essay, I review the attempts made by the monarchy to monitor and count the population of France and I argue that the administrative structure of government in the old regime made such a task impossible. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, France did not possess the necessary bureaucracies for collecting statistical information and when reform-minded officials sought to collect data about the population they frequently encountered strong opposition. Nonetheless, it is significant that the state instigated the first attempts to quantify population.

Alongside these calls for quantified accounts of population flourished an extensive literature on population which contained no numerical figures at all. Early in the eighteenth century, the political philosopher Montesquieu had linked depopulation with despotism, which triggered an extended debate about whether the French population had increased or decreased. Writers who contributed to this literature debated the causes of population growth and decline: they made no attempt to establish the number of persons at a given time. Their writings, however, spurred others to formulate quantified accounts of population.

The quantification of population was not an easy task, nor did it necessarily produce accurate knowledge of the population. In fact, many of the earliest figures given for the French population were not based on any empirical evidence whatsoever. Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, providing more accurate accounts of population became a matter of concern among administrators and the enlightened public. In the seventeenth century, there was widespread agreement that a census was the best method to secure an accurate count of population. A century later, any hope of an accurate census was abandoned and government officials turned to calculation instead. This shift in opinion is in part related to the changing fortunes of the French monarchy during this period. Whether accurate or not, the figures given for populations in both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were usually precise. Writers customarily gave the number of a population to the last individual, even when that number was a product of calculation involving an admitted approximate figure.⁵

In the second section of this essay, I provide an account of the depopulation debates provoked by the writings of Montesquieu and others, who, it must be emphasized, did not quantify population. Those who opposed the arguments of depopulationists, however, did turn to quantification. I provide two examples—stimulated both by administrative needs of the French state and by the depopulation debates—to ascertain the population by calculation using a universal multiplier. In the final section, I examine two analyses of this calculation technique; one made by the intendant Auget de Montyon, the other by the natural philosopher Pierre Simon de Laplace. Although motivated by different interests, both men introduced concerns of accuracy and precision into their discussions of the universal multiplier.

Parochial Registers and Royal Censuses

The various administrative reforms and initiatives aimed at collecting numerical accounts of the French population during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries fell largely into two categories: parochial registers and government censuses. The relative frequency of these initiatives illustrates the acute concern on the part of the monarchy for its population and suggests the failure on the part of the royal bureaucracy to secure the information they sought.

With the rise of the centralized state in early modern Europe came attempts by monarchs to monitor the population of their realms. In 1539, at roughly the same time that Henry VIII of England announced his royal edict concerning vital registration, the royal ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts was issued which mandated the registration of baptisms and deaths in all parishes throughout France. As in England, members of the clergy were to be responsible for maintaining these registers; however, a striking difference in the French specification was the requirement that the registers be signed by a notary as well as by the curé. In theory the clergy were to be enlisted by the French state, and clerical documents were to be monitored by royal officials. In practice, this was not the case. Historians and demographers who have used these registers have never found an example of a register that was in fact signed by a notary.⁶

Louis XIV, who reigned from 1643 to 1715, came closer than any other French monarch to putting in place a sufficient bureaucracy to collect reliable information about the population. In April, 1667, a new edict, formally the ordinance of Saint-Germain-en Laye (commonly called the Code Louis), was put into effect. Among other specifications, this code called for the registration of births, marriages, and deaths, and required the curés to take the registers to a royal judge once a year. Although not required to do so by the code, many curés began systematically recording the age of death in these registers.

In 1691, the government introduced the sale of offices for “clerks, keepers, and conservators of the registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials”; in 1705, offices for “controllers of registers and extracts of baptisms, marriages, and burials”; and in March 1709, offices for “alternative secretary clerks.” These actions can be interpreted as an attempt by the monarchy to transfer record keeping from the Church to the royal bureaucracy. By recording information about the French population itself, the royal bureaucracy sought to increase its control over the accuracy and distribution of that information. Upon Louis XIV’s death, however, the offices created during his reign concerning vital registration came under attack from both the nobility and clergy and were eventually suppressed in December 1716.⁷

In addition to these changes which specifically concerned vital registration, Louis XIV introduced numerous reforms in royal administration, all of which tended to strengthen the royal bureaucracy at the expense of the church, nobility, and provincial estates. France was divided into généralités, regions that were administered by royal intendants, commissioners sent by the royal council.⁸ The intendants provided information about their généralités directly to the King and his council, and the men who held these offices proved to be the most active in collecting quantitative information about the population during the eighteenth century.⁹

In contrast to his grandfather, Louis XV introduced relatively minor changes concerning vital registration during his reign (1715–74). In 1736, for instance, following suggestions made by the King’s advisor Joly de Fleury in 1729, a Déclaration royale was issued which reformed the Code Louis. Curés were now required to keep duplicate registers, one on official paper and one on regular paper, and they were instructed to record the death of infants in the registers. The Déclaration formed the bureaucratic basis by which information about the population was collected in the French state, and there were no further attempts at reform until the Revolution.¹⁰ Thus, throughout most of the eighteenth century, registration of births, deaths, and marriages remained in the hands of the clergy.

In addition to parochial registers, the civil government did conduct periodic censuses which provided quantitative information about the population.¹¹ A series of censuses for different regions of France dated back to the Middle Ages, but they were infrequently conducted, and usually for only one specific area.¹² During Louis XIV’s reign one motivation for the enumerations undertaken came from taxation. Louis’s penchant for extravagance, coupled with the expenses of war, placed France in a financially precarious position and made taxation a critical issue. The only direct tax in place was the taille, a feudal tax levied against those who did not serve in the military. Many towns were exempt, and thus the brunt of the tax fell on the countryside. In the latter part of Louis XIV’s reign, new poll taxes were proposed and adopted. The capitation (1695) and the dixième (1710) were levied in an attemp...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One: Enlightenment Origins
• Part Two: Industrial Cultures
• Part Three: Mass Distribution
• Index
• Contributors