States and Statistics in the Nineteenth Century

States and statistics artwork 28/5/10 11:56 am Page 1 NICO RANDERAAD States and the nineteenth century statistics States and statistics in in the nineteenth century States and Europe by numbers statistics In this vivid and fascinating study, Nico Randeraad describes the turbulent in the history of statistics in nineteenth-century Europe. The book analyses attempts to engineer the internationalisation of statistics in the age of nationalism, and deals not only with developments in the large states nineteenth of Western Europe, but gives equal attention to small states (Belgium, the Netherlands, Hungary) and to the declining Habsburg Empire and Tsarist Russia. century Among the numerous initiatives that unfolded in the name of progress in nineteenth-century Europe, the international statistical movement was one of the most fascinating. Then, unlike today, statistics constituted a Europe by numbers comprehensive science, which stemmed from the idea that society, just like nature, was governed by laws. In order to discover these laws, everything had to be counted, and what could be counted, could be solved: crime, poverty, suicide, prostitution, illness, and many other threats to bourgeois RANDERAAD society. The statisticians, often trained as jurists, economists and doctors, saw themselves as pioneers of a better future. The book takes the reader along to nine international conferences organised by the statisticians, from the first held in Brussels in 1853 to the last held in Budapest in 1876, and tells how their boundless optimism was thwarted by the national interests and ambitions of European states, which did not care much for international statistics. Offering an original perspective on the tensions between universalism and the rise of the nation-state in the nineteenth century, this book will appeal to historians, statisticians, and social scientists in general. Nico Randeraad is Lecturer in History and European Studies at Maastricht University www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk erdesign.co.uk ISBN 978-0-7190-8142-2 .riv 9 7 8 0 7 1 9 0 8 1 4 2 2 Jacket design: www States and statistics in the nineteenth century prelims.indd 1 02/12/2009 12:04:46 This publication has been made possible with the financial support of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) Nosti hominum mores et vite nodos et laqueos rerum, quarum perplexitates nec arythmeticus numeret nec geometra mensuret nec rimetur astrologus; sentiunt autem qui inter eas apertis oculis gradiuntur. Petrarch to Boccaccio, Letters of old age, VI, 2 You know the ways of men and the oddities and snares of life, whose intrica- cies neither an arithmetrician could count nor a geometrician measure nor an astronomer examine. But those who approach such things with their eyes open do perceive them. prelims.indd 2 02/12/2009 12:04:46 States and statistics in the nineteenth century Europe by numbers Nico Randeraad Translated from Dutch by Debra Molnar Manchester University Press Manchester prelims.indd 3 02/12/2009 12:04:46 Copyright © Nico Randeraad 2010 Originally published in Dutch as Het onberekenbare Europa. Macht en getal in de negentiende eeuw The right of Nico Randeraad to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This electronic version has been made freely available under a Creative Commons (CCBY- NC-ND) licence, which permits non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction provided the author(s) and Manchester University Press are fully cited and no modifications or adaptations are made. Details of the licence can be viewed at https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA, UK www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 978 0 7190 8142 2 hardback First published 2010 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Edited and typeset by Frances Hackeson Freelance Publishing Services, Brinscall, Lancs prelims.indd 4 02/12/2009 12:04:47 Contents Introduction page 1 1 The first meeting: Brussels 1853 10 2 All the world’s a stage: Paris 1855 37 3 The expansion of Europe: Vienna 1857 60 4 On waves of passion: London 1860 80 5 The German phoenix: Berlin 1863 103 6 Unbounded nationalism: Florence 1867 126 7 Small gestures in a big world: The Hague 1869 146 8 ‘Sadder and wiser’: St Petersburg 1872 and Budapest 1876 168 Afterword 186 Bibliography 191 Index 203 prelims.indd 5 02/12/2009 12:04:47 prelims.indd 6 02/12/2009 12:04:47 Introduction his book is a history of an illusion. It is also a history of the dream that Tpreceded the illusion. The dream was of the progressive utility of statistical knowledge, and was shared by many a nineteenth-century statistician. Their dream would be fulfilled in three phases. First, data about society would be gathered in every country, employing uniform methods and categories. Then, the data would be compared and governments would base their policies on the knowledge thus acquired. And finally, all of humanity would experience greater happiness and prosperity. The belief in progress had no truer, more faithful or more ambitious proponent than the statistician. He calculated, classified and concluded, until every law that governed society seemed to materialise from the numbers spontaneously. As obvious as it is to us that this was an illusion, the statistician had no doubt that his ideal was achievable. Statistics in the nineteenth century is a far cry from the science we know today. Power and numbers had not yet acquired the inextricable and obvious connection they would in the twentieth century. During the Enlightenment, an academic elite had already determined that knowledge was power, but although the notion of ‘statistics’ had cropped up here and there, it had not yet entered the mainstream. There was no consensus about the meaning of the concept in the eighteenth century. In the Napoleonic Age, statistics became an established part of the administrative repertoire. Good government and statistics were practically synonymous. This applied not only in the states that had been absorbed into Napoleon’s empire, but also in Prussia and Russia, where the institutional foun- dations were laid for government statistics in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Nineteenth-century governments clung to the idea that solutions to social problems could be derived from systematic, empirical observation of a quantitative and qualitative nature. How this idea was put into practice differed 1 intro.indd 1 02/12/2009 12:05:18 States and statistics in the nineteenth century from state to state. In the same way that statistics did not develop linearly as a branch of knowledge, no uniform European model of statistics as a branch of government emerged. A speaker at the third international congress on statistics held in Vienna in 1857 called statistics ‘the science of the century’.1 While not everyone would have shared that opinion, statisticians themselves were certain they were right and fully convinced of the necessity of their mission. They wrote books, established journals, organised congresses and, when called upon, were tireless servants of the state. In their fervour, however, they failed to unify their science. Statistics was a repository of various sciences and disciplines, which enjoyed short- or long-lived popularity. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the dividing lines between scientific disciplines were still vague, or positioned differently than we would expect today. The fate of statistics would be tied to political economics one day and geography or ethics the next. If statistics was not the science of the century, then at least it was the chameleonic manifesta- tion of a procession of sciences that emerged and disappeared throughout the nineteenth century. Statistics was a field with as many practitioners as definitions. Statisticians all shared a desire for factual knowledge, but there the similarities ended. At the universities, statistics initially found a home with the legal disciplines or political sciences. There was little interest in numbers or calculations. In the first half of the nineteenth century it was barely conceivable that statistics would end up as merely an auxiliary science. This development progressed through various stages and was unpredictable. After counting 62 definitions, Gustav Rümelin hypothesised in his Zur Theorie der Statistik (1863) that ‘there had to be a hidden enticement and it brought to mind the suitors in Gozzi’s fable who, undeterred by the bloodied heads of their unfortunate predecessors, sought to solve Turandot’s riddles over and over again’.2 Ernst Engel, director of the Prussian Office of Statistics, identified 180 definitions in 1869. In his view, this demonstrated that there was nothing to be gained from searching for a defini- tion on which everyone could agree.3 The discord about the essence of statistics hindered the uniformisation of statistical research methods. Statistical laws were seldom formulas. Not all statisticians were searching for laws, however carefully formulated. Some even had a categorical and explicit aversion to them. Descriptive statistics, which stemmed from the work of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century German scholars such as Hermann Conring and Gottfried Achenwall, remained influential for a long time. They defined statistics as the description of Staatsmerkwürdigkeiten, a kind of political science without theory. From this tradition emerged consider- able resistance to endless streams of numbers and the laws derived from them.

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