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The Birth of Official Statistics in 18Th Century Sweden Georg Luther (Retired from Statistics Finland) Djurgårdsvillan 8 FIN-00530 Helsingfors, Finland

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The Birth of Official Statistics in 18Th Century Sweden Georg Luther (Retired from Statistics Finland) Djurgårdsvillan 8 FIN-00530 Helsingfors, Finland The Birth of Official Statistics in 18th Century Sweden Georg Luther (retired from Statistics Finland) Djurgårdsvillan 8 FIN-00530 Helsingfors, Finland 1. Backgrounds In the 17th century Sweden was neither populous nar rich - but it was one of the great powers of Europe. Trying to explain this, historians have pointed i.a. at the administration, which was more efficiently organized in Sweden than elsewhere (Roberts 1979, 56-60; Kirby 1990, 134). The Swedish empire, however, cellapsed in loriggwars during the first decades of the 18th century. In the 1720ies the country was exhausted and impoverished. Charles X11 had been an absolute monarch, but after his death in 1718 a new constitution transferred the sovereign power to the parliament. The focus of national politics was shifted from territorial and dynastic aspirations to matters of welfare. The government strove to support and promote agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and trade, and to foster their growth to the leve1 reached in other, more developed countries. This was expected to lead Sweden towards the goal set by the prevailing doctrine of mercantilism: a surplus in the balante of trade and increasing national wealth. The ideas of Petty and other politital arithmeticians were familiar to Swedish scientists and repeated by them. They prescribed measuring the relevant social phenomena and using the figures obtained for inducing changes by conscious action. In England these thoughts remained a matter of discourse in the Royal Society without much impact on government activities. In most other countries, too, they were discussed and elaborated by scientists and learned societies only. In Sweden, however, the interest in politital arithmetics was carried by enthusiasts inta the parliament and suscitated government actions (Lindroth 1978, 91-94; Johannisson 1988, 96-108). The efficient administration had survived Sweden's fall from greatness. This administration already held much of the information wanted by politital arithmeticians and it was well equipped 'co assemble and supplement it. 2. Statistics of foreign trade and navigation Sinte the 1630ies the lotal customs officers in Sweden reported to Stockholm on quantities and values of goods exported and imported. From time to time national summaries and abstracts were produced. In the 1720ies the Swedish Board of Trade was asked to produce extensive reports on the balante of trade and on the tomposition of exports and imports. Preparing them was laborious and slow. In order to speed up the work it was reorganized in the 1730ies. The reports of the lotal customs offices were standardized and an agency with two employees was set up to prepare annual national surveys on foreign trade and navigation. From 1739 on this agency produced annual statistics. It was the first institution created by the Swedish government expressly to produce statistics. The reports were eagerly studied and used by various committees of the Swedish parliament in the following decades, but they were held confidential. Only much later have the data been published in print (Vallerö 1969, 32-67). 3. Reports on the state of the provinces The realm of Sweden - including Finland - was subdivided inta 23 provinces and the administration of each province was headed by a governor appointed by the king. In the 1720ies and 1730ies earlier reporting on current conditions in the provinces was revived and extended. From 1741 on each governor was to produce every three years a report to the parliament on the state of his province. Detailed instructions were issued on the tontents of these reports. They were to describe the current conditions of agriculture, forests, industries, and trade, and the activities of the lotal administration. The reports were studied by parliamentary committees and delegations which jointly prepared the decisions to be taken separately by each estate of the parliament. The province reports contained mainly verbal information, but also many numbers. National surveys were not produced regularly on the basis of the province reports which, of course, were neither printed nar public.(Utterström 1955, 68-75, 99-103). 4. Statistics of mining and manufacturing The mercantilists stressed the importante of developing the processing industries. Sinte the 1630ies a Board of Miniriggin Stockholm supervised the mines and metal works in Sweden and collected detailed reports on their production (Kommerskollegium 1917, 5-31). In 1720 the province governors were ordered to report regularly on the state and development of manufacturing to the Board of Trade, which produced a national survey and submitted it to the parliament. In 1739 a special authority (Swedish: hallrätt) was set up in every town of the realm to supervise and support the lotal manufacturing enterprises. Sinte 1741 these authorities sent annual reports on every factory and its production to the Board of Trade, where national abstracts were assembled and delivered to the parliament. Such surveys were printed in 1747, 1756, 1766 and 1769 (Heckscher 1937, 154-161). 5. Population statistics The establishment of continuous vital and population statistics was a much greater project than those mentioned so far. In 18th century Sweden these statistics were talled "the tabulation" (Swedish: tabellverket). Their history has been recorded many times and is widely known. Consequently a short summary seems sufficient here. The first attempt was no success. In 1736 the diocese chapters of the lutheran church (other congregations were few and small) were asked to collect annual information from the parishes on the number of births and deaths and send reports on them to the government. In the first report data were to be given in retrospett on 15 years. In 1737 information on epidemies and health conditions was included in the data requested. The results were unsatisfactory, apparently because no specific office was directed to supervise the collection of data and produce national summaries. In response to a petition from the parliament a revised and extended system was set up in 1748 and started to operate by collecting data on 1749. Every lutheran parish in Sweden (including Finland) kept a continuously updated list of its members and, in addition, listed christerlings, burials and nuptials. The tabulation, consequently, covered both vital statistics and information on the total population by area, age, civil status, and occupation. The vital statistics were annual and the population data were produced with intervals of three years sinte 1752 and five years sinte 1773. Initially, the tabulation was administered by the Chancery Board, but in 1756 a "Gommission of Tables" was appointed and set in charge of the statistics. Its members were, simultaneously, active members of the Swedish Academy of Sciences. The data obtained were kept strictly secret until 1762. In the following years they were gradually disclosed in articles published in the Journal of the Academy of Sciences. Marly of these articles were written by the astronomer Pehr Wargentin, who was both secretary of the Academy and member of the Gommission of Tables. He was very active in processing the data collected and analyzing the results and through him the population statistics of Sweden were brought to the knowledge of demographers in other countries. Wargentin had no part in the faunding of the Swedish population statistics and he never was in charge of "the tabulation", but his contribution to the work was so extensive that he dominates the history of the early population statistics of Sweden (Hjelt 1900; Arosenius 1928; Hofsten 1983). 6. Student statistics Orre more branch of early Swedish statisties deserves to be mentioned. Sinte 1760 the Chancery Board collected information on the university students, following a proposal of Anders Berch, professor of economics in Uppsala. He advocated active measures to ascertain correspondence between the number of students in various fields of studies and the number of ecclesiastical and administrative posts to be filled in a near future. The data were reported by the universities in questionnaires designed by professor Berch and results were published irregularly in printed articles (Åström 1948). 7. The interest in statistics wanes All these branthes of statistics had their roats in the ideas of mercantilism, which taught that the state could and should improve, the economic conditions by conscious steering based on factual irrformation. In the 1760ies Sweden had built a many-sided basis for such government action: an extensive - but confidential - statistical description of the country. However, effective procedures by which improvements could be brought about were hard to find and the results were slow in ripening. Simultaneously, mercantilism gave way to new physiocratic and liberalistic ideas, according to which the government should abstain from interference in the economic processes. The rule of the parliament had led to severe party strife, which weakened the country and opened it to interference from abroad. Russia and France competed for influence by subsidizing different parties and the weakness of Sweden was compared to that of Poland. In 1772 - the year of the first partition of Poland - a coup d'etat transferred much power from the parliament to the king. He did not share the interest in statistics which the parliament had expressed for half a century. In the 1770ies and 1780ies the statistics attracted little interest and deteriorated. Wargentin continued to gain international farne by publishing demographical articles until he died in 1783, but the current collection, control, and processing, of primary data was slack. However, the statistical activities were not stopped and they never ceàsed altogether. In the 1790ies the interest in numerical information on the society was revived, new officials were appointed to vacant posts and a new period of development began. REFERENCES Arosenius, E. (1928). Bidrag till det svenska tabellverkets historia. Stockholm. Åström, S.-E. (1948). Anders Berchs "Tabellverk". Historisk Tidskrift för Finland 33, 81-97. Heckscher, E. F. (1937). De svenska manufakturerna under 1700-talet. Ekonomisk Tidskrift 39, 153-223. Hjelt, A.
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