When did the modern census start? The modern census developed gradually between the late 17th and mid-19th centuries.
Most civilizations have had some kind of census since the beginning of civilizations. It is always important to know how many people you have in your country because then you can tax them properly and you always know how many people you have available to fight in a war. The Sumerians are thought to have made the first census in 3800 BC. They counted the number of people, livestock, butter, honey, milk, and vegetables every six or seven years. Egypt had a system where they counted the number of cattle that people owned. It was taken every two years and people were taxed on their cattle. Egypt also used a census in 2500 BC to assess the labor force available for the building of the Great Pyramids. A few censuses are mentioned in the Bible, and they were also used to raise tax. Rome had a census that started in the 6th century BC. That evolved into a census that was carried out every five years to keep track of citizens, how much property they had, and their duties. There are some of these censuses that still exist, but they can’t be trusted. The idea of most censuses was to control people, to use them for military service, or to tax them. It was in most citizens’ best interest to either not be on the census or to underrepresent what they owned.
The word census comes from Latin and the Romans. It comes from the Latin word “censere”, which means to assess, appraise, or estimate. It came into English in the 1610s.
It is difficult to say where the first modern census was performed, but it may have been in Quebec, Canada, in 1665. Of course, it was called New France at the time and not Canada. The census was carried out by a French official and the first intendant of New France, Jean Talon. France had just taken direct control of New France from the Company of One Hundred Associates after deciding the company had failed to develop the colony. The French colony was at war with the Iroquois, the native people in the area, and it was having a damaging effect. The French government wanted to know what resources they now controlled. When Talon arrived, he decided that he was going to change the economy from one based on the fur trade to one based on agriculture. To do that, he needed a large population, so his first steps were to work out how many people there were, what they were doing, and what they owned. This was the first modern census. It has been called the first “modern” census because its purpose was to count every resident individually and collect detailed demographic information. He carried it out on his own, going door to door to ask people for their information. He asked their name, sez, age, occupation, marital status, and relationships within their household. He found that there were 3,200 European settlers. Men greatly outnumbered women. And most people were traders or hunters. The population of New France grew under Talon’s stewardship, but he desperately wanted to return to France.
The first nationwide government mandated census was the 1790 census in the USA. The war with Britain had just been won and the new country was working out how government should work. They wanted to decide how many seats each state would have in the House of Representatives, which was based directly on their populations. And they wanted to know how direct taxes would be divided between states, which would again be based on population. For that reason, they needed a census. The census counted 3.9 million people.
Britain and France both began conducting regular national censuses in 1801. There was a lot of opposition to it because people thought it would be used to increase tax, but the governments needed to know how many people there were. Populations were rapidly increasing after the Industrial Revolution and economists like Malthus had warned that there would soon be more people than food. The governments needed to keep track of this. The count showed that the population of Britain was 9 million people.
These censuses continued until 1841 when everything changed. In 1841, the first truly modern census was carried out in Britain. It was different because it was controlled directly by the government and census cards were sent to every house. Previous censuses had been carried out by local parishes, which would just count the number of people themselves. The new census was a great leap forward, and the data was stored for posterity. It still had a few problems, though, because some ages were rounded down and relationships and marital status weren’t recorded. Jean Talon’s 1665 census actually collected more information than the 1841 census in Britain, but the 1841 census was the first nationwide, standardized, and centrally organized census.
Many countries keep individual census records secret for around 100 years. This protects people’s privacy while eventually allowing historians and genealogists to study how people lived. And this is what I learned today.
Sources
https://www.nisra.gov.uk/statistics/2011-and-earlier-censuses/history-census
https://www.britannica.com/science/census
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Census
https://www.etymonline.com/word/census
https://ru.ruwiki.ru/wiki/%D0%A2%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%BD%2C_%D0%96%D0%B0%D0%BD
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