Poster session on Historical demography

Most of demographic theoretical explanations could be divided along the lines of two major premises of social science: first, the modernization theory and, second, institutional approach. According to the first explanation, demographic transitions are staged, irreversible, universal across space and time, progressive, lengthy, Europeanized and homogenizing. Major variants of demographic transition theories (first and second) fit these very premises. In opposite to it, the institutional approach emphasizes the major impact of the local (parochial) specifics in defining the demographic developments including fertility dynamics.
Demographic developments in the world provide a rich evidence for testing these largely competing explanations. Demographic developments in the countries of Eastern Asia serve as a good testing ground. The uniqueness of these countries is that they combine rapid modernization with the lag in changing of the gender roles. That leads to the pattern of fertility – one of the lowest in the modern world. The paper elaborates on developments in the region, provides alternative explanations of the demographic developments in the region and concludes on the possible contribution of the developments’ analysis to the validity of both major theoretical explanations.

There is not much knowledge on migration of the Classic period of ancient Mesoamerica. Therefore, this poster illustrates the analysis of the reach and limitations that anthropologists encountered when they tried to document migration patterns of the past populations of this pre-Hispanic time. In fact, with the migration patterns exposed by Manning, we will explain the type of migratory patterns found in two Mesoamerican sites located in Mexico, the ancient city of Teotihuacan and the Maya site Oxtankah. Note that this analysis requires bio-archaeological data for a social understanding of the historical, economic, political development process of these two populations in relation to human movement.
Key words: human mobility, Mesoamerica, migration patterns, Teotihuacán, Oxtankah

Kyoto had been the capital city and the residential place of emperor from its establishment in 794 until the end of Tokugawa period in 19th century. Though it lost the status of political center in the beginning of 17th century, Kyoto continued to become one of the economic centers in Japan and have a monopoly on highly skilled industrial manufactures such as silk and cotton textiles. We have collected series of population register listings compiled by 30 neighborhoods in Kyoto to study the urban demographic profile of a large city in the Tokugawa period. This study analyzes the listings of the Koromonotana-cho neighborhood registers, a neighborhood in the commercial center of the city. Koromonotana-cho population registers cover 80 years almost continuously in late Tokugawa period with around 200 people listed each year. This study shows the demographic profile of the big mercantile businesses in late Tokugawa period including the period of political conflict and natural disasters in the 1860s.

The phenomenon of a stature convergence across Italian regions during the second half of the twentieth century evidenced higher increases in stature in southern areas, which were initially characterized by height lower than the national average. However, this trend is also affected by the massive migratory flow of people from southern to northern Italy in the 1950s-60s, which greatly slowed the rate of increase in mean height in the receiving regions, since immigrants were on average shorter than the local residents.
Based on conscripts' micro-data (1951 and 1980 cohorts), we aim to estimate the contribution of South-North migrations on over-estimation of the height convergence of southern and island areas. We exploit the dataset which includes a representative sample of 111,834 Italian conscripts born in 1951 and 162,295 born in 1980.
Results indicate that migrations may explain about 20-25 percent of the high speed of convergence of stature across areas of Italy in the 1950s and 1960s, whereas lack of identification of migration flows yields an over-estimation of the well-being changes in people living in the South of Italy.

The 18th century Scotland was characterized by an outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments known as the Scottish enlightenment. “The Scottish Enlightenment thinkers (Adam Smith, David Hume and Adam Ferguson among others) asserted the fundamental importance of human reason combined with a rejection of all authority which could not be justified by reason. They held an optimistic belief in the ability of humanity to make changes for the better in society and nature, guided only by reason” and therefore made a substantial contribution to our understanding of social phenomena and particularly the mechanism of population growth. How these thinkers have marked the intellectual landscape of their day and ours depends on a good understanding of their theory of population growth.
By doing so, this study uses the documentary research to examine the original contribution of the Scottish enlightenment to the understanding of the social phenomena of population growth and the particularity of their theory. The ultimate goal is to contribute to the development of a multidisciplinary approach in the field of research in population theories by combining history of ideas and theories of population growth.

Keywords: Scottish enlightenment, population growth theory

Historians of the late Roman Republic (3rd -1st c. BCE) debate intensely over the nature of demographic developments during this period. Two opposing stances with widely divergent historical implications are being defended. One camp, the ‘low counters’ holds that Roman Italy paid a heavy toll for its military and political expansion into an Empire and experienced continued population decline. The other, the ‘high counters’ by contrast hold that population grew pronouncedly. Both base their arguments on census totals and archaeological traces of habitation that leave room for widely divergent interpretations. At the same time, available evidence on a number of demographic parameters – life expectancy, marriage ages and excess mortality rates – is not integrated into this debate. In this paper, we employ a micro-simulation model, SOCSIM, to integrate both sets of evidence. By doing so, we make explicit which assumptions underlie the opposing viewpoints on population dynamics in Roman Italy. This allows us to evaluate the respective plausibility of each of these scenarios, as it will become evident how well these required assumptions match the range of historically attested demographic parameters for the Roman world. Sophisticated demographic techniques can thus provide significant advances in a fundamental historical debate.

In the last few decades, there has been particular interest in describing demographic patterns in the 19th century in Portugal. Parish-level research has made it possible to observe marriage, fertility, mortality and migration patterns all over the country. However, no attempt was made to synthesise the findings in order to reach a broader understanding of the Portuguese population dynamic over the period. Different parts of Portugal presented their particularities, which were mainly a consequence of regional socio-economic specificities associated with a larger context of demographic patterns (such as international migration streams). In order to fill this lack in the literature, this paper will present a review of the research findings at local and regional levels. It will also analyse data from the census of 1845, 1864, 1878, 1890 and 1900. The idea is to make a comparative analysis of what has already been studied and what the census presents, so regional and national patterns will be identified. In this way, findings of parish level will provide a way to better understand the country as a whole. As a result, it will be possible to observe the influence of socio-economic characteristics, urbanization and migration networks on population behaviour in nineteenth-century Portugal.

The continuous departure of emigrants (mostly young males) observed in Portugal over the nineteenth century directly affected nuptiality patterns, and so fertility behaviours. The Portuguese historiography has already shown a clear connection between migration, high ages at first marriage and inheritance patterns in rural areas. However, Portugal was not only constituted by rural communities, medium and large towns and cities had different population behaviour. In an attempt to fill this gap in the historiography, this paper will present the case of Vila do Conde, a medium-size urban town placed in northwestern Portugal, area from where most of the emigrants were originally from. It will show that in the case of the urban setting of Vila do Conde, the significant absence of young males had a different impact on marriage patterns. Aiming to contribute to a better understanding of fertility patterns in nineteenth-century Portugal, this paper will present an analysis of fertility levels in relation to specific cohorts and times, in order to understand its variations over time. In addition, investigation on illegitimacy patterns will also take place being the first step towards identifying fertility patterns and their impact upon the dynamics of Portuguese population over the nineteenth century.

The current notion that life in ancient Roman cities was distinctly unhealthy is based primarily on theoretical inferences and qualitative descriptions of life in the city of Rome. Quantitative evidence to assess the health experience of urban and rural residents in the ancient Roman Empire has only become available very recently, through the publication of skeletal studies of markers of ill health. This paper will investigate this new material. It draws together evidence from 29 burial sites, mostly from Italy, to investigate differentials in exposure to ill health between urban and rural populations in the 1st-3rd centuries CE. Focus is on two indicators that are widely considered to be good general, non-specific indicators of health: cribra orbitalia and linear enamel hypoplasias. Preliminary investigations that control for several potential biases in the material yield counterintuitive results. Urban communities score better on both health indicators than rural communities do. In discussing why we might observe this anomalous pattern, I consider various context-specific conditions that may have given Roman urban populations health advantages over their rural counterparts. These include the urban system of aqueducts and that of state-subsidized or free food rations for inhabitants of Europe’s first true metropolis.

The paper studies the fertility transition and explains under which conditions its forerunners started to reduce their fertility. It focuses on Jews in Bohemia, who had low fertility rates very early on, not only in comparison with the total country population but also in comparison to Jews elsewhere in Europe. A unique set of aggregate data on population change from the late 18th century until the Shoah allows tracking the process of Jewish fertility transition in its entirety, comparing it with gentiles and interpreting it in its cultural and socio-historical context. The paper shows that Jewish fertility was limited within marriage already in the 18th century. A further sharp decrease came after 1848, when Jews acquired equal civil rights. The necessary conditions for fertility decline thus came together at this time: low mortality, upward mobility aspirations, high human capital, low religiosity, and a favorable legal and socio-economic environment.