The master's thesis aims to shed light on the way in which the concept of unitary and exclusive property on real estate was introduced in the Austrian Empire in the nineteenth century, based on the example of Land Carniola. The core of the thesis is an analysis of the survey as a specific manner of extracting systematic knowledge about local and relatively commonplace phenomena, practices and knowledge, coupled with these practices, such as inventories of weights and measures, compilations of customary law, cadastral surveys, etc. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, surveys became established as a distinctive type of scientific method, which was adopted in various disciplines that were consequently (re)shaped by this method, e.g., statistics, astronomy, surveying, metrology, topography, ethnology and economics. Simultaneously, the survey also emerged as a technique of governance, intervening in local and everyday relationships, customs and notions. The thesis illustrates this more broadly present scientific and administrative practice of surveying and its significance for the transformations of law in this period by studying the impact of three cadastral surveys—the Theresian, Josephine and, especially, Franciscan survey—on the execution of the so-called land relief (Grundentlastung), which established the modern concept of unitary and exclusive property right on the territory of present-day Slovenia. Analysing the work involved in the making of the three cadastres, I show that cadastral surveyors prepared the ground for the later reform of land property relations by recording agricultural habits together with peasants’ practical expertise and knowledge of land features, proprietary and municipal boundaries, trade routes, and staple products.
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