The 19th century was a period when official statistics grew in importance for the modern state, one of the chief instruments being the population census. From mid-19th century onward, systematic modern censuses of every person in the country were also conducted by the Austrian authorities, and the practice continued in the new Yugoslav state after the First World War. Population censuses conducted at the beginning of each decade left behind large quantities of original census materials. Ljubljana is one of the fortunate cases, where the archival fond of census materials has survived in excellent condition to this day. The existence of original census materials is of huge historical importance, as it allows us to peruse every house, apartment and household in the city, and reveals to us particularities, that would otherwise have been lost entirely during the statistical processing of the data.
In this dissertation, I analyzed three separate locations in Ljubljana on the basis of the census materials – Krakovska ulica (Krakovo Street) in the former Krakovo suburb as well as Šentjakobski trg (St James's Square, nowadays Levstik Square) and Mestni trg (Town Square) in the old city. The research is based on three Austrian censuses (1890, 1900 and 1910) and two censuses from the Yugoslav era (1921 and 1931). In the main part of the dissertation, I analyzed the populace of the selected locations based on the occupational structure, relationships within households and place of birth.
|
