"Summary", pp. 261-266 in Henrik Höjer, Svenska siffror. Nationell integration och identifikation genom statistik 1800-1870, Diss. (History, Uppsala University 2001), Gidlunds, Hedemora 2001. (Sweden by numbers. National integration and identification through statistics, c. 1800–1870)
<http://www.skeptron.uu.se/broady/sec/p-hojer-summary-01.htm>
Henrik Höjer
National
consciousness and national community can never be taken for natural or eternal.
Rather, the sense of belonging to a bigger national collective is realised
through different pedagogic means. This study does not deal with nationalism as
an ideology or nationalism in external affairs. It deals with the construction
of national identity and how people who don’t know each other become part of
the same national public sphere. Therefore, one main concern is the
communicative aspects of the nation building process. The aim of this thesis is
to study the nation building process in Sweden. How was a national identity
constructed? One answer to this question is that statistical representations of
the nation played a major role when shaping a visual image of Sweden. A national
self-representation was made possible by statistics. Statistical books also
became a popular genre during the nineteenth century. The main concern and goal
for the new science statistics was to describe a nation, its population,
geography, history, climate and interior condition. Through statistics a general
picture of Sweden was formed. This was mainly an image made of both words and
numbers.
The concept of
“statistics” originally referred to a description of a state in words. But
during the early decades of the nineteenth century the shift in the use of the
concept is visible. The word statistics more and more referred to numerical
descriptions of the nation. At the same time, statistical information became a
public matter. The history of collecting information of the society goes back
further through. During the eighteenth century the
Tabellverket (founded 1749) collected numerical information – and
therefore not “statistics” in contemporary language – of the Swedish
population. These numbers were at first secret. During the 1760’s the total
sum of inhabitants in Sweden were made public for the first time. In the
1770’s a small number of mainly local descriptions was published in the
Vetenskapsakademiens
Handlingar. After 1809 – when Sweden got a new constitution and lost
Finland to Russia – a new and significant interest for statistics takes form.
Members of the Swedish parliament (Riksdagen)
as well as many publishers asked for detailed information about the Swedish
society. This statistical information, were also to be made public and not
anymore secret any more. During the 1810’s, a lot of the statistics compiled
by the Tabellverket was published and
created a source of information for debate about the Swedish society.
During the first half
of the nineteenth century a lot of new branches of society was put under
numerical analyse and made public. The common interest for statistics –
numerical information about Sweden – was huge and statistical journals and
books gained a great deal of attention. In the 1850’s a new statistical bureau
– Statistiska Centralbyrån
–replaced the old Tabellverket. The
new bureau compiled and published statistics, which were collected by different
departments.
Public, national
statistics shaped a national community and a national “us”. A lot of the
statistics over Sweden that was compiled and published in the nineteenth century
answered questions such as “what is Sweden?”, “what is the condition of
Sweden like?”, “what is Sweden like compared other nations?” and “how is
the Swedish society changing?”. These questions, and of course the answers
delivered, were part of the growing interest in knowledge and rational
explanations associated with the nineteenth century. A rational and national
narrative of Sweden was made through statistics. This interest in a scientific
image of Sweden was partly an inheritance from the Enlightenment of the
eighteenth century, but the larger public sphere and the growing amount of
printed numbers was a product of the nineteenth century.
Still, statistics as
a mode for national self-representation was a concern for the emerging middle
class, and so was the sense of national togetherness and national community.
In the 1810’s and
1820’s, statistics was made public and read in order to shape a new
“national spirit”. This way of thinking was expressed by many publishers
during this time. In order to like and love the nation, knowledge about it was
an essential element. Since statistics was a branch of science that dealt with a
whole nation, the science became a perfect tool to get to know the state of the
nation. The statistical narrative of Sweden became a genre that in words and
numbers described things, such as the population, geography, climate, history,
commerce, towns, taxes, army and justice of the nation. Statistics represented
the recourses and potential of a nation.
The national spirit
was also closely connected to the construction of the modern citizen. Gained
political influence of the common classes went hand in hand with increased
political knowledge and liberal demands for political reforms coincided with
demands for public statistics of the development of the nation. Therefore this
national spirit was connected with the statistical “opening” of the society
for the public. The emergence of the public sphere was therefore a precondition
for the diffusion of national statistics.
One reason for the
popularity of statistics was that the progress and condition of a whole nation
could be complied and printed in a single book. The tabular form vas effective
for visualisation of a big number of facts and figures. The tables were also
well fit for all types of comparisons. The concepts of “order”,
“gather”, “compile” and “compare” were common in the discourse of
statistics. In the early part of the nineteenth century, internal comparisons
were demanded, while in the middle of the nineteenth century national
comparisons were demanded, in the numbers as well as in how specialised and
scientific the statistical methods themselves were. In the discourse on
statistics most publishers saw the growing amount of numbers as symbols of truth
and scientific objectivity. Statistics was considered as a method to gain
correct information about society in a time of societal change. In a time of
secularisation and rationalisation, statistics was seen as a new tool to control
and even foresee the development of the society.
Statistical
representations of Sweden created a national integration since they were popular
and widely spread literature. During the first decades of the nineteenth
century, statistical descriptions of Sweden were widely read, discussed and
reviewed. They therefore became part of the public debate and shaped a discourse
about Sweden. This discourse partly constructed an “imagined community”, as
Benedict Anderson has described the modern nation.
Ian Hacking has
written about “the avalanche of printed numbers” during the first decades of
the nineteenth century. The main concern of this avalanche of statistics, was
the state of Sweden. During the 1810’s, statistics was described as one of the
most popular types of literature of the nation. Besides the official numbers –
printed for the first time in the 1810’s – a lot of journals, papers and
books dealt with statistics as a part of a public debate over Swedish internal
affairs. During this early period there were also discussions whether the term
statistics referred to national descriptions in word or numbers. After the
1810’s, it became clear that statistics meant numbers over a nation. In the
1830’s a very popular statistical work, Carl af Forsells
Statistik öfver Sverige, was printed in four sold-out and debated
editions and the official numbers gained a lot of public interest.
When the Swedish
state took a bigger interest in the compiling and publishing of statistics in
the 1850’s by founding a new bureau, the official statistics became more
complicated and lost some public interest due to the big volumes which attracted
less readers. This meant that the integrative aspects mostly appeared during the
earlier period. The Swedish era of the biggest enthusiasm for statistics
occurred in the 1810’s and the following decades.
National statistics
shaped a national identification due to the repeated representations of Sweden
as a nation. As national statistics became a part of the public sphere during
the beginning of the nineteenth century, Sweden as a country became symbolised
by the statistical image of the land itself and no longer only by the royal
family or ancient history. As a statistical representation of the nation became
common, statistical comparisons between countries also became part of shaping a
national identification in contrast to others. Statistics – one of the most
popular sciences of the nineteenth century – became a tool for visualising
Sweden and its development as a nation to its population. The group of readers
who seemed to be most interested in statistics was the middleclass. Statistical
journals were also spread and read to a large number of towns all over Sweden in
the early eighteenth century, when the press in general was almost only local.
When the old statistics of the eighteenth century, with Alain Desrosièrers words, was supposed to be the mirror of the prince, statistics in the nineteenth was the mirror of the nation. Therefore, the public and popular visualisations of Sweden in numbers played a part in the process of internalising the nation as the main political concept. The repeated representations of the Swedish nation as a coherent and consistent object, visible and understandable probably played a part in the process of letting the citizens “know your nation”, as contemporary publishers and statisticians put it. National statistics also played a part in nationalising social issues. What happened in the north of Sweden became of interest to know to people of the once Danish population in the south of Sweden, and so on. A national self-image in numbers made the national community known and internalised. “To love your nation, you must know it”, one publisher put it. After the popular works in the 1830’s about Sweden in numbers, many other books in this genre – national, public statistics – were published around the middle of the nineteenth century.
A national self-image
was also constructed by the after the 1830’s so popular moral statistics.
Through numbers over criminality or rate of suicide a national moral identity
was defined. These numbers were often compared to other nations moral
statistics, and the degree of “civilisation” was measured in a national
competition. The increasing social and moral statistics was part of a bigger
interest for qualitative matters of
the population. In the eighteenth century, the
quantity of the population was the most important matter. A large
number of inhabitants were considered as a resource for the state. After the
1830’s, a big population was rather seen as a threat, and a qualitative good
population was the goal. Here moral statistics was a method for measuring the
level of civilisation and good moral among the Swedes. A bigger statistical
interest for ethnic groups – for example Finns and Jews – became
significant, as well as an interest for measuring the numbers of the disabled
and poor. Also this was part of an attitude of bigger interest for qualitative
issues among the Swedish population. During the 1830’s and 1840’s debates
over Sweden’s internal affairs and development over the last thirty years took
place, and numbers over the population and economics played a important part of
the argumentation.
The biggest
difference between the numbers of the eighteenth century and the nineteenth
century concerns the issue of secret or hardly spread number and than public and
popular numbers. Another big change is that the early numbers mainly was an
instrument for the state, but later statistics was considered as a mirror of the
nation for the citizens. The general context for the statistics also changed.
During the eighteenth century the numbers aimed at an enlightened universal and
static explanation of man. During the nineteenth century the aim was to reach
conclusions changes and progressions of the nation. Social and historical
contexts were considered in a larger degree. During the nineteenth century a
qualitative view of the population replaced the old and mainly quantitative
view. During the nineteenth century statistics also focused on studies over the
changes of society, and not on samplings of a static picture. In addition,
national comparisons also became popular, especially around the 1850’s. The
international statistical congresses, which started at this time, had as one of
their ambitions to make statistical comparisons easier by standardisation of
different national statistical categories.
As a whole, the main
shift from the often local, and hardly read, numbers of the eighteenth century
to the national, public statistics of the nineteenth century – and the impact
the latter had on national consciousness and the sense of national community –
is the most important result of this thesis.
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