Beschreiben und Vermessen. Raumwissen in der östlichen Habsburgermonarchie im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert

Abstract

In the historiography about European empires, there is an increasing interest in processes of describing, measuring and mapping areas as well as considering the various political, economic and social features related to them. This applies in particular to the analysis of population statistics, land taxation and schemes for agricultural improvement. In 2020, Reinhard Johler and Josef Wolf edited a volume, which contributes to this historiographical field. Beschreiben und Vermessen is based on a conference held in Tübingen in 2009. It comprises twenty-one essays related to ‘knowledge about space’ (Raumwissen) in the eastern and southeastern parts of the Austrian (later Austro-Hungarian) Empire. The essays are arranged in three sections: administrative communication and description of the country, surveying and mapping, and perspectives of the history of knowledge. A book review does not allow detailed discussion of every contribution, and, therefore, the following paragraphs focus on three aspects of particular interest to map historians. In some chapters, historical statistics as well as the instructions that were used during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to create these statistics play a major role. Peter Becker, for example, highlights the importance of the instructions in the process, when social and economic features were structured into standardized abstract categories (‘Standardisierung der Zuordnung von Lebensund Wirtschaftsformen zu abstrakten Kategorien’). Such instructions formed a framework in which the creators of statistical descriptions arranged the characteristic features of their areas, as Livia Ardelean shows for the Marmarosch (in Romania) and Rudolf Gräf for the Banat (now divided among Romania, Serbia and Hungary). In these chapters, the authors examine how local staff tried to adapt the instructions to conditions in their respective areas. With regard to surveying and mapping, the contributors to the volume illustrate how the map enabled the central administration literally to ‘see’ the country. Land surveyors received detailed guidelines regarding the representation of topographical features, allowing them to produce maps that worked as a sort of filter. Xénia Havadi-Nagy, for example, demonstrates the importance of the various mapping projects that had the aim of ‘optimizing and acceleratingmovements of troops’. In addition, two chapters, by Borbála Zsuzsanna Török and byReinhard Johler, illustrate how eighteenthand nineteenth-century experts discussed various methods of measuring ethnographic differences, and how cartographers in the twentieth century channelled these differences into ethnographic maps. Another aspect highlighted here is the understanding of descriptions, statistics and maps as instruments or tools for political and administrative aims. Robert Born, for example, shows how military mapping at the Austro-Ottoman border depicted fortresses and other details useful for future war scenarios. At the same time, cartographers produced maps about various other issues that appear as the ‘earliest examples of thematic cartography in East Central Europe’ during the lateseventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries, such as maps showing post routes or quarantine measures against the spread of epidemics (what an interesting historical feature with regard to present day Covid-19 maps!). Overall, the volume provides manifold valuable insights into the work of eighteenthand nineteenth-century statisticians, surveyors, cartographers, bureaucrats and politicians. Indexes of persons and places facilitate the orientation within and between the various contributions. The chapters show the close relation between the different types of sources, such as descriptions, statistics and maps. It is a particular strength of the book to demonstrate how Raumwissen was aggregated and then transformed between text, chart and map, and how this knowledge was used to govern the Austrian Empire.