Counting citizens: the transfer and translation of census categories from the international statistical congresses to the principality of Bulgaria (1872–1888)

Abstract

This paper examines the nineteenth-century census as an early information technology and a medium for the transnational exchange of ideas in the nineteenth century. In particular, it considers how the ideas discussed by the International Statistical Congresses were directly applied in the newly established kingdom of Bulgaria in the first censuses from 1881 to 1888. It then examines how the legacy of Ottoman rule and the categories of the nineteenth-century Ottoman censuses unconsciously influenced the first census of Bulgaria, despite the desire of the new rulers to mark a significant break with the past. It also demonstrates how the nationalist feeling in the multi-ethnic former territory of the Ottoman Empire influenced the seemingly neutral categories of the first census. These categories then began to produce an implicit representation of the ideal Bulgarian citizen and so started the process of exclusion of the Turkish-speaking or Muslim population from full membership of the new body politic.

Keywords:

• Bulgaria
• International Statistical Congress
• census
• national identity
• ethnicity
• minorities
• Turks

Acknowledgements

The Center for Advanced Studies, Higher School of Economics, Russia and Wolfson College, University of Oxford made this work possible. Both institutions provided me with postdoctoral research funds to carry out the research and gave me the space and time to write this article. I would also like to thank the staff at the Central State Archive of Bulgaria, the Academic Archive of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and the librarians at the Institute for Statistics in Sofia for their help and patience as I located materials on the census of 1881 and Mikhail Sarafov. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to Morgane Labbé for her help accessing out of print work on the International Statistical Congresses.

ORCID

Gayle Lonergan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0951-955X

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Research University Higher School of Economics [Postdoctoral Research Fellowship].