Suchergebnisse

Among "the bad years" of the 18th century that affected the city of Arad, 14 of it were because of the floods, the most severe overflows taking place on July 1771. The devastations were considerable and due especially to the fact that the city wasn't protected and the bad weather lasted full days, the waters retracting only after about 7-8 days.
The authorities were interested in stocktaking the effects of the overflow and as a cause they organized charts in which were totalized the losses suffered by the inhabitants of the city in the summer of 1771. The data from these charts permit us to realize the immensity of the disaster: 252 completely destroyed houses, 9 dead, about 8500 florins losses due to the overflowed and devastated gardens, the inundation of the agrarian fields from the proximity of the city, 200 animals drowned, 88 hives destroyed by the waters etc.
Even though the authorities realized along the time works meant to regularize the flow of the river Mureş, and the urban policy thought about the danger of the floods, the city of Arad kept to be endangered by the river in the decades that followed until the waters overflowed again in: 1772, 1774, 1779, 1780, 1783, 1785, 1793 and 1799.

After the peace of Karlovitz, the Mureş River became the official border between the two great empires: the Habsburg and the Ottoman Empire. In this context was organized the military border Tisa-Mureş, and the first called to defend the region were the Serbs, recognized for their military skills. The authorities created the first militarized localities in the county of Arad simultaneously with the first arrival of Serb immigrants in this region. Their presence in the city of Arad and other settlements located on the right bank of the Mureş River changed the ethnic proportions in these areas.
The situation modified after Banat was conquered by Austrians and after the abolishment of the Tisa-Mureş military border. Most Serbs emigrated to the south of Mureş River and even in Russia, their share in the city and county of Arad decreasing significantly after the mid eighteenth century.

The present study aims to investigate in terms of quantitative and qualitative perspectives the rural habitat in the county of Arad during the eighteenth century. The dynamics of settlements, their evolution over the century, changes occurred in the types of environments were conducted in conjunction with the policy of the new imperial authorities and in accordance with the populationist policy of the Habsburg Empire.
The rural habitat which predominated in the Arad County suffered changes of great importance not only just as a consequence of the official systematization policy, but also as a result of the constant demographical increase which occurred in the eighteenth century.

This article proposes to pay attention on the sources of historical demography in the old eparchy of Arad. At the end of XVIIth century, the Ottoman domination in the zone have been filled with the domination of Habsburgs and the Arad city became a significant orthodox Episcopal centre subordinated in religious plan to the metropolitan of Karlovitz. For the reconstitution and the knowledge of the demographical aspects into old counties Arad and Zarand, we can use many documents, which are preserved in the Departmental Direction of National Archive of Arad. Various censuses, tax conscriptions, wills and especially parochial registers of the marital status are sources of first category. With the methods used by Michel Fleury and Louis Henry this sources are essential to know the behaviours demographic for the various ethnos groups, as well majority Rumanian as the population German, Hungarian, Serb or Jewish which have lived in these places 300 years ago.

The study "Population and habitat on the feudal domain Şiria at the beginning of the XVIth century" is based on a statistical document developed in 1525. We have many and very important information on the people's one of the largest feudal domain in Transylvania in the middle Ages. The 8152 inhabitants, where nearly 90% for them is represented by serfs, live in 121 villages scattered over an area large enough in the old county of Zarand. The predominantly landform is mountain. The majority of the 121 villages, 76% more accurate, have up to 80`s inhabitants, so they are relative small villages. Yet some localities are also somewhat larger – market towns - which have between 184 and 460 inhabitants. Finally, we can see that the old type of habitat is preserved up to the present day with few changes and 70 villages from them exist in our days on the territory of the counties Arad and Hunedoara.

This study submits to our attention some qualitative and quantitative aspects related to urban and semi urban habitat from the former Arad County in the eighteenth century. If in 1715 there were 6 market towns, at the end of the century were already 15. Based on the conscriptions, urbariums and census, I have tried to detect the evolution of market towns during the entire eighteenth century. Reform policy of the Habsburg absolutism has determined even an economic and demographic increase in the market towns of Arad County. Between those 15 market towns of the county existing in 1787 only Arad had obvious urban characteristics. Here was concentrated 6.15% of the county population. By comparison with other counties from Transylvania and Hungary, I have pursued to dignify and quantify different aspects of the urbanization degree in the Arad County registered in the eighteenth century. The development of market towns in Arad County has had the same evolution with those of Central and Eastern Europe, because the agrarian character of these localities was predominant. The evolution towards urbanization was evident along the eighteenth century both in terms of population growth and a great social mobility and also in light of the economic and municipal development. The transformations in the direction of modernization registered during the eighteenth century were the basement of the future process of urbanization of Arad County in the century that has followed.

The present paper wishes to be an inventory of the historical-demographical writings within Romanian landscape. We were able to identify preoccupation for demographic phenomena even since late 19th century, that have grown once with the creation of a discipline of historical demography in the post-war period, especially after the changes that Romania was put througt after Revolution in 1989.

The parish registers of civil status, although the main sources of documentation for historical demography, are used with significant results by the other sciences such as history, ethnography, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, etc.. The perspectives of approaching the rural community and family have expanded considerably using these sources of ecclesiastical origin documentaries. The first researchers who refer to a systematic methodology that uses the parish registers of civil status as documentary sources for the completion of demographic data suggest the use of other sources, hitherto unused for this purpose. They will apply a new method, a modern innovation, the stripping and analysis of parish registers of civil status within the meaning of the reconstruction of demographic events (birth, marriage, death).
The family reconstitution method, by analyzing the parish registers of civil status proposed by L. Henry and M. Fleury, has revolutionized the field of study dealing with people. Louis Henry believes that the parish registers of civil status is the ultimate source of information for the pre-state period and this is precisely the reason for which he proposes restoring the family's biological life. Church registers are only able to give us an insight into the family in rural areas, at least for the second half of the XIX century. Church documents, the fundamental sources for researching family life, are of two categories: 1. civil status registers and annual reports of the parishes, 2. Church authorities funds, documents and minutes recorded by the bishops. These documents are complex sources for the researcher interested in historical demography, social history, and the economic history of toponymy, birthdays, etc.
Processing the data contained in these records requires a specific methodology. They allow us to observe trends that have occurred on the long-term demographic events such as: birth, marriage or death. These records are presented for a long time as their only source of documentation regarding civil status and demographic events in the life of most people. Researching these records can unveil important features of natural population movement, the phenomenon of birth, of marriage, the divorce or death. Then, an analysis of form and content of these registers can capture the cultural universe of the priests who fill these records.
These Church documents proved to be important, especially where other documentary sources (mainly those in the category of records made by the state) have proved insufficient, incomplete and unclear. The parish registers of civil status in this case are suitable for both a qualitative analysis, and a quantitative one at the level of local communities. Beyond their usefulness and significance of documentary source, these documents should be regarded as being subjective because they were managed by priests (every priest is then an exponent to promote demographic and confessional "realities" and such realities were viewed from the perspective of his own religious convictions). The parish registers, however, prove to be the only documents that allow us to penetrate the privacy of individuals in each community. A documentary is also undeniably a good dowry that researchers should promote and use in their research not only locally but also to verify and demonstrate certain behaviours and overall trends.

Our study, as we intend it, upon the vulnerability when confronted with death and death rate is structured as a research which is closed to classical historical demography but without neglecting the particularities and individualities of this phenomenon. We are interested both in the general tendencies and in the specific ones. This being our intention, we will try to catch both the phenomenon of regional mortality and the event of death in the many families we have studied during this research work.
The profound economic crisis of this period in the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy together with the epidemics (we have in view especially the 1872-1873 cholera and its prolongation) exercise a strong demographic pressure that brings to our attention mainly the vulnerability of these communities. Towards the end of the analyzed period we can notice a certain decrease in the rate of mortality in the two counties, values that are close to the average ones in the counties of Transylvania. These tendencies may be caused by the remarkable progress in the field of medical assistance, progress that indicates more and more rare strong zones of high mortality. The diminishing of the death rate in the two counties was due to a clear progress recorded by the urban communities of Oradea and Satu Mare.

Vol. 1: Populatie - structura demografica. (Übers.: Bevölkerung - demographische Struktur.) - Bucuresti: Comisia Nationala pentru Statistica, 1994. - LVI, 991 S.; Vol. 2: Populatie - structura social-economica. (Übers.: Bevölkerung - sozio-ökonomische Struktur.) - Bucuresti: Comisia Nationala pentru Statistica, 1994. - LXXIX, 967 S.; Vol. 3: Cladiri - locuinte - gospodarii. (Übers.: Gebäude - Wohnungen - Haushalte.) - Bucuresti: Comisia Nationala pentru Statistica, 1994. - XL, 971 S

The historical-demographic approach of family in their relationship with society with different transitory societal or community typologies is a complex initiative that needs a methodological approach including peripheral elements as well, besides a deep analysis on the central defining elements. The historical demography and other sciences, such as anthropology or history of mentalities, by directly or collaterally approaching the family, often make references to the three important moments in the individual's life: birth, marriage and death.
We have used several categories of documentary sources in our survey. We have the information on the population in north-western Romania due to the ecclesiastic notes (in the parish records or reports and the bishopric notes); on the other hand, we have the information provided by the Austrian and Austro-Hungarian state. Methodologically, the first phase of our research consisted of the preparation of the documents investigation strategy, as expected. In our research, we consider the fact that we approach the area of ecclesiastic entities, as most of our sources for the 19th century belong to the church. This imposes a stress on the confession and its importance. Besides confession, an aspect that we wish to underline is ethnicity. In our investigation on the family the main stress was laid on the survey and analysis of different marital behaviours. Through different constraints and determinisms entailed by the possibility to choose, marriage is highly relevant in establishing behavioural laws (if they ever existed!?). The dimension of the marital market corroborated with the ethno-confessional and socio-professional realities provided the particularities of the marital phenomenon.
Referring to the lay and ecclesiastic legal framework, we support the need for a flexible approach of the topic. The logic of this foray consists of the visualisation of the legal framework – rigid and impregnated with an obvious moralising discourse – on the one hand, and the image of conformism and means of adaptation of the individual, on the other hand.
The starting point of the family is marriage. If we approach marriage from the point of view of the confessional and ethnic conditioning, we get to an analysis of the mixed marriages phenomenon. In fact, the analysis of the ethno-confessional and socio-professional determinisms and of other types of community or individual conditions can be easily carried out in the case of mixed marriages. The central point of our research is the analysis of Romanians', Hungarians', and Germans' marital behaviours without ignoring the image of this phenomenon at other populations in the area.
An analysis on birth and death rate, or natural growth, is able to provide information on the impact demographic phenomena had upon family. A world where death rate was very high and where family would react through a high birth rate was undoubtedly influenced by the demographic flow. Irrespective of the society typology, divorce, concubinage, and illegitimacy (no matter their way of manifestation) were forms of social deviance leading to the dilution of family image and precepts. We do not discuss here a dilution of the traditional precepts on the family, as someone might misunderstand; it is an erosion of the idea of family in general. The "family" began to acquire other forms than the "official" ones. From the relationship of the family with the community were born mentalities, roles and social statuses. The family, its formation, the relationships between man, woman, children and relatives, as well as the relationships with the rest of the community were filtered by the "village gossip". The need for a strong solidarity that was necessary in the unfriendly conditions at the time compelled the individuals to accept the cohabitation with other members of the family (including the extended one) and with the rest of the community.