CENSUSES AND QUASI-CENSUSES The word ‘census’ was originally a Latin term for a valuation (from the verb censere, meaning to value, count, enrol or tax). In Roman times the census was a registered statement of the particulars of each person’s property for taxation or military purposes – an enumeration and register of Roman citizens and their property. This original idea of a census is much close to the idea of cess rolls or valuation rolls, which have been used in Scotland to record the value of the property of certain individuals for the purposes of national and local taxation from the 17th century until the present day. Perhaps the earliest list of the inhabitants of Scotland, although it was limited to landowners, churchmen and burgesses, was the Ragman Roll, ordered by Edward I of England in 1296. Since the 19th century the term ‘census’ has come to mean an enumeration of the inhabitants of a state, or part of it, taken by order of its legislature, primarily to aid the calculation of official statistics and the formation of central and local government policy. Two forms of record produced in census taking are of use to historians and other researchers: the statistics themselves, which are normally published, and the census enumerators’ schedules for each household.
Posted on: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 12:04:43 +0000
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