Familierekonstitution. En modelstudie over befolkningsforholdene i Sejerø sogn 1663–1813

Abstract

Abstract The demographic technique employed in Kaare Frederiksen's book makes this the most advanced population study of seventeenth and eighteenth century Denmark yet published. Moreover, it is not merely a family reconstitution study of Sejere parish, but devotes an entire chapter to conclusions about Denmark's population as a whole which can be drawn from the surviving tax assessment lists for 1645 and 1660. The chapter shows that Lassen's calculations of the Danish population1 based on these tax assessment lists rest on extremely frail foundations and produce serious understatement. It demonstrates that Lassen's calculations allot to the provincial towns 18.2 per cent of the rural population in 1660, by assuming that the population figures for the provincial towns as known from 1672 were valid in 1660. In 1787, 1801 and 1834, however, the population of the provincial towns was only 12.4,12.8 and 14.2 per cent respectively of the rural population. Since data for the provincial towns in 1672 are more re...