HISTORICAL DEMOGRAPHY AND GENEALOGY. THEIR APPROACHES IN THE PAST AND PRESENT

Abstract

This study is a reflection on the possibilities for cooperation between the fields of historical demography and genealogy. The first part of the paper summarizes the development of genealogy as a discipline in the Czech context. The paper goes on to recapitulate theoretical and practical examples of the involvement of genealogy in historical-demographic research in western historiography, especially in the North American context. The paper then discusses Czech development from the 1960s to the present. The paper compares the possibilities of both approaches by introducing the creation of a database using the classical application of the method of family reconstitution, discussing its pitfalls and the characteristics of such research in the Czech context. The paper then presents the possibilities of applying genealogical approaches and evaluations the situations in which applying such approaches is most appropriate.