Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

402 Jean Bourgeois-Pichat
developing a new aspect of demography, namely, historical demography. In
France, a historical demography society was' established in 1962, and publish-
es yearly records on the subject. In 1967, a research team specializing in the
study of the history of the French population was formed, with the help of
various research agencies and of the universities.
150. In the United States, the team of graduates and researchers at Harvard
University responsible for the periodical Daedalus (Journal of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences) organized two international meetings on histori-
cal demography, one in Boston (USA) in 1966 and the other in Bellagio (Italy)
in 1967.
151. In 1965, a national symposium on historical demography was held in
Budapest.
Lastly, a number of research workers belonging to various research institutes
now have programmes bearing on the study of populations of the past.
152. So much for the tools. Everything is at hand for a balanced development
of the new discipline: journal, specialized team, international meetings. Now
let us have a look at the subjects treated. As the studies in question are centred
on the past and do not relate to one subject of research only, they present a
considerable diversity. All the aspects of demography are dealt with.
153. In France, an ambitious project launched about fifteen years ago is nearing
completion. Its purpose was to reconstitute the population trend in France from
the beginning of the eighteenth century, by means of a perusal of parish registers.
A sample of parishes was chosen by lot, and data on the life and death of the
families which had made up the population of those parishes was patiently
assembled. Only some of the results have so far been published. The moment
is approaching when a mass of unpublished results will become available, which
will throw new light on the trend of mortality and fertility rates at a time when
the practice of birth control had only just begun. In the course of this reconsti-
tution of the past, special methods of analysis were gradually developed and a
textbook for researchers wishing to undertake similar studies has been published.
Besides the above-mentioned over-all study of France, a number of regional
research projects have been undertaken by individual researchers.
154. Similar studies are taking place in the United Kingdom. A specialized
research group has been formed at Cambridge (Cambridge Group for the
History of Population and Social Structure). An important demographic study
of the peers of the Realm in the United Kingdom was published recently by the
Population Investigation Committee of the London School of Economics. In
addition, a work published in Great Britain by D. V. Glass and D. E. C.
Ever~ley,3~ gives an excellent selection of the studies conducted in most parts
of the world.