The appearance of the massive fiscal census of Transylvania of 1750 in a meticulously prepared edition is a landmark in the publication of fundamental sources on the modern history of the province. Critical introductory essays by Ladislau Gyémánt, the chief editor of the work, analyze the rich and varied contents and emphasize the special qualities of the census and place it in historical perspective. The census was a product of the new administrative order being introduced into Transylvania in the half-century since its acquisition by the Habsburgs from the Ottoman Empire, which had held it for several centuries under a loose suzerainty. The census also reflected the new, more systematic and rational way of managing the affairs of state in keeping with the enlightened spirit of Maria Theresa's reign. The Viennese Court judged a sound fiscal system to be the foundation of economic and social progress and political stability. It wanted to know exactly what resources were available for its projects and therefore ordered the taking of a comprehensive census of all persons liable for the payment of taxes, a task completed in 1750. On the basis of the enormous amount of information gathered, a new fiscal system for Transylvania was elaborated in 1753, which, with small adjustments, remained in force until the Revolution of 1848. This census was by no means a singular event; it was part of the imperial bureaucracy's counting of all sorts of persons and things, an activity designed, among other things, to concentrate the power of decision in its own hands at the expense of local elites and institutions.
The census itself consists of descriptions of 2,117 rural and urban localities which are published in the original Latin text accompanied by numerous explanatory notes and translations into Romanian. The range of information gathered by the census-takers is enormous, especially on the economy. Agriculture, by far the chief occupation of those surveyed, received close attention. Included in the census-takers’ purview were such matters as the kinds and fertility of the soil, the crops planted in fall and spring, agricultural techniques (crop rotation and the use of fertilizers), and the number and quality of animals used in ploughing, as they sought to measure the productivity and taxability of agriculture. They also gave much attention to animal husbandry, the second most important occupation of taxpayers, which they linked to the availability of pastures and hayfields. Also revealing about the society of the time were the artisan trades, which were based on local resources and produced goods for local households. Commerce was also mainly local and was thus limited to the exchange of local goods. What emerges, then, from the census is the portrait of a society that is still beholden economically to traditional occupations. Urbanization, it is clear from the reports, was modest, as less than ten percent of the taxpayers could be classified as urban.
The census-takers were diligent in performing their assigned duties, but their reports on localities are also valuable for their numerous comments on situations they encountered that went beyond the economic data required in the imperial instructions. They therefore offer us insights into social, confessional, and ethnic relations. For example, they refer to disputes between landlords and peasants over the possession of cultivable land, pastures, vineyards, and forests but also to many cases of cooperation between them. On the territory in southern Transylvania settled by the Saxons they comment frequently on confrontations between Saxons and Romanians as the two communities competed for resources. It is also worth noting that there is little evidence in the census of a massive immigration of Romanians into Transylvania from the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, a source of controversy in historiography and politics lasting down to the 20th century.
The volumes before us, then, offer for the first time a comprehensive overview of the capabilities of the tax-paying population of Transylvania. The accumulated data is indispensable to scholars of the economic and social history of the province. Yet, as the editors point out, the portrait of Transylvanian society they offer is incomplete because the privileged—the nobility and clergy in particular—were excused from paying taxes and thus were not included in the census. Nonetheless, the information it contains, largely unknown and little used by scholars until now, will be of enormous value in expanding our understanding of economic and social conditions in Transylvania at the beginning of the era of enlightenment.
