This research project was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and carried out by collaborators of the Historical Institute, University of Berne under Prof. Beatrix Mesmer. We worked both at the central historical archives of the Canton of Berne, as well as in the district archives to establish an inventors of early statistical sources (16th – early 19th centuries) before modern centralized statistics were established (which was in the first half of the 19th century, in most European states). Contributing to contemporary research – local histories, quantitative methods.
It was important to get into the depth of these source materials and to see how the early modern state, in the case of Berne, was counting – population, households, epidemics etc.
