Historical Geography and Demography

or what old maps and plans tell us about the past

 

Lecturer: Mgr. Miroslav Baranek

Form of teaching: lecture with seminar (P:1 / S:1)

ECTS: 3

Objective:

The course is intended mainly for students of archiving, museology and digitization of historical heritage, history, art history, ethnology, but also for students interested in topographical research of towns and villages in Slovakia by applying traditional historical methods and modern information technologies (GIS). The lectures will be based on the interpretation of contemporary written sources from the late medieval/early modern period up to the middle of the 20th century and will reflect the latest research and trends.

Students will learn how to interpret various sources of historical topography, starting with donation charters and documents of urban provenance (land registers, tax registers, town population registers, property transfer books, etc.) and, above all, they will become acquainted with cartographic sources (maps showing the territory of Hungary and present-day Slovakia, city plans with a focus on the territory of Bratislava, town and cadastral maps). Graduates of the course will be able to analyse cartographic sources and, using sources of historical demography (tax registers, censuses, civil registers, etc.), they will be able to work out the historical topography of the selected territory. The aim of the course is to teach students to excerpt from archival sources exact data for subsequent processing of the historical topography of the territory in the environment of a geographic information system (GIS) and to map different social strata of the population (bourgeoisie, nobility, intellectuals, craftsmen, merchants, Jews, marginalised groups).

Brief overview:

  • Introduction to the Problematics of Historical Geography (HG) and Historical Demography (HD)
  • The subject, aims and methods of HG and HD
  • Sources of HG and HD, their use and processing
  • The oldest cartographic sources focusing on the territory of Hungary and present-day Slovakia
  • State mapping before the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic (first, second, third military mapping) and after the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic
  • Plans of the city of Bratislava (Marquart's plan, Neyder's plan, Rakssányi's plan), their analysis and possibilities of their use for the historical topography of the city
  • Cadastral mapping
  • Written sources (donation and bounds charters), urbariums, registers of homesteads, regnicolaris censuses
  • Land books, property transfer books, land book inserts
  • Origin and development of civil registers (church registers, state registers, Jewish registers), analysis of selected civil registry records
  • Testaments of burghers, protocols of property inspections (protocollum oculatorum) as sources for household furnishings in the past
  • Minutes of the Economic Commission as an unknown source for the historical topography of Bratislava
  • Visualization of historical data in the environment of the geographic information system (QGIS)
  • Excursion to the archive

Requirements for completion of the course:

  • number of accepted absences: 3
  • preparation of a seminar paper (analysis of the selected cartographic source and processing of the topography of the territory – min. 10 standard pages - 80 % of the mark) + final colloquium (20 % of the mark).

Recommended reading:

  • DEMOGRAFIE (nejen) pro demografy. Praha : SLON, 2009.
  • SÝKOROVÁ, Dana. Úvod do demografie. Olomouc : Univerzita Palackého, 1991.
  • MAUR, Eduard. Základy historické demografie. Praha : SPN, 1978.
  • RÁBIK, Vladimír – LABANC, Peter – TIBENSKÝ, Martin. Historická geografia. Trnava : Filozofická fakulta TU, 2013 (vysokoškolská učebnica, dostupná online).
  • SVITÁK, Zbyněk. Úvod do historické topografie českých zemí. Brno : Masarykova univerzita, 2014.
  • MICHAL, Pavel. Vybrané kapitoly z historickej geografie Slovenska (do pol. 19. stor.). Banská Bystrica : Univerzita Mateja Bela, 1993.
  • KLIMKO, Jozef. Vývoj územia Slovenska a vytváranie jeho hraníc. Bratislava : Obzor, 1980.
  • MAJTÁN, Milan. Názvy obcí Slovenskej republiky (Vývin v rokoch 1773 – 1997). Bratislava : VEDA, 1998.
  • ŽUDEL, Juraj. Stolice na Slovensku. Bratislava : Obzor, 1984.
  • ŠEDIVÝ, Juraj. Od historických atlasov miest ku komplexným pamäťovým portálom. Digitalizácia ako zmena diskurzu v urbánnej historiografii. In Historický časopis, roč. 65, č. 1 (2017), s. 119-132.
  • ŠEDIVÁ, Zdenka – ŠEDIVÝ, Juraj. Historicko-pamiatková topografia Bratislavy. Od 13. do 1. polovice 16. storočia. Bratislava, 2018.
  • FEDERMAYER, Frederik. Rody starého Prešporka. Genealogický rozbor obyvateľstva a topografia mesta podľa súpisu z roku 1624. Bratislava : Monada, 2003.
  • BALÁŽ, J. Claude. Bratislava. Topografia historického jadra mesta v 17. – 19. storočí. Bratislava : OZ Priatelia Bratislavy, 2023.
  • HORVÁTH, Vladimír. Bratislavský topografický lexikón. Bratislava : Tatran, 1990.
  • SARMÁNYOVÁ, Jana. Cirkevné matriky na Slovensku zo 16. – 19. storočia. Bratislava : Odbor archívnictva MV SR, 1991.
  • TIŠLIAR, Pavol – ŠPROCHA, Branislav. Premeny vybraných charakteristík obyvateľstva Slovenska v 18. – 1. pol. 20. storočia. Bratislava : Centrum pre historickú demografiu a populačný vývoj Slovenska FiF UK v Bratislave, 2017.