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The layout of the “Land Register of Francis I” (with its fiscal, judicial and political objectives) sought to bring together the provinces of the union of states into a uniform jurisdiction regarding soil assessment and taxation. As a basic part of the development of a more or less unified economic area, the “Franziszeische Surveying Unit” in conjunction with the “land registry” and the “soil assessment” had the goal of viewing the “tax assessment” (which did not take place) as an undertaking to reshape a large region economically, administratively and judicially. For this reason the “land registry” was an important step towards a “modern state” – in the case of the Habsburg monarchy this was definitely without and against the ideological support of nationalism taking place during the start of the 19th century.
In its political meaning the research into the land registry has up until now been largely ignored. There has been almost no adequate consideration for the land registry in the overall view of the Austrian management, economic and social history. |
The missing editorial coverage of the land registry as a source for comparison studies is a drawback whose elimination should provide new impulse to the research with a middle European perspective.
The project faces the methodological challenges brought on by the substantial and complex cartographical and statistical sources. For Carinthia there are 806 land registry locales and for Bukovina there are 317 land registry locales. The set of data should be organized so that different research areas are accessible and able to be analyzed. There are also other research areas outside of agrarian history: administrative history, nutritional history, climatic history, farmland and city naming research, housing and traffic history, historical demographics and ecology. Not as a general methodological postulate, rather, as a topic in itself, there unfolds a high degree of historical and social scientific cross-over. |
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