Practice question · True or false
Pre-modern tax rolls can be read as approximate censuses of the population.
Hints
- Ask what those being counted wanted from the count.
- A tax record is designed to be evaded.
Show the answer
False
Why
A tax roll’s purpose, viewed from below, is to be defeated, it systematically undercounts, and by an unknown amount. Reading it as a census imports the state’s extraction machinery into your demography and calls the result a fact.
Practise Demographic and Statistical History
The app has 4 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History I is free to start.
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