LOKSTAT Archives - Page 3 of 3

Make historical maps yourself on the LOKSTAT website

DETAILS

Used dataset:

LOKSTAT

Date:

October 2018

Category:

Tool

MAKE HISTORICAL MAPS YOURSELF ON THE LOKSTAT WEBSITE

Of all the industrial censuses that have ever taken place in Belgium, the one of 1896 occupies a special place. It was the first census that gave a fairly reliable overview of the various industries in all the localities of the country. If you are looking for solid information about local industries, cottage industries in rural areas, old occupations that no longer exist or searching for data on the economic development of Belgium, you will find just what you need in this source.

The census results can be consulted per municipality as well as per industrial sector. Moreover, the tables can also be visualised spatially using a map program developed by the Department of Geography of Ghent University. Thanks to this application, the reader can make numerous maps of the distribution and employment in the following industries:

mining
quarrying
metal industry,
ceramic industry
glass industry
chemical industry
food industry
textile industry
clothing industry
construction industry
wood and furniture industry
leather and skin industry
tobacco industry
paper industry
book industry
arts and precision industry
transport

The image below shows the distribution of mining companies across the whole of Belgium. What is remarkable are the many small open-cast firms that mined iron in the Campine area around 1900. Moreover, numerous more specific applications are also possible.

Curious about where in the country roof tiles were made or cameras were produced? Would you like to know how many people were employed in the diamond industry or how many men and women were engaged in decorative ceramics? Dive into the application yourself and search for the data that are useful for your research!

Contact the Quetelet Center to start working with other data series from the LOKSTAT database!

Did smallpox make you small?

DETAILS

Used datasets:

LOKSTAT & STREAM

Date:

August 2018

Category:

Scientific publication

DID SMALLPOX MAKE YOU SMALL?

For their study, Ans Vervaeke and Isabelle Devos consulted the LOKSTAT database for figures from the 19th-century population census for Thielt and the STREAM database for socio-professional information for the 18th century. Their results show that the effect of smallpox on height, in contrast to that of family circumstances, is not statistically relevant.

Article:

Vervaeke, Ans, and Isabelle Devos. “Much ado about nothing? Reconsidering the smallpox effect. Height in the nineteenth-century town of Thielt, Belgium”. TSEG/ The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History 14, no. 4 (2018): 56–83.

Abstract:

“Anthropometric evidence such as height has been considered a major indicator of the social and economic well-being of past societies. To understand differences in attained height, the role of several determinants has been widely discussed. Since the 1990s, the impact of disease has shown to be a promising topic. In particular, research on the effect of smallpox on the height of the population in nineteenth-century England has triggered heated debate. Voth and Leunig argue that smallpox stunted height, but their results have been called into serious question by scholars such as Oxley, Razzell, Heintel and Baten. In this article, we introduce new sources and evidence for Thielt, a small rural town in Belgium. By linking military registers with smallpox listings, our analysis allows for a nuanced study of the height of conscripts. In early nineteenth-century Thielt, height differences between smallpox survivors and those who did not fall prey to the disease appear to be largely the result of household circumstances. By taking into account individual and familial attributes, we show the importance of the father’s death and father’s occupation for the son’s height. However, smallpox did not have a statistically significant effect on height.”

The LOKSTAT data applied at the local level

DETAILS

Used dataset:

LOKSTAT

Date:

July 2018

Category:

Publication

THE LOKSTAT DATA APPLIED AT THE LOCAL LEVEL

Based on the agricultural census of 1895 and the industrial census of 1896, Pieter Neirinckx wrote two articles about the economic development of Genk. These publications are just one example of what local historians can achieve with the rich range of data that the Quetelet Center has made available online.

Make your own maps based on the industrial census of 1896, view data tables from the agricultural census of 1895 or from the population census of 1900. The Quetelet Center also manages other data series from the LOKSTAT database which are available to researchers.

Articles:

Neirinckx, Pieter. “De landbouw in Genk aan het einde van de 19de eeuw”. Tweemaandelijks tijdschrift van de Heemkring Heidebloemke Genk (“Agriculture in Genk at the end of the 19th century”. Bimonthly magazine of the local history society Heemkring Heidebloemke Genk) 77, no. 2 (2018): 34–36.

Neirinckx, Pieter. “De Genkse industrie aan het einde van de 19de eeuw”. Tweemaandelijks tijdschrift van de Heemkring Heidebloemke Genk (“Genk industry at the end of the 19th century”. Bimonthly magazine of the local history society Heemkring Heidebloemke Genk) 76, no. 2 (2017): 20–22.

Researchers from the Université Catholique de Louvain use the LOKSTAT database

DETAILS

Used database:

LOKSTAT

Date:

November 2018

Category:

Publication

RESEARCHERS FROM THE UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN USE THE LOKSTAT DATABASE

Annalisa Frigo and Eric Roca investigated the effect of the presence of beguines in certain Belgian municipalities on contemporary gender relations. Read about their findings in the paper or start working with data from the LOKSTAT database yourself.

Article:

Frigo, Annalisa, and Eric Roca. “Roots of gender equality: the persistent effect of beguinages on attitudes toward women”. Labour Seminar Paper, Milan Bocconi University, 2018.

Abstract:

“This paper is concerned with the historical determinants of gender equality. In the specific context of Belgium, it relates higher levels of gender equality during the 19th century to the presence of medieval, female-only, Belgian communities called beguinages. Combining a novel, hand-collected data-set on beguinage location with 19th-century Belgian census data, we document that in municipalities where beguine communities settled the literacy gap reduced. Schooling was not compulsory and literacy differentials reflect parental tenets on gender equality. Using changes in the political organisation through which some villages became more attractive to beguines, we establish that the variation in gender literacy is indeed related to the presence of beguinages. Our results are in line with the extensive empirical evidence documenting the persistence of gender norms and culture. Finally, we propose a novel class of mechanisms, based on improvements in girls’ bargaining power, to rationalise our findings”

Organic urban waste as fertiliser in agriculture

DETAILS

Used database:

LOKSTAT & POPPKAD

Date:

2017

Category:

Scientific publication

ORGANIC URBAN WASTE AS FERTILISER IN AGRICULTURE

In his article, Pieter De Graef questions the historical examples of closed cradle-to-cradle systems, which are put forward by ecological historians as forerunners of current closed nutrient cycles. By using agricultural censuses and cadastral statistics from the LOKSTAT and POPPKAD databases, he calculated how much fertiliser was produced in the different regions of Belgium and shows that there were no closed nutrient cycles.

Article:

De Graef, Pieter. “Food from country to city, waste from city to country: an environmental symbiosis? Fertiliser improvement in eighteenth-century Flanders”. Journal for the History of Environment and Society 2 (2017): 25–61.

Abstract:

“Alternative approaches to resolve bottlenecks in food production often champion the reuse of urban organic waste as fertiliser in agriculture in order to close the nutrient cycle between city and country (cradle to cradle). References are often made to the past because environmental historians tend to work the use of urban wastes into a story of environmental symbiosis between city and countryside. This article argues, however, that closed nutrient cycles did not exist even in pre-industrial society, as the way in which agriculture was structured had a huge impact on the demand for manure. Starting from two agricultural regions in eighteenth-century Flanders, this research calls for more attention to regional structures of agriculture in which cities were embedded and to how these agro-systems shaped nutrient flows from the city to the country by very diverse patterns of demand for fertilisers, leading to unequal redistributive flows of nutrients from towns to different agricultural regions.”

Neuroscientists get to work with LOKSTAT data

DETAILS

Used database:

LOKSTAT

Date:

2018

Category:

Publication

NEUROSCIENTISTS GET TO WORK WITH LOKSTAT DATA

The findings of the research by Aleida Frissen, Jim van Os, Sanne Peeters, Ed Gronenschild and Machteld Marcelis were recently published in the journal Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging. The scientists show that reduced grey matter in the brains of people with a psychotic disorder may be the result of increased sensitivity to environmental risks, particularly in male patients. Read this remarkable study yourself.

Article:

Frissen, Aleida, Jim van Os, Sanne Peeters, Ed Gronenschild, and Machteld Marcelis; for Genetic Risk and Outcome in Psychosis (G.R.O.U.P.). “Evidence that reduced gray matter volume in psychotic disorder is associated with exposure to environmental risk factors”. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging 271 (2018): 100–110.

Abstract:

“The aim of this study was to examine whether cannabis use, childhood trauma and urban upbringing are associated with total gray matter volume (GMV) in individuals with (risk for) psychotic disorder and whether this is sex-specific. T1-weighted MRI scans were acquired from 89 patients with a psychotic disorder, 95 healthy siblings of patients with psychotic disorder and 87 controls. Multilevel random regression analyses were used to examine main effects and interactions between group, sex and environmental factors in models of GMV. The three-way interaction between group, sex and cannabis (χ2 =12.43, p<0.01), as well as developmental urbanicity (χ2 = 6.29, p = 0.01) were significant, indicating that cannabis use and developmental urbanicity were associated with lower GMV in the male patient group (cannabis: B= -32.54, p < 0.01; developmental urbanicity: B= -10.23, p=0.03). For childhood trauma, the two-way interaction with group was significant (χ2 = 5.74, p = 0.02), indicating that childhood trauma was associated with reduced GMV in the patient group (B=-9.79, p=0.01). The findings suggest that reduction of GMV in psychotic disorder may be the outcome of differential sensitivity to environmental risks, particularly in male patients.”