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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - POPGEO_BG (Population Geography of Bulgaria, 1500- 1920: A Historical Spatial Analysis)

Teaser

Summary

The project aims at historicizing Population Geography of Ottoman and post-Ottoman Bulgaria and at producing a spatial narrative of population dynamics that accounts for countryâ€™s spatiotemporal dimensions of population fluctuation trends, density variations with regard to geotemporal circumstances, household structure and its spatial and temporal transformations, and last but not least, it detects human migration from and to the country, as well as internal displacement over a large time period. Benefiting from a longitudinal record which extends through a long historical period (1500â€“1920), the project embarks on establishing patterns of Bulgariaâ€™s population dynamics, while at the same time, by utilizing customized Historical GIS (HGIS) applications it allows for the tracking of changes not only over time but also across space, and so offer a new perspective on the interaction between population developments related to climatic, environmental, natural, socioeconomic and political processes. Hence, it aims at carrying fundamental research that will expand the frontiers of scientific knowledge and will offer benefits to scientific understanding of historical population dynamics, accounting for the geospatial and temporal patterns in these processes. The project not only fills in a gap in the population geography of modern Bulgariaâ€™s territory during the Ottoman and post-Ottoman period, but also offers a methodological solution for the exploitation of Ottoman population and tax records for reliable population data of other parts of Southeastern Europe, something which is still notably missing from the general European population map for the historical period under study.

Work performed

The project â€œPopulation Geography of Bulgaria, 1500-1920: A Historical Spatial Analysisâ€ achieved most of its objectives planned for the first five months. Moreover, there have been instances in which I took the liberty to make an effort in completing tasks, milestones, and deliverables earlier and to present project results at academic venues that became available in the course of the action, but which were not originally included in the plan. The primary objective of the POPGEO_BG was to secure an adequate source base for quantitative and spatial analysis of Bulgariaâ€™s population in the period 1500-1920. This objective was successfully completed in the course of the five-month action period and the collection of Ottoman sources was completed. The second major objective of the project was the spatial analysis of population data throughout the period of study, with a primary focus on shifting regional population densities. Essentially the objective aims to create a geo-DB that includes Bulgariaâ€™s quantitative, spatial, and temporal population characteristics for the period 1500â€“1920, which is imported and managed in GIS. Each settlement is regarded as a spatial data point that carries distinct qualitative information for a specific time point. This spatial data is further aggregated to create unified spatial units subjected to analysis over different time periods, therefore accounting for the changes over time. The third objective of the project was to enhance my research skills through training and therefore augment my employability chances into leading European academic institutions. The focus of my training at KoÃ§ University was to increase my skills in using GIS software and to enhance my current capacity as an advanced GIS user, which had to be achieved through an advanced GIS training program and specially designed training in usage of advanced data science methods. The final objective of the project is to disseminate the results among an international academic community and communicate projectâ€™s achievements to a much wider audience. In the course of the action this was implemented through three paper presentations delivered at respected academic forums as the results were publicly communicated through the projectâ€™s website and social media accounts, which attracted substantial attention.

Final results

The Research methodology of the project rests upon population data extraction, settlement identification and georeferencing of this data. The lack of any ready or aggregated Ottoman population database naturally forced me to envisage a strategy based on the collection of Ottoman primary sources that contain non-aggregated population data. Acquiring all possible sources that the project can use from the Ottoman archives in Istanbul as soon as possible was among the top priorities of the action. Archival source collection went hand in hand with data extraction and data geofencing. In accord with the predefined research strategy of the project the acquired archival documents were subjected to closer inspection and population data (male population, divided by religion) was extracted for every settlement, registered in the documents. The lack of a historical gazetteer made the process of settlement identification very difficult and time consuming, because local toponymy in Bulgaria had seen a drastic change after the national state was established. These complications were largely overcome by the usage of contemporary detailed military maps like the Russian 3-verst map (1:120 000) from 1878 and the Austrian Generalkarte von Mitteleuropa (1:200 000) from 1910 that contain in most cases the local toponymy, used in the Ottoman population registers. Accordingly, settlementsâ€™ spatial identification and the extraction of total population and houseÂ¬hold numbers from the 19th-century Ottoman population registers allowed the building of a spatially referenced database, which by 31 October 2019 contained 2254 settlements that belonged administratively to 34 sub-districts (nahiye) and 18 districts (kaza).
Each datapoint, reflecting a settlement in the 1840s population registers and the extracted Christian and Muslim population data was spatially joined with village land polygons, acquired from the Bulgarian National Agency of Cadaster. Thus, population point data from the Ottoman registers was spatially referenced to adequate territorial polygons and was analyzed further, as for instance population totals and population densities were determined on a single settlement level. The spatially joined data was aggregated further and I was able to draw realistic administrative borders of the 1840s Ottoman administrative units. The success of this task is of crucial importance for the project strategy, because the thus created administrative polygons are to be used as the primary analytic spatial unit of POPGEO_BG in comparing population fluctuations over large time periods. The approach in which Ottoman point data was spatially joined to village land polygons, the polygons belonging to the same administrative sub-district (Ott. nahiye), were further aggregated to draw the borders of the sub-districts and finally the so-formed sub-districts were once more aggregated to draw the borders of the districts (Ott. kaza), proved to be very successful. I was able to generate 29 territorial units, which occupy an area of 38 537 square km, which constitutes roughly about 35% of the territory of Bulgaria. Creating POPGEO_BG primary units for spatial analysis allowed me to run multiple tests with spatially referenced population data that I have built, thus creating larger segments of the countryâ€™s population densities in 1840s.