The Black Sea Historical Statistics,1812-1914: A Short Introduction

Abstract

This paper is an introduction to the Black Sea Historical Statistics (BSHS), a database system which includes data on the commerce and shipping of the Black Sea from 1812 to 1914. BSHS is one of the main products of a larger interdisciplinary project that brought together researchers from several universities, research centres and institutes in order to examine the social and economic development of the Black Sea, the main grain exporting market in the nineteenth century. Methodologically, BSHS transcends the traditional narrow nation-centred approach by focusing on the Black Sea as the unit of historical analysis. In this way, it fosters cross-regional comparisons and the identification of regional patterns of economic collaboration and competition in the long run. The creation of BSHS involved dealing with several challenges, emerging from the honogenization of data extracted from archival sources of 10 different countries. The main issue was the coexistence of different systems of quantification (measures, weights and currencies) in an era when the process of transition from pre-modern regionalism to the first global economy in the 1870s and 1880s was slow and uneven. While developed countries were involved actively in this process, Eastern European countries were trapped between tradition and modernity. We, therefore, consider that the ways we have dealt with these complexities might provide useful feedback for similar projects in the future.