Welcome

Overview of aim and history:

The project aims at setting up a Data Base Management System (DBMS) in respect of the rural economy of contemporary Greece. In the first stage, the annual statistics of agriculture from the inter-war years 1914-1938 were collected and entered in the data base. These represent a rich collection of data sources which have never been studied fully and systematically. Also, essential data relating to the demographic structure and the administrative development of the variables under examination. By checking the accuracy, quality and precise contents of the available statistical data as a whole, one can get rid of the present multiformity and vagueness of the administrative and semantic references and ensure the homogeneity of the data synchronically as well as in synchronically compact series of variables.

The DBMS will allow the charting of the diversity of the rural sector. Thus facilitating the study of regional municipal-economic systems and supporting more securely related comparative studies between Greek or Mediterranean regions.

A part of the sources was collected, computerised and processed before this programme was officially incorporated into the IMS of the ITE, and has since been used in the current research activities of the Programme. This mainly concerns all the data from the Agricultural and Husbandry Censuses of 1860, 1887, 1911, 1929 and 1950, as well as the essential accompanying population and geographical data. In order to achieve the necessary time depth which allow the evaluation of the accuracy the quantitative data of the interwar period data from the first large-scale post-war agricultural census of 1961 will be used.

In the current phase, the Programme concentrates on processing data from the Ottoman agricultural and husbandry census of 1910/1912 for those areas which are today Greek, as well as information (published and unpublished) on Northern Greece, which derives from the agricultural-social research relating to the years 1913-1939 which is quantitatively rich in data of a local character. This data, as well as information from the censuses of the arable areas of Thessaly (1896-1908), is due to be entered into the DBMS in the next phase.

In the final stage the DBMS could incorporate all the official statistical sources, such as the population, rural and industrial censuses (1826-1961), as well as the statistics of foreign trade and natural population movements of the Statistics Service or other corresponding services of neighbouring countries. It is also planned in the future to link up the DBMS to corresponding data bases relating to the economy and the society of Greek towns or rural communities of other Mediterranean countries.

The ultimate aim of the research Programme is to facilitate and strengthen research into rural history, to activate the existing research potential, to attract students and new researchers and, finally, to allow the setting up of an autonomous research and academic field.

The DBMS will be constantly enriched from sources and...

• will allow free access via the Internet to all users.
• will allow various interfaces of multiple variables, synchronically and diachronically, offering greater possibilities of statistical and cartographic processing to any interested researcher.
• will encourage the study of the Modern Greek rural sector, thus solving the problem of processing scattered and hard to come by data, as well as solving the problem of re-adapting data in keeping with continuous changes in the administrative structure of the country.
• will assist with incorporating the Greek case into a wider context of research which is being conducted in Greece and abroad on agricultural history.
• will support the teaching and research at the University of Crete and at the Institute of Technology and Research.