Agricultural History Review, Volume 60 Part 2 (2012), p. 322

Following their earlier collective volume, De l’estime au cadastre en Europe: les systèmes cadastraux aux XIXe et XXe siècles (2008), co-edited with Pierre Clergeot, Florence Bourillon (Université de Paris-Est Créteil) and Nadine Vivier (Université du Maine, Le Mans) have assembled a dozen essays that look back to selected examples of European experience during the eighteenth century, cover the development of cadastral systems in six countries during the nineteenth century, and embrace urban as well as rural examples.

In their introductory essay, they highlight three guiding themes: experimentation to produce appropriate methods for taxing landed property; determination of the economically and politically acceptable level of taxation in relation to land use, area and quality of land; and incorporation of changes in property and taxation levy following initial surveys. Taking the French model for constructing the ancien cadastre in the first half of the nineteenth century, which generated registers listing land use, quality, surface area and ownership, as well as detailed maps covering each individual parcel of property, they reveal an array of differing approaches adopted elsewhere. For example, in European sections of the Ottoman Empire, taxation was reorganized by individual landowners rather than by rural communities as whole entities, whilst Spanish attempts to produce a genuine property-based taxation system failed during the second half of the nineteenth century. Calculating the appropriate fiscal levy for each parcel was achieved in varying ways, sometimes by looking back to earlier experiments from which adjustments were made, but more often by organizing special enquiries. These were administered by tax collectors and official land surveyors, or involved local experts (drawn from adjacent administrative units to minimize corruption) as well as civil servants. In Bosnia–Herzegovina, military surveyors played an essential role in the whole process of calculating tax as well as drawing up maps and registers, whilst in Spain declarations by individual landowners were of prime importance, doubtless contributing to the difficulties encountered. Not surprisingly, different territories adopted different methods to adjust and revise their cadastral taxation systems as fields and meadows were gradually replaced by suburbs as the nineteenth century progressed.

La mesure cadastrale is composed of three equal sections, each of four chapters, which reflect the volume’s three guiding themes. Thus, experimentation is illustrated in the context of eighteenth-century Lombardy, Ottoman cities in the nineteenth century, Bosnia–Herzegovina under Austro–Hungarian rule, and nineteenth-century Spain; fiscal determination is discussed in ancien régime Languedoc, part of Upper Normandy, the city of Paris at the start of the nineteenth century, and the environs of Istanbul; and the dual challenge of cadastral and fiscal adjustment in the nineteenth century is exemplified by Belgium, Italy, the Parisian suburb of Gentilly, and sites in inner Bordeaux. These distinctive case studies are integrated with skill and ingenuity by the editors, and add important evidence to our knowledge of the operation of cadastrally-based taxation systems in various parts of Europe. Source material is indicated by a wealth of footnotes and most essays are illustrated by facsimiles, statistical tables, graphs or quantitative maps. These are valuable complements to the text and are usually very effective, but it is a pity that the three maps of northern Italy on pages 22 and 25 were not drawn to a standardized base (as is obvious by comparing the depiction of lakes and coastlines) and that there is no legend to describe the different forms of shading on the map on page 158 showing Istanbul and its surroundings. At a mere €20, the Presses Universitaires de Rennes have once again produced an attractive and well-priced addition to their History list, which grew by sixteen titles during the first quarter of 2012 alone.