4.3 Clergymen and soldiers became interested in population development

After the severe years of war in the early 18^th century particular attention was given to provision of labour force. The losses of the Great Northern War (1700-1721) were heavy and the Little Wrath (1741-43) brought about great devastation. In addition, emigration from Sweden was believed to be so strong that it would endanger the future of the realm. Sweden had presumably lost much of her population during the wars. Interest was shown in many quarters towards calculating the size of the population.

Although keeping of church lists was intended to serve parishes only, their importance as basic data for describing population phenomena was already discovered in the early 18^th century. In particular, the birth and death statistics compiled for the parliamentary session of 1734 by Erik Benzelius, the Bishop of Linköping, aroused much interest.

In 1736 clergymen were ordered to supply information yearly on baptisms and burials from the church registers of parishes. The information was collected retrospectively from 1721 onwards, but it was deficient, however.

In 1737 an order was issued by the initiative of the Health Board that information must be collected from church registers on births, deaths and epidemics. The information on deaths was given on a rough age classification where children and old people were placed into separate groups. This was also found to be incomplete.

During his service in the French army, Brigadier General Jakob Albrecht von Lantingshausen had became familiar with demographic studies made in England and Holland. The primary objective in the country ravaged by the Little Wrath was to revive its economy. In the 1740s Brigadier General von Lantingshausen drafted a memo for the parliamentary session where he suggested acquisition of information on "The power of the nation in relation to the number of its population, growth and exits, and so on."