State‐istics and statistics: exclusion categories in the population census (Belgium, 1846–1930)

During most of the nineteenth century, the etymology of the term ‘statistics’ was still much alive: statistics was state‐istics, the empirical study of the state. It has been argued that the nineteenth‐century avalanche of printed numbers gave rise to a new discourse about society. Not only was society conceived of as a population; the corps social (Quetelet) was also conceptualized as a subject of statistics. An important contribution of this state‐istics was to conceive a new sort of object, which could be both the target of research and of policy interventions. On the basis of a case‐study of all the Belgian population censuses taken before the Second World War, we attempt to articulate the complex interactions between science, government, and society in the modern era. We thereby direct our attention to the range of exclusions and exclusion places that appeared in these censuses. Our analysis highlights the intimate relationship between population and territory in the ‘search engines’ of the statisticians. The discursive constitution of territorial exclusions allows us to analyse the articulation of inclusion ideals – in the period before such ideals became firmly institutionalized in the so‐called welfare state of the postwar period.