The Ethnic and Social Structure of the Population of Croatia and Slavonia according to the Census of 1890.

Autor analizira popis stanovništva Hrvatske i Slavonije iz 1890. godine. Na osnovi izvora prikazuje se socijalni i etnički sastav stanovništva. Popis stanovništva iz 1890. godine pruža jedinstven uvid u te strukture zato što je jedini popis prije 1948. koji razlikuje hrvatski od srpskoga materinskog jezika. Na osnovi tih podataka autor pokušava protumačiti problem etničke identifikacije stanovništva u Hrvatskoj i Slavoniji tog doba, s osobitim naglaskom na problem etničke identifikacije Srba.Croatia and Slavonia started their modernisation at the end of the nineteenth century. At that time the process of changing social and ethnic structures of the population started also. In that period numerous immigrants came there and settled from other parts of the Monarchy, but the process of emigration from certain Croatian areas also started. Immigrant ethnic groups had rather different social structures from those of the native population. In the first place, there may be observed a greater level of literacy among these immigrants (particularly in the cases of Czechs and Jews), but differences in their occupational structure may be noted also. This was the consequence of a greater level of development of other parts of the Monarchy, and it shows that Croatia and Slavonia still had rather agrarian and illiterate populations, and even the basic modernisation that happened in the period would be hardly possible without the immigration of a better-educated population from more developed parts of the Monarchy. From the first modern census of 1857 to that of 1948 none of the censuses listed the category of ethnicity, but only those of mother tongue (and that since the census of 1880) and belonging to a confession. For that reason, historiography estimated the ethnic structure of the population based on these two objective indicators. The fact that Croatian and Serbian mother tongues were listed only as one category (hrvatski ili srpski materinji jezik) meant that the proportions of Croats and Serbs were estimated based only on confessional structure, because most Croats were Catholics and most Serbs were members of the Orthodox Church. The author discusses the census of 1890, the only one containing data differentiating Croatian and Serbian mother tongues. These data are interesting, because there are data on those belonging to the Orthodox confession and having Croatian as their mother tongue. It induced the author to question the correctness of the aforementioned confessional criterion for establishing the number of Serbs in Croatia and Slavonia of that time