Modern Jewish History

Mapping Past Populations: Digital Tools and Quantitative Methods

Since 2017, a digital atlas of Jewish populations in Italy and the Mediterranean (particularly, North Africa) has been under development at the Centre Roland Mousnier (CNRS - Sorbonne Université, Paris). The atlas is based on a massive database, which contains hundreds of thousands of entries from archival documents relative to around forty localities in Italy. In addition to Rome and the Church States, these include local archives (or those of the Jewish communities) in Tuscany (Florence, Siena, Livorno and Pisa), Lombardy (Duchy of Mantua), Emilia-Romagna (Reggio Emilia, and Modena), Veneto (Venice, Padua, Rovigo, and Verona), which have been used extensively to study:

1) the economic and social history of Jewish populations from the mid-fifteenth to the end of the nineteenth century;
2) the historical demography of the Jews;
3) the legal norms regulating the Jewish presence in Italy.

The atlas is devised to become an invaluable resource for the history of Italian Jews. It has also been the subject of various public presentations and scientific publications since 2018. This workshop organised in Paris on October 19th-20th, 2023, which will bring together researchers working on other populations and geographical areas, will present the advances made in the digital atlas of the Jewish populations of Italy, particularly as concerns mobility, migration and historical demography.