The Toll Registers of Aschach (1718-1737): Database and Analysis

Trade on the Danube River as the central traffic route of the Upper German economic area has been sorely neglected by academic researchers. The best approach is provided by toll books of which the toll registers of Aschach (passed on for the period 16271775) take up a prominent position for the Austrian lands. The information on merchants and shippers, trading contacts, goods and amounts contains evidence which enables us to reconstruct economic relations, the trade cycle and to answer questions on the development of material culture. Due to the sheer extent of the source and the current practice regarding research funding in Austria, the editing and processing of the toll registers of Aschach needs to be divided into a number of independent sub-projects. This should ensure two things in spite of the medium-term goal of providing access to the complete source within an electronic database: the results will be at hand at the end of the entire research timeframe and all sub-projects can be finalised independent from each other. The project will initially bring into focus the era of Emperor Charles VI as the course for the creation of a unified economic area was set during his reign. Primary aims are the digitization and edition of sources supported by an electronic database and secondly the academic analysis and interpretation thereof. The questions on traded goods, (groups of) people involved in the trade and results from Imperial customs politics for the pan-regional economic relations will come to the fore. Furthermore we aim for a more intensive networking of scholars in neighbouring countries working on similar topics. The close cooperation with the Archive of the Federal Province of Upper Austria (Oberösterreichisches Landesarchiv) and the Institute for Austrian Historical Research (Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung) ensures the continuity of the project.

Since 2013, the project The Danube Trade edits in cooperation with the Provincial Archive of Upper Austria the most important source for early modern trade in the Austrian Danube region. In addition, fundamental research on the long-neglected economic history of the age of Baroque has been published. In Central Europe, the governmental authorities of the early modern states did not create trade statistics until well into the 18th century. Therefore, historians are facing serious challenges in reconstructing flows of goods and trade cycles, consumption habits e.g. the inclusion of colonial goods like chocolate, coffee or tea in the menu or to identify the individuals engaged in trade and transport (merchants and shippers). The analysis of toll registers provides the best method to investigate the transport of goods in the early modern period. These books of account of the various customs stations contain the name of the haulier, the carried goods, their proprietors as well as the carried passengers. The river system of the Danube and its tributaries was the main transport route in Austria north of the Alps. During the long centuries before the railway revolution of the 19th century roads were mainly in poor condition and ill-suited for the transport of bulk products or heavy goods. Under appropriate geographic and political conditions inland shipping has been of paramount importance. The 194 volumes (one annual account comprises c. 9001,300 pages) of the Toll Registers of Aschach in Upper Austria covering the period from 1627 to 1775 are the most outstanding series of toll registers in Austria. On the basis of thousands of registered movements of ships and rafts per year, we are able to reconstruct the exchange of goods between the Austrian Danube region and its neighbouring countries as well as the integration of the area into European and global trade. During the first stage of the Danube Trade-project the toll registers of Aschach between 1718 and 1737 have been completely entered into a database (c. 48,000 passages with more than 200,000 loads belonging to c. 10,000 individuals from 800 towns), a demo version of the online inquiry has been released for the years 1728 and 1729, and the scans of the books for the period between 1716 and 1740 have been published. The project aims to make this unique source of Austrian economic history searchable by ships passages, persons, commodities and place names enabling the scientific analysis of early modern Danube trade.