Welcome Remarks for The Sum of the People: How the Census has Shaped Nations, from the Ancient World to the Modern Age

October 28, 2020

Greetings from the National Archives. I’m David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to this virtual book talk on The Sum of the People: How the Census has Shaped Nations, from the Ancient World to the Modern Age, with our special guest, Andrew Whitby.

Before we hear from our guest author, I want to tell you about two upcoming online programs that you can view on the National Archives YouTube channel.

On Friday, October 30, at 6 p.m., Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster will tell us about his recent book, Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World, which assesses current national security threats to the United States and provides a clear pathway to improve strategic competence. Joining the conversation will be Nicholas Coddington, Director of the National Archives Office of Education and Public Programs.

And on Tuesday, November 10, at 3 p.m., David Winkler, who is the current Smithsonian Air and Space Museum Charles Lindbergh Fellow in Aerospace History, will discuss his recent book, Tribute to a Nation: Hadyn Williams and the Building of the World War II Memorial.

I hope you will join us for these programs.

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In April 2020, the United States embarked on its 24th decennial population census. The 10-year national count is mandated by Article I, section 2, of the United States Constitution, and it is also part of a tradition of counting people that goes back at least three millennia and now spans the globe.

The census forms collected throughout the centuries are more than just numbers—they represent people. For many researchers at the National Archives, their first encounter with us is through census records, as they seek family connections in the past.

In The Sum of the People, data scientist Andrew Whitby traces the remarkable history of the census. In doing so, he states that his aim has been “to show how the institution of counting people has evolved, how it has changed as societies changed, and how it has sometimes changed those societies in turn.”

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Andrew Whitby is an economist and data scientist with a Ph.D. in econometrics from the University of Oxford. Most recently, he worked in the development data group of the World Bank, where he was coeditor of the Atlas of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Now I’ll turn you over to Andrew Whitby. Thank you for joining us today.