Every discussion of death toll I have ever seen is a simple subtraction of the two censuses.
The two censuses were more than a century apart, in 157 and 280, so they cannot tell you anything about killing. Going in the opposite direction, if the killing is spread out over time, it could easily kill twice population with no net effect.
I think 10% killed counts as “incredibly deadly.”
Yes, there is a line in wikipedia claiming that the Jin census was high quality, but other people claim that it was low quality. In fact, what that line really tells you is the existence of people claiming that it was low quality.
This is where we get back to something I said a few comments upthread: if there were losses anything like as big as the censuses suggest, they seem like good evidence of major government incompetence even if they had nothing to do with war.
but other people claim that it was low quality
No doubt. There would be some people claiming high quality and some people claiming low quality regardless of the actual facts, I take it.
The later census reports about 1⁄4 as many people as the earlier. For China not to have lost at least, say, 1⁄3 its population, it seems like (1) the later census must have been really bad, or else (2) it must have been counting a markedly smaller notional population (e.g., some territory having been lost). I haven’t seen anything suggesting that #2 was the case (and have seen it explicitly claimed that it wasn’t); is that wrong?
If not #2 then #1, but that again seems improbable prima facie. Do you have good reason to think it’s wrong?
I’m just trying to understand the basis for your very uncompromising claim: “your sources are complete garbage”. Because it seems strange to me that nothing you’ve said so far either gives good support for that claim or indicates that you have good support for it. I’m not claiming you haven’t, for the avoidance of doubt. It’s just that, well, you seem to be conspicuously avoiding offering any support beyond the observation that comparing censuses could give misleading results.
Every discussion of death toll I have ever seen is a simple subtraction of the two censuses.
The two censuses were more than a century apart, in 157 and 280, so they cannot tell you anything about killing. Going in the opposite direction, if the killing is spread out over time, it could easily kill twice population with no net effect.
I think 10% killed counts as “incredibly deadly.”
Yes, there is a line in wikipedia claiming that the Jin census was high quality, but other people claim that it was low quality. In fact, what that line really tells you is the existence of people claiming that it was low quality.
This is where we get back to something I said a few comments upthread: if there were losses anything like as big as the censuses suggest, they seem like good evidence of major government incompetence even if they had nothing to do with war.
No doubt. There would be some people claiming high quality and some people claiming low quality regardless of the actual facts, I take it.
The later census reports about 1⁄4 as many people as the earlier. For China not to have lost at least, say, 1⁄3 its population, it seems like (1) the later census must have been really bad, or else (2) it must have been counting a markedly smaller notional population (e.g., some territory having been lost). I haven’t seen anything suggesting that #2 was the case (and have seen it explicitly claimed that it wasn’t); is that wrong?
If not #2 then #1, but that again seems improbable prima facie. Do you have good reason to think it’s wrong?
I’m just trying to understand the basis for your very uncompromising claim: “your sources are complete garbage”. Because it seems strange to me that nothing you’ve said so far either gives good support for that claim or indicates that you have good support for it. I’m not claiming you haven’t, for the avoidance of doubt. It’s just that, well, you seem to be conspicuously avoiding offering any support beyond the observation that comparing censuses could give misleading results.