One might well be satisfied that a strictly quantitative approach is all that is needed for further work. Nonetheless, a nagging doubt persists: can all that we need to know be totally explained in quantitative terms? Are the determinants of mortality indicators as quantitative as the indicators themselves? Can one quantify the interaction between a microscopic pathogen and a human population? or the role of chance in the transmission of an epidemic? or the determinants of policies and health budgets?

It was this consideration which led the Norsk demografisk forening (Norwegian Demographic Society), through the good offices of Solvi Sogner and Ståle Dyrvik, to sponsor a special forum on historical mortality in conjunction with their annual meeting in Oslo in June, 1999. An additional rationale was planning for the subsequent International Congress of Historical Sciences held in Oslo in August, 2000. The International Commission for Historical Demography, an integral part of that Congress, included sessions on historical mortality along with sessions on family history and international migration.

The articles included in this special issue of Annales de démographie historique come from the Oslo meetings of 1999 and 2000, but they represent only a small part of the discussions on the nature of historical mortality. In order to explain where these articles fit in the broader discourse, we must first describe the terms of the forum.

The initial proposal for a forum on historical mortality called for two sub-themes, each divided into three topics. The first sub-theme—reappraising structuralist explanations for mortality reduction—raised three related questions: 1) the appropriateness of quantitative models for biological phenomena (genetic, immunological, and epidemiological); 2) the general role of policy and funding in determining xx^th century mortality reductions; and 3) the particular role of policy and funding in biomedical advances. The second sub-theme—the mechanisms of mortality reduction—explored three other issues: 1) the diverse role of local, national, and international governments in mortality reduction; 2) the interaction between different healing systems—family, ethnomedical, and public health as well as biomedical in promoting longer life; and 3) the changing role of governments, non-governmental organizations, and individual healers in mortality reduction.

This ambitious agenda required the expertise of a broad spectrum of specialists. Beyond the usual array of social scientists trained to evaluate and analyse statistical data, it was also necessary to invite biomedical specialists. These included Chris Wills (1996), a microbiologist who has written extensively on the interaction between people and pathogens, Harry Marks (1997), a medical historian who has written a substantial monograph on medical testing, Oysten Kravdal (2000) who has studied class-differentiated mortality from cancer in modern Norway, and Richard Steckel (1997), an economist who has championed the study of human growth and an indicator of human welfare and co-editor, with economist Michael Haines (2000), of a major synthesis on the demography of North and Central America and the Caribbean. Other national specialists included geographer Robert Woods (2000), author of the definitive demography of Victorian England and Wales, the French historian of cholera and aging, Patrice Bourdelais (1993), historian Kari Pitkänen (1993) of Finland, Dutch demographer Frans van Poppel (1992), and the Swedish practitioners economist Tommy Bengtsson (1994) and historian Peter Sköld (1996), and Svenn-Erik Mamelund (1994) of Norway.

Other participants had written case studies of particular problems, policies, or places. Specialists in the history of public health included Jan Sundin (1999) and Marie Nelson (1989) from Sweden, Robert Millward (1998), who had worked on water purification in Victorian Britain, William Hubbard (2000) who has analyzed urban public health in xix^th century Norway, Robert Lee (1997) who has investigated water and other aspects of public health in Wilhelmian Germany, and Elyce Rotella (1999) who had studied a parallel movement in early twentieth century United States.

Policy specialists included historian Daniel Fox (1993), who has studied the politics of health care in the United States and western Europe, Jenny Wood (1997) who works for the British Office for National Statistics, Norwegian historian Gunnar Thorvaldsen (1998) who works in the massive historical data base in Tromsö. Authors of local studies included historians Sölvi Sogner (1993) of Norway, George Alter (1988), who works on the industrialization of Belgium as part of the Eurasia project, Jürgen Schlumbohm (1994) who has pioneered in the study of early modern Germany, and Virginie de Luca of France. International matters have been addressed by Catherine Rollet (1990) of France and Nico Keilman and Helge Brunborg (1995) of Norway.

Finally, there were historians who have addressed the daunting problem of the relationship between culture and demography: Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux (1997) who has studied child care in France at the end of the Ancien Régime, Simon Szreter (1996) who has most recently explored the relationship between demography and social capital, Sheila Ryan Johansson (1994), who has studied the relationship between medicine and health in early modern England, and Bruce Fetter (1997), who proposed the application of an evolutionary model to human health care.

The discussions, held at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, produced a general consensus that not all of historical demography could be explained through quantitative indicators, but the breadth of the enterprise precluded more specific conclusions. Instead, forum members enjoyed the luxury of exploring broad areas beyond the usual purview of professional meetings. They also arrived at a call for papers to be discussed fourteen months later at the International Congress of Historical Sciences.

Proposals for Oslo2000 came from all over the world—Taiwan, Korea, Russia, Iceland, Chile, Argentina, Algeria, and the Gambia—in addition to the countries represented at the 1999 Forum. The nine hours of presentation included such topics as culture and demography, politics and mortality, and genetic and natural environments. Although lacking the intimacy of the 1999 Forum, the mortality panels at Oslo2000 represented a continuation of the earlier wind of change.

The six papers chosen by the editors of Annales de démographie historique were all presented in final form to Oslo2000. They demonstrate many of the strands of discussion at the two meetings: culture, the role of local governments in health care delivery, international organizations, and urban environments. Their subject matter is limited to Western Europe and the United States, but they raise issues which extend to the whole modern world.

In the paper devoted to the role of cultural differences in mortality, George Alter, Michel Oris, and Göran Bröström examine interfamily differences in a xix^th century Belgian town. Although childhood mortality was clustered in particular families, differences between families diminished at puberty and disappeared by the time surviving children had reached their fifties. In old age, however, differences of wealth continued to tilt the scales against the poor.

Alice Reid's paper on the role of health visitors on the mortality of pre-school-aged children in early twentieth century England examines the utility of a public health service provided at the local level. Although poor families were the objects of a certain condescension, the supervision provided by local government appears to have saved young lives. Indeed, Reid concludes that mortality reductions were due more to improvements in knowledge of child care and hygiene than through the direct provision of medical services.

The intervention of local governments in late xix^th century Germany also looms large in W.R. Lee and J.P. Vögele's discussion of regional differences in health care. They show that, even after German reunification in 1871, substantial differences persisted between the component units of the German Reich and, indeed, within different levels of local and regional administration. After examining policies relating to smallpox vaccination, water treatment, and infant welfare, they conclude that federal governments contribute to great local disparities in the provision of health services, despite central policies intended to promote the welfare of the entire population.

Catherine Rollet shows that this same generalization applies to international efforts in the forty years before World War I to improve children's health within nation states. She sketches the changing agenda of international congresses from an initial concern for children at risk as a danger to society to children as potential victims of disease to children as part of family networks needing government services.

Like the two preceding papers, Louis Cain and Elyce Rotella address the diversity in government responses to a perceived health crisis in the United States during the early twentieth century. They specifically address the conditions which led American municipalities to spend money on water purification, sewerage, and solid waste removal. First, they show that either local outbreaks of water-borne diseases or reports of outbreaks in other cities did have a measurable effect on municipalities' decisions to expend capital on public health. Secondly, they show through a multivariate analysis the relative effectiveness of these capital expenditures, demonstrating that relatively small amounts spent on the removal of garbage produced disproportionately high levels of mortality reduction.

U.S. urban mortality is also the object of Michael Haines' essay which covers the period, 1800-1940. Haines demonstrates that mortality levels in urban areas were higher than in rural areas and actually rose during the mid-nineteenth century. During the 1870s urban rates began to fall first as a result of public works and improvements in public health and then as biomedical procedures became effective. By the 1940s rural-urban mortality differences had largely disappeared, and cities had become healthier for children.

Collectively, these six essays demonstrate that mortality reduction is more than a matter of social structure. Policy mattered in the xix^th and xx^th centuries as did governmental organization and family knowledge. Although quantitative analysis will continue to play a vital role in explaining mortality patterns, the spirit of the Oslo meetings calls demographers to remember the role of human initiative in mortality reduction.