The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power

by Deirdre Mask

In 1763, Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II, who would become her co-regent, lost the Seven Years War, which involved every kingdom of Europe. This time weddings could not fasten the empire together. Maria Theresa tried to win back the rich province of Silesia—today, a region of Poland—from her archenemy, Frederick II of Prussia. But her exhausted troops came home empty-handed. Maria Theresa was devastated. If she hadn’t always been pregnant, she said—she had eight children during her wars with Prussia alone—she would have joined in the battle herself. MARIA THERESA She needed more soldiers. The Habsburg Empire was still governed by a feudal system. Landlords, who controlled the families who worked on their land, were largely responsible for military recruitment. Unsurprisingly, they held back the strong and hardworking for themselves, and sent the rest to fight. In theory, Maria Theresa reigned over an empire full of hearty young men, but what use were they if she had no way to find them? So, in 1770, the same year her youngest daughter Marie Antoinette was married at Versailles, Maria Theresa ordered a “conscription of souls,” an accounting of all military-eligible men in her territories. But soon she discovered another problem: she had no real way of counting people in the warrens of the villages. There was no way to distinguish between the homes. She struck on an answer: house numbers. By numbering each door and listing its occupants, the military could strip away the...