How the Habsburg administration populated the Banat. A history of State knowledge and practices by Benjamin Landais (University of Avignon). Published thanks to credits connected with the NEPOSTRANS project! Once one of the most multi-ethnic territories in Europe, the Banat was populated in the 18th century by tens of thousands of Catholic peasants from all over the continent. They joined Orthodox communities already there, while Greek, Armenian and Jewish merchants still increased this rural Babel by settling in the market towns and the city of Timişoara. Modern categories of ethnicity are of small use for understanding this mosaic. On the contrary, Banatian ethnicity needs to be considered in its historical contexts and as the outcome of partly conflicting administrative designs. During the political integration of Banat into the Habsburg monarchy, there were tensions between Vienna and the local authorities. Specific dynamics of settlement and the multiplication of collective privileges encouraged the fragmentation of the settlers’ collective identity. From this, it is clear that ethnicity was not an abstract classification imposed from above in a so-called colonial society. However, the processes of negotiations and fragmentations were neither linear nor systematic. Furthermore, trends towards uniformity countered them. The historical analysis is then able to identify two regimes of ethnicity: an older one, differentiating socially and legally among the settlers; a new one, influenced by the Enlightenment and characterised by a culturally based assignment of identity.