The Colonial Emergence of a Statistical Imaginary

Intellectual networks linking humanitarians in Britain, Western Australia, and New Zealand in the 1850s and 1860s operationalized the concept of native “protection” by arguing contra demographic pessimists that native peoples could survive if their adaptation was thoughtfully managed. While the popu...

Full description

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Comparative studies in society and history 2013-10, Vol.55 (4), p.922-954
Main Authors:	Rowse, Tim, Shellam, Tiffany
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	19th century Adaptation to change Australia Census Censuses Colonial government Colonialism England Environmentalism Govern by Number Government Great Britain Humanitarian aid Humanitarianism Indigenous peoples Indigenous Populations Knowledge Materialism Missionaries Native peoples New Zealand Nightingale, Florence (1820-1910) Population decline Protection Public health Quantifiers Society Statistical analysis Statistics Vulnerability
Online Access:	Get full text
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!

Description
Summary:	Intellectual networks linking humanitarians in Britain, Western Australia, and New Zealand in the 1850s and 1860s operationalized the concept of native “protection” by arguing contra demographic pessimists that native peoples could survive if their adaptation was thoughtfully managed. While the population-measurement capacities of the colonial governments of Western Australia and New Zealand were still weak, missionaries pioneered the gathering of the data that enabled humanitarians to objectify natives as populations. This paper focuses on Francis Dart Fenton (in New Zealand), Florence Nightingale (in Britain), and Rosendo Salvado (in Western Australia) in the 1850s and 1860s. Their belief in the necessity of population statistics manifests the practical convergence of colonial humanitarianism with public health perspectives and with “the statistical movement” that had become influential in Britain in the 1830s. We draw attention to the materialism and environmentalism of these three quantifiers of natives, and to how native peoples were represented as governable through knowledge of their physical needs and vulnerabilities.
ISSN:	0010-4175 1475-2999