IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB001201830

The Colonial Emergence of a Statistical Imaginary (2013)

Rowse, Tim (Author)
Shellam, Tiffany (Author)

Comparative Studies in Society and History
Volume: 55
Pages: 922--954
Publication date: 2013
Language: English

DOI: 10.1017/S0010417513000467

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Statistics Applied statistics Demography; population research Indigenous peoples; indigeneity Science and culture Science and politics Environmentalism Science and government Great Britain, colonies 19th century Australia New Zealand

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.

...More

Description How statistical measurement allowed governments to calculate the needs of indigenous peoples and the environment.

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB001201830

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Rowse, Tim; (2014)
“Rooted in Demographic Reality”: The Contribution of New World Censuses to Indigenous Survival (/p/isis/citation/CBB001201587/)

Article Bennett, Tony; Dibley, Ben; Harrison, Rodney; (2014)
Introduction: Anthropology, Collecting and Colonial Governmentalities (/p/isis/citation/CBB001201581/)

Book Pascoe, Gwen; (2012)
Long Views and Short Vistas: Victoria's Nineteenth-Century Public Botanic Gardens (/p/isis/citation/CBB001201478/)

Article McCarthy, Conal; (2014)
“Empirical Anthropologists Advocating Cultural Adjustments”: The Anthropological Governance of pirana Ngata and the Native Affairs Department (/p/isis/citation/CBB001201589/)

Article Aparna Nair; (2024)
Enumerating Infirmity: Disability, Demography, and Empire, 1820–1950 (/p/isis/citation/CBB148141470/)

Article Batty, Philip; (2014)
The Tywerrenge as an Artefact of Rule: The (Post) Colonial Life of a Secret/Sacred Aboriginal Object (/p/isis/citation/CBB001201590/)

Article Emily O'Gorman; James Beattie; Matthew Henry; (2016)
Histories of Climate, Science, and Colonization in Australia and New Zealand, 1800–1945 (/p/isis/citation/CBB574597140/)

Book Beattie, James; (2011)
Empire and Environmental Anxiety: Health, Science, Art, and Conservation in South Asia and Australasia, 1800--1920 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001320917/)

Chapter McCarthy, Conal; (2012)
Carving Out a Place in the Better Britain of the South Pacific: Maori in New Zealand Museums and Exhibitions (/p/isis/citation/CBB001201468/)

Article Aspengren, Henrik C.; (2011)
Sociological Knowledge and Colonial Power in Bombay around the First World War (/p/isis/citation/CBB001024729/)

Article Labbé, Morgane; (2007)
Institutionalizing the Statistics of Nationality in Prussia in the 19th Century (From Local Bureaucracy to State-Level Census of Population) (/p/isis/citation/CBB000773206/)

Book Crook, Tom; O'Hara, Glen; (2011)
Statistics and the Public Sphere: Numbers and the People in Modern Britain, c. 1800--2000 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001033382/)

Book Starbuck, Nicole; (2013)
Baudin, Napoleon and the Exploration of Australia (/p/isis/citation/CBB001201503/)

Article Star, Paul; (2006)
Ecology: A Science of Nation? The Utilization of Plant Ecology in New Zealand, 1896--1930 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001020755/)

Article Priestley, Rebecca; (2006)
The Search for Uranium in “Nuclear Free” New Zealand: Prospecting on the West Coast, 1940s to 1970s (/p/isis/citation/CBB001232421/)

Article Stamhuis, Ida H.; (2007)
A Nineteenth-Century Statistical Society that Abandoned Statistics (/p/isis/citation/CBB000773207/)

Article François, Aurore; Machiels, Christine; (2007)
L'usage des statistiques par les discours abolitionniste et réglementariste sur la prostitution à Bruxelles (1844--1948) (/p/isis/citation/CBB000931375/)

Article Labbé, Morgane; (2008)
L'arithmétique politique en Allemagne au début du XIXe siècle: réceptions et polémiques (/p/isis/citation/CBB001021397/)

Book Jarrod Hore; (2022)
Visions of Nature: How Landscape Photography Shaped Settler Colonialism (/p/isis/citation/CBB045823423/)

Article Touchelay, Béatrice; (2010)
La Société de statistique de Paris et les fondations de l'expertise du service central de la statistique publique (1936--1975) (/p/isis/citation/CBB001024450/)