The Colonial Emergence of a Statistical Imaginary

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2108802
AutoresT Rowse (0000-0003-3602-5966, Western Sydney University, autor de correspondencia), Tiffany Shellam (0000-0001-8521-7564, Deakin University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2013
Volumen55
Número4
Páginas922-954
Fecha de publicación2013-10-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaComparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0010417513000467
OpenAlexW2160060782
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas6
Referencias citadas23

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

Colonialism · Environmentalism · Epistemology · Ethnology · Genealogy · Geography · Materialism · Operationalization · Political science · Politics · Population · Sociology · State (computer science) · Australian History and Society · Demography · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Law