"Colonial Demography" or "Colonial Populations" has been taken as a field of study crossing the Historical Demography, History of populations and the Modern European colonialism. In a simple definition this recent area of expertise can be broadly described as the collection and analysis of quantitative data of people living on the colonial aegis. The European powers were building a discourse itself to sort, categorize and imagine their overseas populations (Ittmann 2003, Anderson 1996). On the other hand they developed a complex framework for the collection of demographic information, and complex biometric and nosological data.
To the question of "race", health and size of populations, new interpretations and concepts related to ethnicity qualification were emerging. For instance "Domesticated", or "civilized" populations in the Portuguese or Spanish colonial empires were part of a common vocabulary to other imperial powers, - such as the English and German - that is important to understand in a broader analytical framework.
This course aims to offer a broad perspective about European colonial populations focusing in the experience of four countries – Portugal, Spain, England and Germany – from the beginning of the 18th century until ca. 1920. We will characterize the context of this recent research field addressing its specificities, core-objectives and the framework of population statistics – population enumerations, census taking and vital statistics – over time and space. In this line we aim to discuss: i) who ordered these population ennumerations?, ii) who was to be counted?; iii) what circuits were used for information and data collection?; iv) who supervised, collected and produced the information; v) at what extend did the local authorities readapted central impositions towards social classifications, introducing new parameters?
A second objective of this course is to offer a general overview of these colonial populations demographic characteristics in terms of structure (population growth, gender and age structure and social composition). On the other hand we will study population dynamics with emphasis on natality, mortality patterns and population fluxes, both of settlers and forced migrations. From this analysis it is expected that students become aware of the differentiated demographic regimes of these European colonies spanning from the Americas to Asia, addressing key-importance topics as migrations, miscegenation and slavery.
Finally we will discuss the importance of implementing digital humanities methods and techniques for studying Colonial Populations. Focusing on the new historiographical agendas, where the interest on Inequality and Well-being has grown significantly, digital humanities have emerged as a key-instrument to analyze large-scale datasets by using data-mining and information visualization techniques. Thus, while exploring the most recent and promising databases with historical colonial data - such as the Clio-Infra or the Minnesota Population Center database - we will pay attention to the requirements and procedures needed to have into account when implementing large scale colonial demographic databases.


Summary

1 – Setting up the context. The Early Modern colonial empires and the later-comers

2 – What is colonial demography?

3 – Counting overseas “subjects”. Population surveys and censuses as ideological constructions and “power technologies”.

4 - Social, ethnic, racial and religious classifications among time and space.

5 – Global demographic tendencies, 1750-1920.

6 - Migrations and patterns of settling and marriage.

7 – Slavery in the Early Modern and Modern Empires: a census.

8 – Colonial populations in the Digital Humanities. The state-of-the art and the new historiographical agendas towards Inequality and Well-being.