Counting Portuguese colonial populations, 1776–1875: a research note

Matos, Paulo Teodoro de

doi:10.1080/1081602x.2016.1147371

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Finally, the Company's meticulousness may be seen as part of eighteenth‐century rationalism, which stimulated census‐taking and use of statistics in empires across the globe (e.g. De Matos, ). This development went hand in hand with an increased importance in legal procedures of written evidence over oral testimonies (Schrikker and Lyna, ).…”

Section: The Thombo Registrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Thombo Treasure. Colonial Population Administration as Source for the Historical Demography of Early Modern Sri Lanka

Kok

2020

Aust Econ Hist Rev

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During their occupation of Sri Lanka (1640–1796) and following Sinhalese and Portuguese practices, the Dutch created an elaborate registration of people, estates, and labour services. The administrative records known as the thombos are incomparable in their level of detail, yet they have hardly been used for the purposes of demographic or economic history. This article describes the challenges involved in ‘decoding’ the thombos, that is, reconstructing the meaning of particular variables in the light of the prevailing legal pluralism in which Sinhalese common law and Roman‐Dutch law co‐existed uncomfortably. It also summarises research findings from a pilot study involving about two hundred small villages in Colombo province. Finally, it sketches research horizons, as the thombo ‘treasure’ holds great prospects for (comparative) studies into family systems and the impact of colonial rule on fertility and mortality.

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Section: The Thombo Registrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Thombo Treasure. Colonial Population Administration as Source for the Historical Demography of Early Modern Sri Lanka

Kok

2020

Aust Econ Hist Rev

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“…In this way, apart from Austria, most civil growth was at local‐regional government levels, although operating subordinate to the State and conducting their tasks in a standardized fashion (Mann, 1993). In the specific case of carrying out censuses, in the United Kingdom, Italy and the United States during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, central governments depended on civil servants and local agents (Curtis, 1994; Emigh et al., 2016b; Matos, 2016). In a sense, this would be a tautology as, after the liberal revolution, all these institutions were part of the same state apparatus, irrespective of their degree of autonomy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bottom‐up Nation‐building: National Censuses and Local Administration in Nineteenth‐Century Spain

Salas-Vives¹,

Pujadas-Mora²

2021

J Historical Sociology

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It is customary to consider population censuses (and statistics in general) as exclusive to the modern State, appearing in the second half of the eighteenth century but being developed and spreading in the West during the nineteenth century. Indeed, censuses help to strengthen and legitimize such states. However, in Spain, just as in Europe and the United States, the first population censuses considered modern were the result of, on the one hand, the directives and general and provincial coordination provided by the new state statistical institutions, such as the Statistics Commission or the Institute of Geography and, on the other, municipal personnel and the previous knowledge of local conditions held by the councils and other agents, such as the clergy, intellectuals, and notables. The media were also availed of for the cause. Let us recall that the municipalities were an explicit part of the state apparatus, therefore their relevance in carrying out censuses is not an indication of failure or weakness on the part of the Spanish State regarding the process of “bottom‐up nation‐building”, but rather a way to imagine the nation through which collective involvement would build the nation from the locality.

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The Demography of Slavery in the Coffee Districts of Angola, c. 1800–70

Vos

Matos

2021

J. Afr. Hist.

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This article uses demographic data from nineteenth-century Angola to evaluate, within a West Central African setting, the widely accepted theory that sub-Saharan Africa's integration within the Atlantic world through slave and commodity trading caused significant transformations in slavery in the subcontinent. It specifically questions, first, whether slaveholding became more dominant in Angola during the last phase of the transatlantic slave trade; second, whether Angolan slave populations were predominantly female; and third, whether slavery in Angola expanded further during the cash crop revolution that accompanied the nineteenth-century suppression of the Atlantic slave trade. Besides making a significant contribution to understanding the demographic context of slavery in the era of abolition, the article aims to display ways in which historians can use the population surveys the Portuguese Empire carried out in Africa from the late eighteenth century.

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Counting Portuguese colonial populations, 1776–1875: a research note

Cited by 5 publications

References 11 publications

The Thombo Treasure. Colonial Population Administration as Source for the Historical Demography of Early Modern Sri Lanka

The Thombo Treasure. Colonial Population Administration as Source for the Historical Demography of Early Modern Sri Lanka

Bottom‐up Nation‐building: National Censuses and Local Administration in Nineteenth‐Century Spain

The Demography of Slavery in the Coffee Districts of Angola, c. 1800–70

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