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The Colonial Emergence of a Statistical Imaginary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 September 2013

Tim Rowse  and
Tiffany Shellam
Tim Rowse*
Affiliation:
University of Western Sydney
Tiffany Shellam*
Affiliation:
Deakin University
*
[email protected]
[email protected]
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Abstract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , October 2013 , pp. 922 - 954
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2013 

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105 ACC 2953A/9, correspondence, 1864, vol. II, New Norcia Archive (henceforth NNA).

106 Salvado to Colonial Secretary, 30 June 1864, ACC 2953A/34, Reports—Libro no. 2, NNA.

107 “Form of Return from England by Miss Nightingale, October 1860,” ACC 2953A/9, NNA.

108 Seaman (“Florence Nightingale,” 90) incorrectly states that the only return to come to Nightingale from Australia was from Poonindie Native Training Institution in South Australia—the New Norcia return is in the NNA.

109 Ibid., 91.

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111 Ibid., 476.

112 Ibid., our emphasis.

113 Ibid. In 1864, Nightingale asked the Duke of Newcastle to have a circular drawn up and sent to the governors to “lead the way to more correct statistics” and point out “the great advantage of schools, hospitals and other institutions keeping more complete data.” See McDonald, Florence Nightingale, 167.

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116 Florence Nightingale, “Note on the Aboriginal Races of Australia,” 533. In a petition to Queen Isobel of Spain in 1867, Salvado quoted Nightingale's praise; see ACC 4654A/1, p. 87, NNA.

117 At: http://www.archive.org/stream/noteonaboriginal00nigh/noteonaboriginal00nigh_djvu.txt (accessed 22 Nov. 2011).

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119 In May 1864, Salvado drew a census titled, “Number, Name, Height and Weight of the Aboriginal Natives of New Norcia on the 22nd May 1864,” ACC 2953A/9, NNA. Reports about New Norcia, including statistics of Aborigines, were published in the Perth Gazette on 11 Apr. 1862, 17 Nov. 1865, 24 Nov. 1865, and 23 Aug. 1867; Inquirer and Commercial News, 15 Nov. 1865. His 1864 report, “Information Respecting the Habits,” was ordered printed in 1871. Under the Industrial Schools Act 1874, funding obliged Salvado to report numbers of Aborigines. He was appointed a protector in 1887 under the Aborigines Protection Act 1886. In his “Statement Concerning the Natives (Aborigines and Half-Caste) at the Benedictine Mission of New Norcia, W.A. on the 1st January 1894,” he categorized named individuals by gender, age, and family unit, and whether they were “Half-caste” or “Aboriginal.” In an 1897 report of the Aborigines Protection Board, Salvado's district, which he enumerated, returned the largest number of Aborigines for the colony, at 3,051; Report of the Aborigines Protection Board, 1887, Parliamentary Papers of Western Australia, 1887, no. 8.

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