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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 June 2011
During the past few decades, many scholars have studied the various demographic consequences of European overseas expansion. One focus of attention has been the fatal impact of European expansion on the native populations of the New World. Before contact with Europeans, the native populations of the Americas, Australia, and the Pacific were generally free of infectious diseases, and so lacked immunity to diseases such as smallpox, measles, and influenza, which were introduced by Europeans. A second focus of attention has been the mortality among Europeans when they went overseas and encountered new diseases, such as malaria, yellow fever, and cholera, to which they had no immunity. And a third focus of attention has been the mortality among various African, Asian, and Pacific Islander labourers when they were procured as slaves or indentured servants for work on European plantations in various parts of the world.
* We are indebted to Vincent Houben for making available to us unpublished data from his ongoing research on Javanese migration to Sumatra, and to Stanley L. Engerman and Doug Munro for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
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8 It is possible to make an upper bound estimate of the average death rate of indentured workers during the first five years in Suriname, by simply assuming that no deaths occurred among re-indentured workers. On this assumption, the death rate of the first indentured population was at most 1.7 per 1,000 more than the death rate of the combined first indentured and re-indentured population for the period 1899–1932, the only period for which statistics on the number of re-indentured workers were reported. Unfortunately, it is not possible to conduct a similar exercise for the Federated Malay States. Data were reported on the number of re-indentured contracts but not on the number of re-indentured workers employed on the same estates as indentured workers. It is also not known if the mortality statistics relating to Javanese contract workers in the Straits Settlements were inclusive of any re-indentured workers, and separate information on reindentured contracts were not reported for 1912–1913.
9 This conclusion can be shown by assuming that all deaths of Javanese contract workers (inclusive of re-indentured contracts) in Suriname occurred in the first three years after arrival. On the basis of this assumption, the average annual death rate of Javanese during their first three years after arriving in Suriname would be seventeen per 1,000 (over 1899–1932, the period for which re-indentured contract information is available). This is an upper bound estimate of the ‘true’ mortality suffered during the first three years after arrival in Suriname, yet it is still considerably less than the mortality suffered by Javanese contract workers in Malaya.
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