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The Statistical Table as Colonial Knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2017

Tim Rowse
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Abstract

The statistical table is one expression of the settler colonial capacity and willingness to enumerate colonized “peoples” as “populations.” By examining four tables—from 1763, 1828, 1848, and 1850—in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia this paper illustrates the emergence of this powerful technique of representation during the same a period in which European states were developing their capacity to represent the social in statistical terms. In the colonial context, the rise of the notion of a “population” whose characteristics could be averaged contributed to the specifically administrative eclipse of native sovereignty, paralleling the jural/political demise of native sovereignty.

Keywords

colonial knowledgestatisticspopulationsovereigntymodernity
Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 41 , Special Issue 1: Knowledge Brokers and Knowledge Production in Colonial Orders , April 2017 , pp. 51 - 73
Copyright
© 2017 Research Institute for History, Leiden University 

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Footnotes

*

Tim Rowse is a Professor Emeritus in the Institute of Culture and Society (Western Sydney University) and a School Visitor in the Research School of Social Sciences (The Australian National University). He has been studying settler colonial history (mainly Australian) since the early 1980s. His most recent book is Rethinking Social Justice: From “Peoples” To “Populations” (Aboriginal Studies Press 2012); with Lisa Ford he edited Between Indigenous and Settler Governance (Routledge 2012).

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