Hostname: page-component-788cddb947-nxk7g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-09T16:37:43.989Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Colonial Emergence of a Statistical Imaginary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 September 2013

Tim Rowse*
Affiliation:
University of Western Sydney
Tiffany Shellam*
Affiliation:
Deakin University

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
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Dippie, B. W., The Non-Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy (Wesleyan University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Brantlinger, P., Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800–1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Francis, D.The Imaginary Indian: The Image of the Indian in Canadian Culture (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1992)Google Scholar; McGregor, R., Imagined Destinies (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Stenhouse, J., “‘A Disappearing Race Before We Came Here’: Doctor Alfred Kingcome Newman, the Dying Maori, and Victorian Scientific Racism,” New Zealand Journal of History 30, 2 (Oct. 1996), 124–40Google Scholar.

2 Lester, A., Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth Century South Africa and Britain (London: Routledge, 2001), 110Google Scholar. Other recent studies of the Report and its influence include: Lester, A., “British Settler Discourse and the Circuits of Empire,” History Workshop Journal 54 (2002): 2750CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lester, A., “Humanitarians and White Settlers in the Nineteenth Century,” in Etherington, N., ed., Missions and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 6485Google Scholar; Lester, A. and Dussart, F., “Trajectories of Protection: Protectorates of Aborigines in Early 19th Century Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand,” New Zealand Geographer (2008): 64, 205–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Laidlaw, Z., “‘Aunt Anna's Report’: The Buxton Women and the Aborigines Select Committee, 1835–37,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 32, 2 (2004): 128CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Elbourne, E., “The Sin of the Settler: The 1835–36 Select Committee on Aborigines and Debates Over Virtue and Conquest in the Early Nineteenth-Century British White Settler Empire,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 4, 3 (2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_colonialism_and_colonial_history/v004/4.3elbourne.html; Blackstock, M. D., “The Aborigines Report (1837): A Case Study in the Slow Change of Colonial Relations,” Canadian Journal of Native Studies 20, 1 (2000): 6794Google Scholar.

3 Lester, Imperial Networks, 110.

4 British Parliamentary Papers (Colonies), vol. 40, Report of the House of Commons Committee on Aborigines in British Settlements (26 June 1837), 84.

5 Laidlaw, Z., Colonial Connections 1815–45: Patronage, the Information Revolution and Colonial Government (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2005), 169–99Google Scholar; Lester, A., “Historical Geographies of British Colonization: New South Wales, New Zealand and the Cape in the Early Nineteenth Century,” in Potter, S. J., ed., Imperial Communication: Australia, Britain, and the British Empire, c. 1830–50 (London: Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King's College, University of London, 2005), 91120Google Scholar.

6 Hacking, I., The Taming of Chance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Goldman, L., “Statistics and the Science of Society in Early Victorian Britain: An Intellectual Context for the General Register Office,” Social History of Medicine 4, 3 (1991): 415–34CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

8 Eastwood, D., “‘Amplifying the Province of the Legislature’: The Flow of Information and the English State in the Early Nineteenth Century,” Historical Research 62 (1989): 276–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Eastwood, D., “Men, Morals and the Machinery of Social Legislation, 1790–1840,” Parliamentary History 13 (1994): 190205CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hilts, V. L., “Aliis Exterendum, or the Origins of the Statistical Society of London,” Isis 69 (1978): 2143CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cullen, M. J., The Statistical Movement in Early Victorian Britain: The Foundations of Empirical Social Research (New York: Harvester Press, 1975)Google Scholar; Porter, T., The Rise of Statistical Thinking: 1820–1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Goldman, L., “The Origins of British Social Science: Political Economy, Natural Science and Statistics,” Historical Journal 26 (1983): 587616CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

9 Laidlaw, Colonial Connections, 172–73.

10 A.F.G. Brown, A Humanitarian Institution? Francis Dart Fenton and the Origins of the Native Land Court, 1850–1865, BA honors thesis, University of Otago, 1998.

11 Hacking, Taming of Chance, 53.

12 Diamond, M. and Stone, M., “Nightingale on Quetelet,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (General) 144, 1 (1981): 6679CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 70.

13 Salesa, D. I., Racial Crossings: Race Intermarriage and the Victorian British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 153CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Porter, Rise of Statistical Thinking, 27.

15 Cullen, Statistical Movement, 145.

16 Ibid., 145.

17 The Salvado Memoirs, Stormon, E. J., ed. (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1977), 7374Google Scholar.

18 McGregor, R., “Degrees of Fatalism: Discourses on Racial Extinction in Australia and New Zealand,” in Grimshaw, P. and McGregor, R., eds., Collisions of Cultures and Identities: Settlers and Indigenous Peoples (Melbourne: Department of History, University of Melbourne, 2007), 245–61Google Scholar. Pakeha optimism about “racial amalgamation,” whether or not “amalgamation” included intermarriage, is also a theme of Salesa's Racial Crossings.

19 Western Australia Census of 1870: ABORIGINES, at: http://hccda.anu.edu.au/pages/WA-1870-census-01_26 (accessed 9 Dec. 2011).

20 Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (New Zealand), 1901, vol. 4, H26B, p. 10.

21 Stirling to Goderich, Perth, 2 Apr. 1832, in Report of the House of Commons Committee on Aborigines in British Settlements, Appendix, 128–29.

22 “Meeting of the Executive Council, 31 July 1832,” in Report of the House of Commons Committee on Aborigines in British Settlements, Appendix, 133–34.

23 Ibid.

24 T. T. Ellis, “Weekly Journal,” 6 Dec. 1833, Colonial Secretary's Received (henceforth CSR) 29/157–159; and 30 Jan. 1834, CSR 30/163, both in State Records Office Western Australian (henceforth SROWA).

25 Copy of a dispatch from Governor Sir James Stirling to the Earl of Aberdeen, Western Australia, Perth, 10 July 1835, CO 18/15, Australian Joint Copying Project (henceforth AJCP), Battye Library, Western Australia (henceforth BL) reel no. 300–1.

26 F. F. Armstrong, in Perth Gazette, 5 Nov. 1836: 797.

27 Statistical report upon the Colony of Western Australia, 1837, Perth Gazette, 5 Aug. 1837: 948. That is, Stirling discounted Armstrong's census of 1837, but relied on Armstrong's 1836 estimate, published in the Perth Gazette.

28 Hutt to Lord Glenelg, 3 May 1839, Copies or Extracts from the Despatches of the Governors of the Australian Colonies, with the Reports of the Protectors of Aborigines, and Any Other Correspondence to Illustrate the Condition of the Aboriginal Population of the Said Colonies, from the Date of the Last Papers Laid Before Parliament on the Subject (Papers ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 12 Aug. 1839, no. 526), printed 9 Aug. 1844, C. 627, BL, p. 363.

29 Sessional Papers, Executive and Legislative Councils, 1839–1841, 4 Feb. 1840, CO 20/3, AJCP.

30 Peter Barrow, “Annual Report of the Protector of Aborigines, York, Western Australia, 31 Mar. 1841,” Perth Gazette, 1 May 1841; Hutt to Lord Stanley, 8 Apr. 1842, Aborigines (Australian Colonies) House of Commons, Aug. 1844, British Parliamentary Papers, no. 627, p. 411.

31 Legislative Council, 15 June and 20 July 1840, CO 20/3, AJCP. For Grey's recommendations, see George Grey to Lord John Russell, 4 June 1840, Historical Records of Australia, series 1, vol. 6, p. 39.

32 Charles Symmons, Protector, “Names and Census of Natives, Original Owners of Land on the Right and Left Banks of the Swan from Fremantle to the Head of the River,” 31 Dec. 1840, CSR 89/128, SROWA.

33 Barrow, Peter, “Annual Report of the Protector of Aborigines, York, Western Australia, 31 March 1841,” Perth Gazette, 1 May 1841.

34 “Returns of the Natives of the Toodyay District,” 1 Mar. 1840, CSR 85/116, Acc. 36, SROWA.

35 Henry Bland, “No. 1 List of Natives (Men and Boys) on the Avon District”; “No. 2 List of Natives Generally in the Employ of Settlers in the York District”; “No. 3 List of Natives Inhabiting the Neighbourhood of Albany,” Jan. 1842, all in CSR 108/21, Acc. 36, SROWA.

36 Moore, George Fletcher, “Civilization of the Aborigines of Western Australia,” Colonial Magazine and Commercial Maritime Journal 5, 19 (1841): 422–23Google Scholar; this article was published in slightly different form in the Perth Gazette, 20 Feb. 1841.

37 Hutt, 27 May 1841, Legislative Council, Perth Gazette, 29 May 1841.

38 C. Symmons, “Quarterly Report to Colonial Secretary,” 31 Mar. 1844, printed in Government Gazette, Inquirer, 24 Apr. 1844.

39 Legislative Council Minutes, 18 July 1848, printed in Inquirer, 19 July 1848.

40 “The Force of the Protectors of Natives throughout the Colony of Western Australia,” 1848, CSR, vol. 173/217, SROWA.

41 “The Census of Western Australia and Returns of Crops and Stock,” 10 Oct. 1848, CSR, vol. 172/268–282, SROWA.

42 Wilkinshaw Cowan, “Report of Protector of Natives, York, 22 January 1852,” Inquirer 18 Feb. 1852.

43 Haebich, A., “‘No man is an island’: Bishop Salvado's Vision for Mission Work with the Aboriginal People of Western Australia,” New Norcia Studies 9 (Sept. 2001): 20Google Scholar; Russo, George, Lord Abbot of the Wilderness: The Life and Times of Bishop Salvado (Melbourne: Polding Press), 136Google Scholar.

44 Tilbrook, Lois, Nyungar Tradition: Glimpses of Aborigines of South-Western Australia, 1829–1914 (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1983), 47Google Scholar.

45 Hutchison, D., ed., A Town Like No Other (South Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1995), 61Google Scholar.

46 Salvado Memoirs, 85.

47 James Busby to Colonial Secretary of New South Wales, 16 June 1837, British Parliamentary Papers (New Zealand) (henceforth BPPNZ), vol. 3, 122: 7–8. Busby mentioned warfare among Maori, but judged that Maori acquisition of firearms had made their battles no bloodier.

48 Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords Appointed to Inquire into the Present State of the Islands of New Zealand and the Expediency of Regulating the Settlement of British Subjects Therein, 8 Aug. 1838, BPPNZ, vol. 1, 680.

49 Estimate of Cook's passenger J. R. Forster. For Forster's reservations, see his Observations Made during a Voyage Round the World, Thomas, N., Guest, H., and Dettelbach, M., eds. (Honolulu: University of Hawaìi Press, 1996), 151–52Google Scholar.

50 Polack, J. S., New Zealand: Being a Narrative of Travels and Adventures during a Residence in that Country between the Years 1831 and 1837 (London: Richard Bentley, 1838)Google Scholar.

51 Bannister, S., “An Account of the Changes and Present Condition of the Population of New Zealand,” Journal of the Statistical Society of London 1, 6 (Oct. 1838): 362–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 Ibid., 370.

53 BPPNZ, vol. 1, 680, “Minutes of Evidence,” 5.

54 Ibid., 9.

55 Ibid., 23.

56 Ibid., 84–86, 89.

57 Dated 3 Aug. 1840, BPPNZ, vol. 1, 582: i–xii.

58 Motte, S., Outline of a System of Legislation for Securing Protection to the Aboriginal Inhabitants of All Countries Colonized by Great Britain, Extending to Them Political And Social Rights, Ameliorating Their Condition, and Promoting Their Civilization (London: John Murray 1840), 30Google Scholar.

59 Report from the Select Committee on New Zealand; Together with the Minutes of Proceedings, Minutes of Evidence, Appendix, Index, and Map of the Colony of New Zealand, BPPNZ, vol. 2, 556, “Minutes of Evidence,” 41.

60 Ibid., 127.

61 Ibid., 168.

62 BPPNZ, vol. 5, 337, 47, appendix A to minutes of Thursday, 3 Apr. 1845.

63 George Grey to Earl Grey, 3 May 1847, BPPNZ, vol. 6, 892, 43.

64 George Grey to Earl Grey, 9 July 1849, BPPNZ, vol. 6, 1136, 190.

65 Dorset to Grey, 8 Oct. 1850, encl. in George Grey to Earl Grey, 8 Oct. 1850, BPPNZ, vol. 7, 1420, 87.

66 George Grey to Earl Grey, 30 Aug. 1851, BPPNZ, vol. 8, 1475, 20.

67 For the one hundred thousand figure, see, “Address to the General Assembly,” encl. in R. H. Wynyard to the Duke of Newcastle, 30 May 1854, BPPNZ, v. 10, 2719, 33. For the revised figure, see R. H. Wynyard to Lord John Russell, 10 Aug. 1855, BPPNZ, vol. 10, 2719, 136.

68 R. H. Wynyard to T. Gore Browne, 12 Sept. 1855, encl. in T. Gore Browne to Lord John Russell, 20 Sept. 1855, BPPNZ, vol. 10, 2719, 155.

69 Dieffenbach, E., Travels in New Zealand (London: John Murray, 1843), vol. 2, 1415Google Scholar.

70 Taylor, Richard, Te Ika a Maui or New Zealand and Its Inhabitants (London: Wertheim and Macintosh, 1855), 257Google Scholar.

71 Ibid., 256–57.

72 T. Gore Browne to William Molesworth, 14 Feb. 1856, BPPNZ, vol. 10, 2719, 187.

73 Minutes of Evidence of the Waikato Committee, in “Appendices to the Journal of the House of Representatives, 1860,” F-3, 133–39: “Minute by Mr. Fenton in Reference to Native Affairs,” 13 Oct. 1856, 135.

74 Ibid., 138.

75 For Fenton, the formation of a Maori roll for the election of native magistrates would be the occasion of “a complete census of the Maori male population”; ibid., 139.

76 Fenton, F. D., Observations on the State of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of New Zealand (Auckland: printed by W. C. Wilson for the New Zealand Government, 1859), 42Google Scholar. Mark Hickford has richly described Fenton's contribution to an imperial jurisprudence of native title, in Lords of the Land: Indigenous Property Rights and the Jurisprudence of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 286–90, 293–96Google Scholar.

77 Fenton, Observations on the State, 3.

78 Quoted by Howe, K. R., “John Morgan 1806/7?–1865,” in The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol. 1 (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, Allen and Unwin, 1990), 299Google Scholar.

79 Howe, K. R., “The Maori Response to Christianity in the Thames-Waikato Area, 1833–40,” New Zealand Journal of History 7, 1 (Apr. 1973): 2846, here 44Google Scholar.

80 Ibid., 44.

81 Ibid., 45.

82 Table II in Fenton's Observations on the State summarizes his data (p. 20).

83 Ibid., 23.

84 Ibid., 38.

85 Ibid., 34.

86 Ibid., 38.

87 Ibid., 39.

88 Ibid., 39. Salesa, Racial Crossings, 114–18, presents the Otawhao School as Morgan's demonstration that half-caste children, in particular, would flourish if properly managed. Fenton did not highlight the racial composition of the Otawhoa School in his 1859 report.

89 Ibid., 40.

90 Ibid.

91 Thomson, Arthur S., The Story of New Zealand: Past and Present, Savage and Civilized, vols. 1 and 2 (London: J. Murray, 1859)Google Scholar. Thomson's table XXII, “Showing the Number of Aboriginal Native Population of the Colony of New Zealand in 1858,” gives as its sources Fenton's Observations on the State, and “Blue Book 1859.” His bibliography includes no “Blue Book 1859”; and he may have meant Statistics for New Zealand for 1857 (Auckland: Wilson by Dr. Bennett, Registrar-General). Table XXIII, “Showing the State of the Population of Certain Tribes in the Waikato District in the Years 1844 and 1858,” was, he says, “extracted from a census made by F. D. Fenton, Esq., Resident Magistrate.” See vol. 2, p. 336, for both tables.

92 Ibid., 285.

93 Ibid., 290.

94 Ibid.

95 McDonald, L., Florence Nightingale on Public Health Care, Collected Works of Florence Nightingale, vol. 6 (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2004), 163Google Scholar. See also Seaman, Keith, “Florence Nightingale and the Australian Aborigines,” Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia 20 (1992): 9096Google Scholar, here 90.

96 Nightingale to George Grey 16 Apr. 1860, Auckland Public Library (Grey Collection) Manuscripts, ADD MSS 45795, ff. 241.

97 Thomson, Story of New Zealand, vol. 2, 251.

98 Nightingale to Grey, 26 Apr. 1860, Auckland Public Library (Grey Collection) Manuscripts ADD MSS 45795, ff. 242.

99 “Note:—On the New Zealand Depopulation Question” (attributed to Florence Nightingale), Auckland Public Library (Grey Collection) Manuscripts, ADD MSS 45795, ff. 244, original emphasis.

100 Ibid.

101 Ibid., original emphasis.

102 Ibid., original emphasis.

103 N. Green and L. Tilbrook, eds., Aborigines of New Norcia 1845–1914, in Erickson, Rica, ed., Dictionary of Western Australians (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1989), 194–95Google Scholar.

104 “Report of Wilkinshaw Cowan, Guardian of Aborigines, York District, 22nd April 1857,” CSR Acc. 36, vol. 373/34, SROWA. The 1858 census was the only census by New Norcia that enumerated Aborigines across such an expansive territory. Salvado's subsequent returns included Mission Aborigines only, with occasional estimates of “wild” or “wandering bush natives.”

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.

110 Nightingale, Florence, “Sanitary Statistics of Native Colonial Schools and Hospitals,” Transactions of the National Association for Promotion of Social Sciences (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1864)Google Scholar, 475 (BL, PR4272); also published by George E Eyre and William Spottiswoode in London in 1863.

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.

114 F. Nightingale, “Note on the Aboriginal Races of Australia,” read at the meeting of the National Association for Promotion of Social Sciences, York England, in 1864; and published by Emily Faithfull, printer and publisher ordinary to Her Majesty (London: Victoria Press, 1864), 3.

115 Salvado to Colonial Secretary, 19 Feb. 1864, “Information Respecting the Habits and Customs of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Western Australia Compiled from Various Sources,” Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Council (Western Australia), 1871, no. 2.

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.

118 Ibid.

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.

120 Hasluck, P., Black Australians: A Survey of Native Policy in Western Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1942), 65, 121Google Scholar.

121 Ibid., 99.

122 Lester, Imperial Networks, 117.

123 For Indigenous peoples' subsequent use of the colonists' statistics, see Wanhalla, A., “‘The Politics of “Periodical Counting’: Race, Place and Identity in Southern New Zealand,” in Mar, T. B. and Edmonds, P., eds., Making Settler Colonial Space (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 198217CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rowse, T., “Official Statistics and the Contemporary Politics of Indigeneity,” Australian Journal of Political Science 44, 2 (June 2009): 193211CrossRefGoogle Scholar.