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The Missing Migrants: African Seeds in the Demographer's Field*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Bruce S. Fetter
Bruce S. Fetter*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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Extract

The three principal components of demography--fertility, mortality, and migration--can each provide information for reconstructing elements of the African past. Birth rate, more than anything else, determines the reproduction of the labor force, a particular concern of many historians. Death rate is an existential measure of the quality of life; any assessment of the long-run effects of colonial rule must take into account any discernable changes in mortality patterns that may have occurred. Finally, the study of migration is essential for understanding the redistribution of people and resources which resulted from the slave trade and colonization.

Although all three indicators are essential for a complete understanding of the history of a given population, they occur with substantially different rhythms. Mortality is a one-time happening for us all. Fertility depends on both partners in a sexual union, although most clearly circumscribed by menarchy and menopause in females. Migration, particularly in Africa, has affected males more frequently than females and can be, moreover, an abrupt and irregular phenomenon. Following the three activities simultaneously is thus an extremely complex undertaking.

For the developed world demographers have examined whole countries for periods as far removed as the eighteenth century and individual villages for demographic phenomena reaching back to the Middle Ages. Unfortunately for students of Africa, the materials available to us are not nearly so rich. Most colonial regimes did not conduct censuses in the current sense of the word. At most, they conducted surveys or village-by-village ‘nose counts’ which, naturally, vary enormously in their reliability.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 11 , 1984 , pp. 99 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1984

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Footnotes

*

My thanks to the following people for their comments on an earlier draft of this essay: David Gardinier, Rita Headrick, David Patterson, Jan Vansina and Grace Limbach, typist.

References

Notes

1. Romaniuk, Anatole, “The Demography of the Democratic Republic of the Congo” in Brass, William and Coale, Ansley, eds., The Demography of Tropical Africa (Princeton, 1968), 261.Google Scholar

2. Coale, /Demeny, , Regional Model Life Tables (13)–(14).Google Scholar

3. Coale, and Lorimer, , “Survey of Estimates of Fertility and Mortality” in Brass, /Coale, , Demography, 151–67.Google Scholar

4. This separates African censuses from the rest of the Third World. See, for example, the sex ratios reported by Divale, William T. and Harris, Marvin, “Population, Warfare, and the Male Supremacist Complex,” American Anthropologist, 78 (1976), 521–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. table VII. My thanks to Professor John F. McGovern for acquainting me with Harris' work.

5. van de Walle, Etienne, “Note on the Effect of Age Misreporting” in Brass, /Coale, , Demography, 143–50Google Scholar; Joel Gregory, “Emigrant Labour from Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia, 1900–1945,” draft of a paper presented to the 1982 meeting of the Canadian Association of African Studies.

6. Nyasaland Protectorate. Superintendent of the Census. Report on the Census of 1926, (Zomba, 1926)Google Scholar, Table M.

7. Romaniuk, , “Demography,” 241–341.Google Scholar

8. Murray, , Census of 1926, xxii–xxiii, xxv, xxvii, xli.Google ScholarCoale, /Demeny, , Regional Model Life Table's, (35)–(37).Google Scholar

9. Kuczynski, R.R., Demographic Survey of the British Colonial Empire II (London, 1949), 535, 586, 591.Google ScholarMurray, , Census of 1926, xxvii.Google Scholar

10. Agnew, Swanzie, “Factors Affecting the Demographic Situation in Malawi in Precolonial and Colonial Times,” African Historical Demography I (Edinburgh, 1977), 373–400.Google Scholar

11. In an earlier paper, “The Long Arm of the Census Taker: Nysaland Censuses and the Contours of Colonial Rule,” I concluded that children were undercounted because their proportion in the population was inconsistent with high rates of natural increase. This assumption is unwarranted if the supposed rate of natural increase is reduced.

12. My thanks to Joel Gregory and Dennis Cordell for directing me to the two works described below.

13. Condé, , Mortality, 3:xiii, xiv.Google Scholar

14. Smith, Peter C., “Demographic History: an Approach to the Study of the Filipino Past” in Larkin, John A., ed., Perspectives on Philippine Historiography: A Symposium, [Monograph Series No.21, Yale University Southeast Asia Studies] (New Haven, 1979), 27–46.Google Scholar For a rare African example see Thornton, John, “An Eighteenth Century Baptismal Register and the Demographic History of Manguenzo,” African Historical Demography I, 405–415.Google Scholar

15. Wellinder, Stig, Prehistoric Demography [Acta Archeologica Lundensis, serie in 8° minore, no. 8] (Lund, 1979), 107–13.Google Scholar See also Hassan, Fekri A., “Demographic Archeology” in Schiffer, Michael B., ed., Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory I (New York, 1978), 49–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. Kenneth M. Weiss, “Demographic Disturbances and the Use of Life Tables in Anthropology” in Swedlund, Alan C., ed., “Population Studies in Archaeology and Biological Anthropology: A Symposium,“ American Antiquity, 40 (1975), 46–56Google Scholar [ = Memoir No. 30, Society for American Archaeology].

17. I have examined the relationship between migration and fertility in a paper, “Labor Migration and Infertility in Central Africa: A Regional Approach,” presented to the 1983 Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association.