Comparing Colonial Censuses: British, United States, and Italian Censuses in India, Puerto Rico, and East Africa.

Rebecca Jean Emigh, UCLA
Patricia Ahmed, South Dakota State University
Dylan Riley, University of California at Berkeley

This paper examines imperialist census taking comparatively, by considering the colonial censuses taken (or not taken, as the case may be) in East Africa, Puerto Rico, and India. While the imperial powers of the United States, Britain, and Italy all had similar initial plans and the technical knowledge to redact censuses in their colonies. Nevertheless, they could not always do so. The British and Americans were relatively successful in redacting censuses in India and Puerto Rico, but the British and Italians were mostly unsuccessful in doing so in East Africa (in Eritrea and Somaliland). We argue that states’ capitalizing on widespread indigenous social knowledge and previous mercantilist censuses made imperialist censuses possible, not state strength or the state actors’ intentions.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 148. Making States and Statistics