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  • A Population History of North America
  • David Henige
A Population History of North America. Edited by Michael R. Haines and Richard H. Steckel (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2000) 736 pp. $75.00

This work follows the standard "Cambridge history" format: few (thirteen) but long (only one under forty pages) chapters. Of these, three concern Mexico, three Canada, one the Caribbean; the rest treat the present United States. There are full-perhaps too full-accoutrements: more than 140 figures, 9 maps, and a (very) technical appendix.

A sustained effort to encapsulate the population history of North America is long overdue, and the disparateness of the present work helps to show why. Each of the authors is appropriately interested mostly in population change, whether it be increase, decrease, patterns of fertility or mortality, or constitution. However, the available evidence varies so much that each author must find a way to treat his or her subject in ways that sometimes exceed the limits imposed by the evidence. In this regard, the most interesting chapter is Hubert Charbonneau et al.'s treatment of the St. Lawrence valley under French rule (99-142). The data are more replete and more homogenous for this area than for any other [End Page 485] in North America before the mid-nineteenth century, largely because of Roman Catholic record keeping for baptism, marriage, and death. The chapter makes clear the implications of the enormous amount of material that has been lost, or never existed, for other areas under study.

This is not to say that other chapters do not make plausible cases-those by Robert McCaa on colonial Mexico and LorenaWalsh on colonial U.S. African-Americans come first to mind-but they lack the detail necessary for interpretive fine-tuning or certitude. None of the chapters attempts to concoct extraordinarily high aboriginal population numbers, although appropriate and ample attention is paid to depopulation and its causes-as well as to the ensuing demographic regeneration. The essays dealing with times and places in which the data are more detailed are paradoxically more difficult to confront. The data are arrayed in a surfeit of formats and technical operations, no doubt the result of heroic compression.

This brings up the matter of intended audience. Historians will find the earlier chapters more provocative, if less certainly informational, whereas only those well-trained in demographic methods will be at ease in many of these later chapters. In a sense, the compression is both too much and too little.

Numerous interesting, and often surprising, points crop up along the way-for instance, that, at least in the first year, emigration to Virginia was nearly as unsafe as service in West Africa. It is also intriguing how disparately various authors date nadir, particularly for American Indians, emphasizing that definitions matter even in data-dependent fields like historical demography. We are also reminded, more than once, of the variant effects of differing demographic regimes, most notably in population growth-or lack of it-among African-Africans and others.

In technical matters, the index is substantial and nuanced, but the maps are small for their purpose. The bibliographies at the end of each chapter are useful, but often too brief, though it is sometimes interesting to note differences of opinion when an item occurs in more than one chapter. As is so often the case in collaborative works, the essays and their bibliographies have been allowed to vegetate, awaiting either laggard contributors or publishing exigencies, and it shows in more than the fact that there are no citations to material published since 1996. [End Page 486]

David Henige
University of Wisconsin, Madison
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