The Demographics of Empire: The Colonial Order and the Creation of Knowledge

2. “Where Nature Dominates Man”: Demographic Ideas and Policy in British Colonial Africa, 1890–1970

59 2 “Where Nature Dominates Man” Demographic Ideas and Policy in British Colonial Africa, 1890–1970 karl ittmann In 1925, Leo Amery, the British colonial secretary, declared at the Imperial Social Hygiene Conference, The problem of development in Africa is in the main, a human problem: it has got to be carried through by the people of the country themselves.At the present moment the people of Africa are neither in numbers nor in physique or intelligence capable of coping with the great task that lies before them in the development of Africa. The duty of statesmanship lies in the physical, moral and intellectual development of those people, and the physical side is the foundation of it.We have got to cope—and we are realizing increasingly that the very foundation of successful administration in Africa lies in that— with the health problems of that great continent.1 Amery expressed the prevailing view ofAfrican population among British officials during the interwar era, which focused on the problem of underpopulation.Yet within thirty years, officials began to warn about the dangers of overpopulation in Africa.This rapid shift occurred despite the fact that officials lacked accurate demographic information about the continent.2 Rather, it reflected changed perceptions , as members of the British government discarded earlier ideas about African population. This essay explores this transition and places British ideas 60 karl ittmann about African population within a larger demographic discourse of empire. It also links this discourse to the actions of officials and private individuals in Africa and the metropolis from the end of the nineteenth century to the demise of British colonial rule in the 1960s.3 Despite changing British ideas about African population ,three characteristics of this discourse remained stable.First,the British linked African demographic trends to a set of racial and cultural traits. Second, they saw African societies as unable to control nature,whether in the form of reproduction or production.And third,they argued that sinceAfricans could not control nature,they needed British and European intervention in order to become“modern.”This essay does not directly evaluate claims about African population growth in the colonial era. Literature on modern African population examines a number of critical issues, among them: variations in African demographic regimes, rates of growth before and after the colonial encounter, levels of fertility and mortality, and the causes of growth since the 1920s.4 This research bears directly on many of the assertions made by British commentators, but determining the truth of those assertions is not my main concern.Instead,this essay focuses on the ways in which popular and academic understandings created their own reality and influenced colonial policy. I begin with a discussion of British population discourse from the late nineteenth century untilWorldWar I, which portrayed Africans as backward and demographically stagnant. I then turn to the interwar years and the interaction between demographic ideas and British policy in Africa, particularly in the areas of labor and health, during the era of the dual mandate, as the British sought to foster the growth of African populations.The next phase began in the late 1930s, as the British government, under the twin pressures of political unrest and war, became more active in social and economic affairs and created a more interventionist colonial state in order to preserve the empire. In the postwar era, British officials and demographers expressed concern about population growth in Africa and its potential impact upon this new colonial agenda, which led to efforts to improve population data through the expansion of census and statistical departments.They also addressed the perceived impact of population growth through resettlement, agricultural programs, and the encouragement of private family planning services in parts of British Africa. Finally, I examine how British ideas and institutions influenced the postcolonial era, particularly the development of aid and population programs that sprang up in the 1960s and 1970s. British Population Thought in the Age of Empire British views of African population constituted part of a larger British discourse of imperial population in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Two men, Charles Darwin and Thomas Malthus, shaped this discourse. Although Malthusian ideas have been dominant since the 1950s, this dominance is a relatively recent phenomenon . Before the emergence of Malthusian orthodoxy in the first half of the nineteenth century,British students of population,like their counterparts elsewhere 61 Demographic Ideas and Policy in British Colonial Africa in Europe...