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A Cultural History of the British Census“Sprung from Ourselves”: Counting Race at Home and in the Colonies

A Cultural History of the British Census: “Sprung from Ourselves”: Counting Race at Home and in... [The census, I have argued, played a major role in allowing British people to visualize their nation in new ways. The precise borders of the nation, however, were fluid and shifting, and as global communication and migration increased over the course of the nineteenth century, new ways of understanding those borders emerged. Britain’s large, diverse, and scattered Empire was also counted by census takers, and the census data helped British people to visualize their Empire, like their nation, as a vast and shifting aggregate in which different kinds of people moved and interacted with one another. In this chapter, I will discuss the administration of the census in Ireland and the colonies as well as British understandings of racial demographics during the nineteenth century. By examining British interpretations of colonial statistics we can gain insight into the tensions within British national and imperial identity, particularly as they related to racial proportions in both metropole and colonies.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Cultural History of the British Census“Sprung from Ourselves”: Counting Race at Home and in the Colonies

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan US
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2011
ISBN
978-1-349-29824-2
Pages
147 –178
DOI
10.1057/9780230337602_7
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[The census, I have argued, played a major role in allowing British people to visualize their nation in new ways. The precise borders of the nation, however, were fluid and shifting, and as global communication and migration increased over the course of the nineteenth century, new ways of understanding those borders emerged. Britain’s large, diverse, and scattered Empire was also counted by census takers, and the census data helped British people to visualize their Empire, like their nation, as a vast and shifting aggregate in which different kinds of people moved and interacted with one another. In this chapter, I will discuss the administration of the census in Ireland and the colonies as well as British understandings of racial demographics during the nineteenth century. By examining British interpretations of colonial statistics we can gain insight into the tensions within British national and imperial identity, particularly as they related to racial proportions in both metropole and colonies.]

Published: Nov 15, 2015

Keywords: Cultural History; British Government; Census Report; British People; Irish Immigration

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