The Statistical Table as Colonial Knowledge

The statistical table is one expression of the settler colonial capacity and willingness to enumerate colonized peoples as populations. By examining four tables - from 1763, 1828, 1848, and 1850 - in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia this paper illustrates the emergence of this powerful technique of representation during the same a period in which European states were developing their capacity to represent the social in statistical terms. In the colonial context, the rise of the notion of a population whose characteristics could be averaged contributed to the specifically administrative eclipse of native sovereignty, paralleling the jural/political demise of native sovereignty.