Abstract

DE MAFOS, Pablo Teodoro  and  SILVEIRA E SOUSA, Pablo. Statistics and Census Taking in Portuguese America, 1750-1820. memorias [online]. 2015, n.25, pp.74-103. ISSN 1794-8886.  https://doi.org/10.14482/memor.25.L6915.

From the 1720s the Portuguese overseas bureaucracy started to order the collection of organized, quantified information on population. These processes gained particular dimension in Brazil during the second half of the 18th century, but were decreed to all territories of the empire (in Africa, Indian Ocean and the East). An extensive corpus of documents was thus produced, consisting on hundreds of statistical charts, decrees and political instructions. The Portuguese bureaucratic elites, influenced by the political arithmetic and physiocratic thought, understood population as a State resource that should be calculated, managed and placed according to governance conveniences. This article aims to describe and analyze the types of orders and statistical charts produced for the Portuguese America, as well as its evolution and growing complexity. Following pioneering authors as Dauril Alden e Maria Luiza Marcílio we defend its enormous potential in the estimations of demographic statistics for the colonial period.

Keywords : Portuguese empire; demography; statistics; early modern period; período colonial.

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