Counting colonial populations in the Portuguese Empire, 1776-1875: Preliminary results for Brazil, Mozambique and Portuguese India, c. 1800

In this paper we present preliminary results on the study of population structures in the former Portuguese colonies of Brazil, Mozambique and Portuguese India circa 1800. Here, we look at socio-occupational, religious, and ethnic composition, working population, and age groups in the different territories. Our final aim is to compare results and highlight main differences between these colonial spaces.
This study is integrated in the project Counting Colonial Populations: Demography and the use of statistics in the Portuguese Empire, 1776-1875. This project aims to identify and reconstruct the principal indicators of the demographic colonial populations; to distinguish and explain the existing demographic regimes; to rebuild the bureaucratic network used in the production and collection of statistical information; to identify the evolution of population categories; and to assess how these statistics responded to the needs of the colonial administration at military, fiscal and territorial occupation levels. To achieve these goals the team is collecting, processing, and analyzing population maps ordered by the Portuguese Crown, and generating reliable indicators and demographic series for each territory: Brazil, Madeira, Azores, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé, Angola, Mozambique, Portuguese India, Macao and Timor.