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2016 ; 34
(ä): 63-108
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Counting Souls: Towards an historical demography of Africa
#MMPMID27313490
Walters S
Demogr Res
2016[Jan]; 34
(ä): 63-108
PMID27313490
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BACKGROUND: Little is known about even the relatively recent demographic history
of Africa, because of the lack of data. Elsewhere, historical demographic trends
have been reconstructed by applying family reconstitution to church records. Such
data also exist throughout Africa from the late 19th century. For the Counting
Souls Project, nearly one million records from the oldest Catholic parishes in
East and Central Africa have been digitised. These data are currently being
processed into a relational database. The aim of this paper is to describe their
potential for demographic reconstruction in the region, and to outline how their
provenance defines the analytical approach. RESULTS: Empirically, religion is
correlated with population patterns in contemporary Africa, and, historically,
reproduction and family formation were central to Christian mission in the
region. Measuring change using sources created by agents of change raises
questions of epistemology, causation, and selection bias. This paper describes
how these concerns are balanced by missionary determination to follow the
intimate lives of their parishioners, to monitor their 'souls', and to measure
their morality, fidelity, and faith. This intimate recording means that the
African parish registers, together with related sources such as missionary
diaries and letters and oral histories, describe qualitatively and quantitatively
what happens to individual agency (reproductive decision-making) when the moral
hegemony shifts (via evangelisation and colonisation), and how the two interact
in a reciprocal process of change. CONCLUSION: Reconstructing long-term
demographic trends using parish registers in Africa is therefore more than simply
generating rates and testing their reliability. It is a bigger description of how
'decision rules' are structured and re-structured, unpicking the cognitive seam
between individual and culture by exploring dynamic micro-interactions between
reproduction, honour, hope, and modernity over the long term. With such a
mixed-methods approach, parish registers offer real potential for historical
demography in Africa.
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