A demographic history of colonial populations

International Seminar on “A demographic history of colonial populations: Pioneers, settlers and mixed populations (16th-20th centuries)”
25-26 November 2013
Lyon, France
Organized by the IUSSP Scientific Panel on Historical Demography and the Centre Jacques Cartier

Continental populations, and more specifically the African and American populations as we know them today, are the result of complex historical processes. Thus, from the 16th Century, European powers established colonial empires in the African and American continents. Settlement histories have been quite diverse and generated new populations formed through immigration and sometimes mixed unions.

The establishment of those new populations did not only depend on the size of the native populations at the time of European contact, but also on the interactions between the aboriginal groups and the newcomers. Three kinds of processes can be identified. First, in some cases, indigenous populations that were demographically numerous lived close but strictly separated from European settlers. Despite prohibitions of marriages and sexual relations between members of different “races” children of mixed ancestry were born from these contacts, as was the case for example in Algeria and South Africa. In a second case, unions between natives and settlers or their descendants were frequent and led to the creation of new populations with mixed ancestry. It was for example the case in Brazil, Mexico, and to some extent in Angola. In many countries, such as Brazil, slaves coming from Africa and their descendants also contributed to the formation of multiracial / mixed societies.

Third, some original populations were decimated and replaced by populations of pioneers, as in most of North America. One interesting case is when the European immigrants, from various origins, mixed together (for example in New-Orleans, Canada, but also Algeria). Moreover, extra-European migrants made sometimes even more complex the relations between different populations. We can cite the presence of Indians in South Africa or in La Réunion, as well as Japanese in Peru, and Syrians and Lebanese in Brazil.