Race, the Canadian Census, and Interactive Political Development PDF

Studies in American Political Development, 34 (April 2020), 44–70. ISSN 0898-588X/20 doi:10.1017/S0898588X19000191 © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press...

Studies in American Political Development, 34 (April 2020), 44–70. ISSN 0898-588X/20 doi:10.1017/S0898588X19000191 © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press Race, the Canadian Census, and Interactive Political Development Debra Thompson , Department of Political Science, McGill University This article explores the erratic history of counting by race on the Canadian census. It argues that the political development of racial classifications on Canadian censuses has been shaped by the interactions among evolving global ideas about race, the programmatic beliefs of international epistemic communities of statisticians and census designers, and domestic institutions involved in the administration of the census. First, Canadian census design- ers drew from shifting global conceptions about the nature of race and racial difference, which normatively defined the legitimate ends of race policies. Second, Canadian census designers often paid heed to the programmatic beliefs of the international statistical community about the appropriateness of collecting racial data. Finally, evolving political institutions involved in the administration of the census mediated these transnational ideas, molding them to fit the Canadian national context through institutional and cultural translative processes. Theoretically, this research makes the case that focusing on interactive political development can augment the theoretical toolbox of American political development, enabling a more comprehensive picture of the emergence, dynamism, and per- sistence of the Canadian racial order. 1. INTRODUCTION of the ways that Canada counted by race? How and why did racial taxonomies in the Canadian census There is an interesting but largely unexplored geneal- change and with what consequences? ogy of racial classifications and categories on the Can- In brief, I argue that the racial questions and classi- adian census. A question on the racial origins of the fications in the Canadian census have been shaped by population occurred on some of the earliest censuses the interactions among evolving global ideas about of the pre-Confederation era and continued on race, programmatic beliefs of international epistemic nearly every census of the nineteenth and early twen- communities of statisticians and census designers, tieth centuries. In 1951, the census abandoned the and domestic institutions involved in the administra- language of race, instead featuring a question on tion of the census. The argument is threefold. First, “ethnic origins.” Then, in 1996, a newly designed Canadian census designers drew from shifting question was put alongside the question on ethnic global conceptions about the nature of race and origins in order to more accurately enumerate the racial difference—for example, whether race is nonwhite populations of Canada. Only two studies broadly understood as a biological truth or a social of race and the Canadian census describe this evolu- construction. These macro-level ideas exist trans- tion, but neither answers the question of why these nationally, beyond the borders and control of any changes occurred.1 What explains the fits and starts one nation-state. They are also rather ubiquitous, but can be made more finite if they are institutional- ized in the mandates, declarations, or processes of Email: [email protected] international organizations. These racial worldviews Acknowledgments: The author would like to thank the participants have changed over time, often because of exogenous of the American, British and Canadian Political Development work- shop, held at Oxford University in May 2016, for helpful comments events with global repercussions, such as war or the on the original draft of this article, and the editors of Studies in transnational ripple effects of developments in American Political Development and two anonymous reviewers for racial politics elsewhere. Second, Canadian census their thoughtful critiques of the many subsequent iterations. 1. John Kralt, “Ethnic Origins in the Canadian Census, 1871– 1986,” in Ethnic Demography: Canadian Immigrant, Ethnic and Cultural Variations, ed. Shiva Halli, Frank Trovato, and Leo Driedger (Mon- treal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990), 13–29; Monica Boyd, 2000), 33–54. The most thorough examination of the history of the Gustave Goldmann, and Pamela White, “Race in the Canadian Canadian census more generally is Bruce Curtis, The Politics of Popu- Census,” in Race and Racism: Canada’s Challenge, ed. Leo Driedger lation: State Formation, Statistics, and the Census of Canada, 1840–1875 and Shiva Halli (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001). 44 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X19000191 Published online by Cambridge University Press  RACE, THE CANADIAN CENSUS 45 designers often paid heed to the programmatic changing institutional practices and behaviors to beliefs of the international statistical community, make them consistent with external ideas.5 Rather, which are more systematic, coordinated, and policy- it is a process through which local actors use their specific ideas about the appropriateness and necessity institutional power and position to adapt program- of collecting racial data.2 These ideas can be influen- matic beliefs of international epistemic communities tial in domestic policymaking arenas in part because to meet and mesh local institutional practices. Given census administration is a highly technical enterprise, that the conceptual and political terrain of race polit- involving the mobilization of time, people, money, ics is full of landmines, these translational processes and importantly, expertise. Programmatic beliefs do not inevitably lead to policy change. Even with also changed over time as the concerns, knowledge, support from powerful actors, ideas constantly run and understanding of these experts evolved. Taken the risk of blockage as they traverse political arenas. together, racial worldviews inform the legitimate In empirical terms, this article traces evolving trans- ends of race policies, while programmatic beliefs national racial ideas and programmatic beliefs, and inform the appropriate means of achieving those details varying processes of institutional and cultural ends. On the whole, these transnational ideas work translation that mediated their impact on racial ques- as a global-level cultural code, providing a range of tions and classifications in Canada from the earliest acceptable policy options that actors can draw from censuses of the nineteenth century until the 1960s. when making decisions.3 The nineteenth- and early twentieth-century debates Finally, the evolving political institutions involved in among scientists and ethnologists legitimated the the administration of the census mediated these racial central tenets of biological racialism—tenets crafted worldviews and programmatic beliefs, and actors through domestic and international racial projects therein molded them to fit the Canadian national such as imperialism, colonialism, and slavery. At the context through two processes: cultural translation same time, emergent epistemic communities of statis- and institutional translation. Cultural translation is ticians and census administrators advanced the idea the process through which actors attempt to create that moral statistics could be used to solve pressing congruence between transnational and domestic social issues and agreed that counting by race norms. The characteristics of a norm may help or served compelling state interests. In the territory hinder this process. If a transnational racial idea reso- that would eventually become Canada, weak colonial nates with domestic norms already in place, then this institutions and competitive cultural animosity strong “cultural match” can make the diffusion of the between Anglophones and Francophones made racial idea more rapid.4 But the process of creating census-taking efforts difficult, though demarcating cultural congruence is an interpretive exercise— black and indigenous populations was an important actors can make norms appear to be congruent by dis- colonial imperative. Confederation in 1867 catalyzed cursively aligning transnational racial ideas and a number of institutional developments and gave “national cultural repertoires.” These help citizens census designers more discretion over the translation and policymakers conceptualize race as a political cat- of racial worldviews and programmatic beliefs. The egory and conceive of rational, temporally situated architect of Canadian statistics was able to tweak the solutions to problems of racial hierarchy, conflict, classification rules for the origins question in order and inequality. Institutional translation is the process to institutionalize peculiar interpretations of Canad- through which actors localize programmatic beliefs ian national identity as bicultural, while upholding by incorporating them into domestic institutional the hierarchical ordering of what was presumed to orders. Localization is not simply a matter of be biologically distinct races. As political elites and high-level bureaucrats consolidated and centralized the statistical system in the early twentieth century 2. These ideas are often discussed within and transmitted in accordance with international trends, the influ- through international organizations, epistemic communities, and ence of racial worldviews and programmatic beliefs networks of state actors On the distinctions between “levels” of became even more pronounced. The census was for- ideas, see Sheri Berman, The Social Democratic Movement: Ideas and Politics in the Making of Interwar Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard tified as a racial project, in which eugenicist language University Press, 1998); Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, and logic shaped racial classification rules, and count- “Taking Stock: The Constructivist Research Program in Inter- ing by race in the census was used to solidify and national Relations and Comparative Politics,” Annual Review of Polit- protect the boundaries of whiteness. ical Science 4 (2001): 391–416; Jal Mehta, “The Varied Role of Ideas A major shift in racial worldviews occurred in the in Politics: From ‘Whether’ to ‘How,’” in Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research, ed. Daniel Béland and Robert Henry Cox aftermath of the Second World War, spurred by a (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 23–46. tidal wave of exogenous global events, such as the 3. Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos, Becoming Multicultural: Immi- gration and the Politics of Membership in Canada and Germany (Vancou- ver: University of British Columbia Press, 2012). 4. Jeffrey Checkel, “Norms, Institutions, and National Identity 5. Amitav Acharya, “How Ideas Spread: Whose Norms Matter? in Contemporary Europe,” International Studies Quarterly 43, no. 1 Norm Localization and Institutional Change in Asian Regional- (1999): 84–114. ism,” International Organization 58, no. 2 (2004), 251. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X19000191 Published online by Cambridge University Press  46 DEBRA THOMPSON Holocaust, decolonization, the burgeoning norm of or policy emulation and instead excluding certain ele- human rights, and the foreign policy debates of the ments of transnational ideas that could harm the Cold War. In this transnational moment, the norma- existing social or political order of the time and tive context surrounding the previously dominant adapting other aspects that they believed to be more conceptualization of race as irrefutably biological effective in the Canadian context.7 The impact of and the hierarchical organization of superior and transnational racial ideas, therefore, is always filtered inferior races fundamentally changed. Perceptions by domestic-level processes of cultural and institu- of democratic legitimacy in the Anglophone West tional translation, which can modify, mediate, or now depended in part on an adherence—at least, offi- obstruct their influence. cially—to the principles of racial equality. The invali- In theoretical terms, this exploration of interactive dation of biological racialism raised important political development in the context of the Canadian pragmatic questions in the newly formed Inter- census raises an important question about generaliz- national Statistical Commission of the United ability of American political development (APD) Nations (UN): If race was no longer considered legit- scholarship: just how American is APD? On one imate, were census questions that differentiated hand, both APD and the subset of the field that inter- among racial groups appropriate? Programmatic rogates race and APD are decidedly, distinctively, beliefs of transnational networks of statisticians and American. Early works in the field sought to chal- census designers shifted from unequivocal support lenge “stateless” accounts of American politics and of efforts to count by race in national censuses to rec- government by placing the development, capacities, ommending that such questions be excluded. These and peculiarities of American institutional arrange- discussions were influential in Canada because of ments at the center of analyses.8 In The Search for the centralized and relatively autonomous structure American Political Development, Orren and Skowronek of the statistical system. At the same time, key policy write that to examine APD is “tantamount to interro- actors, most notably the dominion statistician, once gating the national premise” and the “master narra- again modified transnational ideas to suit dominant tive of American politics” of America’s unique racial frames in Canada, which significantly over- origins and its people’s manifest destiny.9 Peculiar lapped with nation-building projects such as colonial- features and arrangements of American politics, ism, the management of the French/English such as federalism and localism, the separation of cleavage, and the elusive search for a Canadian powers, the party system, and the distinct process of national identity. state formation, are often used to explain the persist- It was therefore the interaction of transnational and ence of racial inequality in the United States.10 APD domestic factors that drove the political development scholarship on race often employs developmental of racial taxonomies in the Canadian census. Trans- narratives that focus on four uniquely American crit- national ideas alone cannot explain these changes. ical junctures: the founding era, the Civil War and It is never a foregone conclusion that racial world- Reconstruction, the New Deal, and the civil rights views will be adopted in domestic contexts, and movement.11 There is also a tendency to give even if they are, domestic-level outputs are rarely emu- primacy to the black-white binary that emerged lated blindly and completely. Domestic contexts still from slavery and its aftermath, thereby ignoring the matter; those “deeply rooted cultural beliefs that racial formations that defined the legal status of inform the goals and desires that people bring to Native Americans, Asian immigrants, former the political world and, hence, the ways they define and express their interests; the meanings, interpreta- tions, and judgments they attach to events and condi- 7. Acharya, “How Ideas Spread,” 245. See also Frank Dobbin, Beth Simmons, and Geoffrey Garrett, “The Global Diffusion of tions; and their expectations about cause-and-effect Public Policies: Social Construction, Coercion, Competition, or relationships in the political world,”6 which are Learning?” Annual Review of Sociology 33 (2007): 449–72. often informed by immediate political and social 8. Desmond King and Robert Lieberman, “Finding the Ameri- environments. Similarly, though domestic-level can State: Transcending the ‘Statelessness’ Account,” Polity 40, no. 3 (2008): 368–78; see also Stephen Skowronek, Building a New Ameri- explanations are important, archival research reveals can State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877– that Canadian census designers believed the domin- 1920 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982) and ant racial worldviews of the day and worried about Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., the reputation of Canada’s statistical system among Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University its peers. They actively sought to learn from the expe- Press, 1985). 9. Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek, The Search for Ameri- riences and experiments of policymakers in other can Political Development (New York: Cambridge University Press, countries, rationally rejecting wholesale ideational 2004), 33. 10. Lieberman, “Ideas and Institutions in Race Politics,” 212. 11. Kimberley S. Johnson, “The Color Line and the State: Race 6. Robert C. Lieberman, “Ideas and Institutions in Race Polit- and American Political Development,” in The Oxford Handbook of ics,” in Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research, ed. Daniel Béland American Political Development, ed. Richard Valelly, Suzanne and Robert Henry Cox (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), Mettler, and Robert Lieberman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 214. 2016). https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X19000191 Published online by Cambridge University Press  RACE, THE CANADIAN CENSUS 47 Mexican citizens, and those who inhabit the border- basis of APD research are animated by an implicitly lands within racial classification systems.12 Though comparative assumption about the exceptionalism this body of work is influential in its ability to see of American policy architectures, especially in race as more than an irrational, outdated system of studies of the welfare state and explorations of specific individual beliefs, instead conceptualizing racial cat- policy areas such as health care. He writes that “many, egories as “social constructions with historically if not most, works in the APD tradition come down to embedded accretions of power relations,”13 these arguments about specific national configurations of racial formations are often conceptualized as wholly political institutions, ideas, or culture—that generally American in origin, implementation, and conse- leave unspoken the counterfactual speculation that quence. This is likely a ramification of the disciplinary were the prevailing institutions (or ideas or cultural location of both APD and race and ethnic politics formations) different, the outcomes would have scholarship within the subfield of American political been different as well.”19 A series of workshops in science. 2015 and 2016 held at the University of Toronto On the other hand, there is nothing particularly and Oxford University were premised on the idea American about defining political development as that putting studies of American, British, and Canad- durable shifts in governing authority or examining ian (conveniently, ABC) political development side by the ways that the entrenchment of institutional side, or using comparative-historical analysis to arrangements at specific historical moments foreclose examine these cases in tandem, could yield important otherwise viable alternatives.14 Nor does specifically and revealing insights, even to national literatures American-focused scholarship have a monopoly on with long-established orthodoxies.20 paying attention to how those acting within state insti- The mounting calls for comparative work suggest tutions and in the name of the state make, enforce, that the theoretical toolbox of APD can readily be and interpret public policy.15 As Richard Bensel adapted and applied to circumstances outside the writes, if we think of the term “American” in APD as United States. Such efforts include the use of a modifier rather than a dictum, “the term specifies wide-angle lenses to allow for macro and longitudinal the spatial and temporal boundedness of American analyses of politics; asking the big questions of why, political development without ascribing unique prin- but especially how, and what happened?; examining ciples to that experience…. the modifier American the applicability of theories of institutional stability, could be replaced by any other national adjective or such as intercurrence and path dependency, and dispensed with altogether.”16 In an excellent review incremental change, such as layering, drift, and con- of the intellectual origins and affinities of compara- version; and taking history, institutions, and especially tive politics and APD, Kimberly Morgan suggests the role of (racial) ideas seriously.21 The few com- that there is much to be learned from a comparative parative studies of race politics that have incorporated approach to political development.17 For example, the United States as a case study have made important King and Lieberman suggest that a comparative- and original contributions to our understandings of historical analysis of the emergence, persistence, historical and contemporary racial formations, espe- and adaptation of American democracy provides a cially in combatting the seductive but parochial valuable set of puzzles that have much to add to our logic of American racial exceptionalism.22 A com- understandings of the causes and processes behind parative political development perspective on the democratization.18 In addition, Robert Lieberman notes that many of the key questions that form the 19. Robert C. Lieberman, “The ABCs of Political Development: Notes toward an ABCD Manifesto” (unpublished manuscript for 12. Ibid. ABCD Workshop, University of Toronto, October 2016). 13. Julie Novkov, “Rethinking Race in American Politics,” Polit- 20. The ABC political development workshops were organized ical Research Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2008), 650. along thematic lines: parties and legislatures (October 2015, Uni- 14. Orren and Skowronek, The Search for American Political versity of Toronto), democratization and citizenship (May 2016, Development. University of Oxford), and public policy (September 2016, Univer- 15. Joseph Lowndes, Julie Novkov, and Dorian Warren, eds., sity of Toronto). Race and American Political Development (New York: Routledge, 2008). 21. Adam Sheingate, “Institutional Dynamics and American 16. Richard Bensel, “The Tension Between American Political Political Development,” Annual Review of Political Science 17 Development as a Research Community and as a Disciplinary Sub- (2014): 461–77; Suzanne Mettler and Richard Valelly, “The Distinct- field,” Studies in American Political Development 17 (2003): 104–105, iveness and Necessity of American Political Development,” in The emphasis in original. Oxford Handbook of American Political Development, ed. Richard 17. Kimberly J. Morgan, “Comparative Politics and American Valelly, Suzanne Mettler, and Robert C. Lieberman (Oxford: Political Development,” in The Oxford Handbook of American Political Oxford University Press, 2016). Development, ed. Richard Valelly, Suzanne Mettler, and Robert Lie- 22. Anthony Marx, Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of berman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). South Africa, the United States, and Brazil (Cambridge, UK: Cam- 18. Desmond King and Robert C. Lieberman, “American Pol- bridge University Press, 1998); Robert C. Lieberman, Shaping Race itical Development as a Process of Democratization,” in Democratiza- Policy: The United States in Comparative Perspective (Princeton, NJ: tion in America: A Comparative-Historical Analysis, ed. Desmond King, Princeton University Press, 2005); Debra Thompson, The Schematic Robert C. Lieberman, Gretchen Ritter, and Laurence Whitehead State: Race, Transnationalism, and the Politics of the Census (Cambridge, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 3–27. UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016). https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X19000191 Published online by Cambridge University Press  48 DEBRA THOMPSON racial politics of the census can also test the conclu- and are constituted by and through their movement sions generated by the literature on race and the U. between places, sites, or moments.27 S. Census. For example, in their examination of Drawing from the literatures on diaspora studies, racial taxonomies in the U.S. Census between 1880 transnational history, and constructivist international and 1930, Hochschild and Powell argue that census relations, I argue that macro-level ideas about race officials’ choices of racial categories were driven in —such as whether it is biologically determinative or part by contestation between Congress and the bur- a social construction—are transnational. Here, trans- eaucracy for political control over the census.23 Con- national is not necessarily the same as global or uni- gressional oversight over the census is a key versal. Rather, as Aiwah Ong suggests, the trans in institutional dynamic in the U.S. context; how might transnational denotes both movement across space the parliamentary system of government, the relative or boundaries and the changing nature of something centralization of the Canadian statistical system, and as it moves.28 Paul Gilroy’s formulation of the Black autonomy of the Dominion Bureau of Statistics in Atlantic notes the importance of both the roots of Canada change the nature of contestation over count- racial ideas and the routes through which encounters ing? One of the theoretical goals of this article, there- among individuals, ideas, and institutions shift, fore, is to determine what adjustments (if any) are realign, constitute, and recreate race across space required to enable APD to be equally illuminating and time.29 Transnational lenses zoom in on interac- of the causes, composition, and consequences of tions, exchanges, constructions, and translations Canada’s racial order. across borders, as well as the significance of different Moreover, comparative political development is a national experiences of the same global phenom- first and necessary step to understanding the ways in enon.30 In this way, and as many have argued, race which processes of political development may be is a distinctively modern, transnational idea that shaped by forces that are not confined by territorial emerged over several centuries as a result of the boundaries. This contention builds upon long- need to create sharp divisions between Europeans standing efforts in international relations to demon- and non-Europeans in the Atlantic slave trade, the strate that international influences such as war and spread of European colonial rule throughout Africa trade have an explicit impact on domestic struc- and Asia, and, eventually, the pseudo-scientific racial tures.24 The literature on policy diffusion in inter- ideologies of the nineteenth and twentieth centur- national relations and sociology, for example, ies.31 Conceptualizing race as transnational chal- demonstrates that the policy choices of one country lenges accounts of racial exceptionalism that tend to are often shaped by the choices of its neighbors as bind race with state sovereignty, giving primacy to decision makers attempt to learn from the policy experiments of their peers. The adoption of similar policies in different countries can also be catalyzed 27. Ibid. 28. Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transna- by the proliferation or institutionalization of norms tionality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999). in epistemic communities and international organiza- 29. Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Con- tions.25 Additionally, the “transnational turn” in sciousness (London: Verso, 1993). history is centrally concerned with how “movements, 30. Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Pro- gressive Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); flows, and circulation,” are fundamental to historical David Thelen, “The Nation and Beyond: Transnational Perspectives processes.26 While a comparative approach might on United States History,” Journal of American History 86, no. 3 reveal the ways that these processes, networks, ideas, (1999): 965–75; Nikhil Pal Singh, Black Is a Country: Race and the or institutions vary across time or space, transnational Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer- analysis is premised on the understanding that these sity Press, 2004); Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann, “Beyond Comparison: Histoire Croisée and the Challenge of forces exist beyond the borders of the nation-state Reflexivity,” History and Theory 45, no. 1 (2006): 30–50; Ian Tyrrell, Transnational Nation: United States History in Global Perspective Since 1789 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Micol Seigel, Uneven Encounters: Making Race and Nation in Brazil and the United States 23. Jennifer L. Hochschild and Brenna Marea Powell, “Racial (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009). Reorganization and the United States Census 1850–1930: Mulat- 31. Charles Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni- toes, Half-Breeds, Mixed Parentage, Hindoos, and the Mexican versity Press, 1997); George M. Fredrickson, Racism: A Short History Race,” Studies in American Political Development 22, no. 1 (2008): (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Charles Hirsch- 59–96. man, “The Origins and Demise of the Concept of Race,” Population 24. Peter Gourevitch, “The Second Image Reversed: The Inter- and Development Review 30, no. 3 (2004): 385–415; Bruce Baum, The national Sources of Domestic Politics,” International Organization 32, Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race: A Political History of Racial Identity no. 4 (1978): 881–912; Ira Katznelson and Martin Shefter, eds., (New York: New York University Press, 2006); Audrey Smedley, Race Shaped by War and Trade: International Influences on American Political in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview, 3rd ed. Development (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2007); Marilyn Lake and Henry Rey- 25. Dobbin et al., “The Global Diffusion of Public Policies.” nolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the 26. C. A. Bayly, Sven Beckert, Matthew Connelly, Isabel International Challenge of Racial Equality (Cambridge, UK: Cam- Hofmeyr, Wendy Kozol, and Patricia Seed, “AHR Conversation: bridge University Press, 2008); Barnor Hesse, “Self-Fulfilling Proph- On Transnational History,” American Historical Review 111, no. 5 ecy: The Postracial Horizon,” South Atlantic Quarterly 110, no. 1 (2006), 1444. (2011): 155–78. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X19000191 Published online by Cambridge University Press  RACE, THE CANADIAN CENSUS 49 “internal dynamics at the expense of global patterns Second, in spite of Canada’s contemporary reputa- and intertwined national-state legacies of racial dom- tion for its diversity, multiculturalism, and tolerance, ination.”32 Thus, insofar as we can conceptualize its history is marred by segregation, state-sanctioned racial ideas as existing within, through, and beyond discrimination, and patterns of racial inequality that the purview or control of any one nation-state,33 the have persisted into the twenty-first century. Slavery theoretical toolbox of APD provides a means in Canada was not as pervasive as in the United through which we might examine how domestic States or Latin America, but it existed nonetheless, racial orders are interactively constituted. lasting over two hundred years and only coming to This article focuses on major shifts in racial sche- an end when slavery was abolished by imperial matics on the Canadian census from the nineteenth decree in 1833.36 Legalized discrimination against century until the 1960s for a number of reasons. racialized minorities in the criminal justice system, First, this periodization demonstrates that the fits housing, education, employment, education, and and starts of Canada’s erratic history of counting by voting continued well into the mid-twentieth race have little relation to the demographic compos- century.37 Racially exclusive immigration laws effect- ition of the Canadian population. Table 1 provides a ively prohibited nonwhite immigration until 1967, summary of key identity groups that contributed to when a race-neutral points system came into effect.38 Canada’s evolving diversity between 1871 and 1971. Indigenous territorial dispossession was a colonial The racialized segments of the Canadian popula- imperative, and the Indian Act regime was purpose- tion were numerically quite small until the last fully designed to govern the lives of Aboriginal decades of the twentieth century, with the combined people from cradle to grave.39 These paternalistic populations of Chinese, Japanese, and black groups processes of assimilation were violent and destructive, holding steady at less than 1 percent of the Canadian involving the theft of indigenous lands, the suppres- population between 1871 and 1971, even as the total sion of indigenous cultures, and the denial of access population grew from 3.4 million in 1871 to 21.5 to the means through which Aboriginal people million a century later. The Aboriginal population could challenge the state (e.g., Indians were prohib- was also quite small, declining from 2.4 percent of ited from retaining legal counsel).40 The residential the population in 1901 to 1.5 percent in 1971. It was not until the 1980s and 1990s that significant demo- graphic changes took hold: Between 1981 and 2001, 36. Afua Cooper, The Hanging of Angélique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montreal (Toronto: Harper- the number of “visible minorities” in Canada Collins, 2006); Katherine McKittrick, Demonic Grounds: Black increased from 1.1 million, or 5 percent of the popu- Women and the Cartographies of Struggle (Minneapolis: University of lation, to 4 million people, or 13 percent.34 The most Minnesota Press, 2006), ch. 4. recent census data from 2016 reveal that 22.3 percent 37. James W. St. G. Walker, “Race,” Rights, and the Law in the of the population, around 7.7 million people, identify Supreme Court of Canada: Historical Case Studies (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997); Constance Backhouse, as a racial minority, and the proportion of visible Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada (Toronto: Univer- minorities is expected to reach one-third of the popu- sity of Toronto Press, 1999); Sunera Thobani, Exalted Subjects: lation by 2036.35 Though Canada is now among the Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada (Toronto: Univer- most racially diverse countries in the OECD (Organ- sity of Toronto Press, 2007); Frances Henry and Carol Tator, The Colour of Democracy: Racism in Canadian Society, 4th ed. (Toronto: Har- isation for Economic Co-operation and Develop- court Brace, 2010); Barrington Walker, Race on Trial: Black Defend- ment), it was during the nineteenth and first half of ants in Ontario’s Criminal Courts, 1858–1958 (Toronto: University the twentieth century that that successive Canadian of Toronto Press, 2010); Robyn Maynard, Policing Black Lives: State governments were greatly concerned about enumerat- Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present (Halifax, NS: Fernwood, ing the comparatively miniscule nonwhite population. 2017). 38. Freda Hawkins, Critical Years in Immigration: Canada and Australia Compared (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989); Valerie Knowles, Strangers at Our Gates: Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy, 1540–1990 (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1992); 32. Michael Hanchard and Erin Aeran Chung, “From Race Ninette Kelley and Michael Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic: A Relations to Comparative Racial Politics: A Survey of Cross-National History of Canadian Immigration Policy (Toronto: University of Scholarship on Race in the Social Sciences,” Du Bois Review 1, no. 2 Toronto Press, 1998); Triadafilopoulos, Becoming Multicultural. (2004): 331. 39. John Leslie and Ron Maguire, The Historical Development of 33. Manfred Berg and Simon Wendt, eds., Racism in the Modern the Indian Act (Ottawa: Department of Indian Affairs and Northern World: Historical Perspectives on Cultural Transfer and Adaptation Development, 1978); Indian Registration and Band Lists Director- (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011); Alexander Anievas, Nivi Man- ate, The Indian Act, Past and Present: A Manual on Registration and chanda, and Robbie Shilliam, eds., Race and Racism in International Entitlement Legislation (Ottawa: Indian Registration and Band Lists Relations: Confronting the Global Colour Line (London: Routledge, Directorate, 1991). 2015). 40. Taiaiake Alfred, Wasa’se: Indigenous Pathways of Action and 34. Statistics Canada, Canada Year Book 2007, Ethnic Diversity and Freedom (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2005); Joyce Green, Immigration (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 2007). ed., Making Space for Indigenous Feminism (Black Point, NS: Fern- 35. Eric Grenier, “21.9% of Canadians Are Immigrants, the wood, 2007); Leanne Simpson, Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories Highest Share in 85 Years: StatsCan,” Globe and Mail, October 27, of Nishnaabeg ReCreation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence (Winnipeg: 2017, http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/census-2016-immigration- Arbeiter Ring Press, 2011); Glen Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks: 1.4368970. Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (Minneapolis: University of https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X19000191 Published online by Cambridge University Press  50 DEBRA THOMPSON Table 1. Ethnic Origins of the Canadian Population, 1871–1971 (percent of total population)a Origin 1871 1881 1901 1911 1921 1931 1941 1951 1961 1971 French 31.1 30 30.7 28.6 27.9 28.2 30.3 30.8 30.4 28.7 English 20.3 20.4 23.5 26 30 26.4 25.8 25.9 23 44.6b Irish 24.3 22.1 18.4 14.9 12.6 11.9 11 10.3 9.6 Scottish 15.8 16.2 14.9 14.3 13.4 13 12.2 11 10.4 Other European 6.9 6.9 8.5 13.1 14.2 17.6 17.8 18.2 22.6 23 Chinese - 0.1 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.3 0.6 Japanese - - 0.1 0.1 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 Native Indian and Inuit 0.7 2.5 2.4 1.5 1.3 1.2 1.1 1.2 1.2 1.5 Negro 0.6 0.5 0.3 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.2 0.2 Notes. aStatistics Canada, Origins of the Population, Census Dates, 1871–1971 (Ottawa: Statistics Canada), Table A125-163. b Estimates for the “British” category, which includes English, Irish, Scottish, and Other. school system, which forcibly removed Indian chil- ethnic and racial hues, particularly in contrast to the dren from their homes and communities and American “melting pot,” it was in fact a “vertical placed them in church- or state-run schools where mosaic” with British-origin Canadians at the apex of they experienced physical and sexual abuse, an ethno-racial hierarchy.44 Though differences in amounted to nothing less than cultural genocide.41 income and wealth between English and French The ongoing violence faced by indigenous women, Canadians have now disappeared, and other white girls, and gender-diverse and nonbinary42 people, ethnic groups earn more on average than painstakingly detailed in the 2019 Final Report of the British-origin citizens, “racial minorities in Canada National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous remain at a disadvantage, some groups significantly Women and Girls, identifies colonization as an inher- so, and Aboriginal peoples are hugely disadvan- ently gendered form of oppression.43 For these taged.”45 Rather than emerging as a result of the reasons, many indigenous scholars in Canada use demographic fact of an increasingly diverse popula- the framework of “internal colonialism” instead of tion and egalitarian sociopolitical environment, the race, racism, or racialization to emphasize the country’s multicultural, multiracial national identity ongoing exploitative relationship between the Canad- was carefully crafted and honed by successive Canad- ian government and Aboriginal peoples. It is a term ian governments beginning in the 1970s and involved that encapsulates the compounding relationships a convenient, if not purposeful, obscuring of historic among processes of racial discrimination, territorial and contemporary discussions about racism in dispossession, and the displacement of traditional Canada. Aboriginal cultures and modes of governance. An exploration of the political development of In 1965, sociologist John Porter argued that though racial questions and classifications on the Canadian Canadians understood the country to be a mosaic of census therefore stands to reveal a great deal about the origins and evolution of the Canadian racial order. According to Michael Dawson, the racial strati- fication that has historically shaped (American) polit- Minnesota Press, 2014); Audra Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus: Polit- ical, social, and economic life coalesces into a racial ical Life across the Border of Settler States (Durham, NC: Duke University order, which assigns racial groups “various degrees Press, 2014). of citizenship rights, legal status, relationships to the 41. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Canada’s Residential Schools: The Legacy, Final Report of the Truth and Reconcili- ation Commission of Canada, vol. 5 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Uni- versity Press, 2015). 44. John Porter, The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class 42. Represented by the acronym 2SLGBTQQIA, or Two-Spirit, and Power in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965). lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, 45. Keith Banting and Debra Thompson, “The Puzzling Per- and asexual. sistence of Racial Inequality in Canada,” in The Double Bind: the Pol- 43. Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National itics of Racial and Class Inequalities in the Americas, Report of the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (Van- American Political Science Association Presidential Task Force on couver: Privy Council Office, 2019), https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/ Racial and Class Inequalities in the Americas [APSA], ed. Juliet final-report/. Hooker and Alvin Tillery (Washington, DC: APSA, 2016), 105. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X19000191 Published online by Cambridge University Press  RACE, THE CANADIAN CENSUS 51 security apparatus, places in the economy, and the exceptional case can be challenged through amount of status conferred on members of each comparative-historical analysis.51 racial group.”46 With their focus on the evolution A number of excellent studies of race and the and impact of American ideas and institutions, APD census in the United States and Latin America hold scholars have often been at the forefront of political in common the idea that racial categories are an inte- science scholarship that seeks to understand the gral component of a country’s racial order, including intractable influence of race on the creation, main- Melissa Nobles’s trailblazing book Shades of Citizenship, tenance, and evolution of political orders and the Jennifer Hochschild, Vesla Weaver, and Traci Burch’s American state.47 There is also a small but notable Creating a New Racial Order, Desmond King and Roger body of work that examines the formation of racial Smith’s Still a House Divided, Kenneth Prewitt’s What is orders outside of the United States. Often drawing Your Race?, and Mara Loveman’s National Colors.52 In from Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s Racial For- advancing these racial schemas, the census is both a mation in the United States,48 this scholarship examines racial project of the state and an administrative hub the nexus of race and state through citizenship laws, in the service of other state-backed racial projects.53 racial classifications systems, legacies of colonialism, Yet, unlike the extensive literature in APD that mechanisms of state control and surveillance, civil explores the relationship between race and the rights regimes, and social activism.49 This work is various manifestations of the American state, there comparative, global, cross-disciplinary, and multi- is very little literature in Canadian political science paradigmatic,50 but also shares with APD an institu- that theorizes “the role of the Canadian state in pro- tionalist core, historical orientation, and nuanced ducing legal and discursive concepts of race and understanding of how race is deeply embedded in state apparatuses. Research by George Fredrickson, Ira Katznelson, Michael Hanchard, Anthony Marx, Robert Lieberman, Howard Winant, Tianna Paschel, Erik Bleich, Danielle Clealand, and Mark Sawyer 51. Ira Katznelson, Black Men, White Cities: Race, Politics, and Migration in the United States, 1900–30, and Great Britain, 1948–68 has illuminated the dynamics of racial orders in com- (London: Oxford University Press, 1973); George Fredrickson, parative context, demonstrating that though the vast White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African majority of race scholarship can be found in the History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981); George Fredrick- American-centered subfields of the social sciences, son, The Comparative Imagination: On the History of Racism, National- ism, and Social Movements (Berkeley: University of California Press, the desire to understand the United States as an 1997); Marx, Making Race and Nation; Howard Winant, The World Is a Ghetto: Race and Democracy Since World War II (New York: Basic Books, 2001); Erik Bleich, Race Politics in Britain and France: Ideas and Policymaking Since the 1960s (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Uni- 46. Michael Dawson, Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary versity Press, 2003); Lieberman, Shaping Race Policy; Mark African American Political Ideologies (Chicago: University of Chicago Q. Sawyer, Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba (New York: Cam- Press, 2001), 25. For a coalition-centered definition of racial bridge University Press, 2006); Tianna S. Paschel, Becoming Black Pol- orders, see Desmond King and Rogers Smith, “Racial Orders in itical Subjects: Movements and Ethno-Racial Rights in Colombia and Brazil American Political Development,” American Political Science Review (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016); Danielle Pilar 99, no. 1 (2005): 75–92. Clealand, The Power of Race in Cuba: Racial Ideology and Black Con- 47. Notable works include Rogers M. Smith, Civic Ideals: Con- sciousness During the Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, flicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven, CT: Yale Uni- 2017); Michael Hanchard, The Spectre of Race: How Discrimination versity Press, 1997); Desmond S. King, In the Name of Liberalism: Haunts Western Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Illiberal Social Policy in the USA and Britain (New York: Oxford Univer- Press, 2018). sity Press, 1999); Lieberman, “Ideas, Institutions, and Political 52. Sharon M. Lee, “Racial Classifications in the U.S. Census: Order”; Lowndes et al., Race and American Political Development; 1890–1990,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 16, no. 1 (1993): 75–94; 2008; Desmond King and Rogers M. Smith, Still a House Divided: Melissa Nobles, Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Race and Politics in Obama’s America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni- Politics (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000); Alice versity Press, 2011); Megan Ming Francis, Civil Rights and the Robbin, “Classifying Racial and Ethnic Group Data in the United Making of the Modern American State (New York: Cambridge Univer- States: The Politics of Negotiation and Accommodation,” Journal sity Press, 2013); Naomi Murakawa, The First Civil Right: How Liberals of Government Information 27 (2000): 139–56; Hochschild and Built Prison America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Powell, “Racial Reorganization and the United States Census”; Johnson, “The Color Line and the State”; Paul Frymer, Building King and Smith, Still a House Divided; Jennifer L. Hochschild, an American Empire: The Era of Territorial and Political Expansion Vesla Weaver, and Traci Burch, Creating a New Racial Order: How (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017); Chloe Thurston, Immigration, Multiculturalism, Genomics, and the Young Can Remake At the Boundaries of Homeownership: Credit, Discrimination, and the Race in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012); American State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018). Kenneth Prewitt, What Is Your Race? The Census and Our Flawed 48. Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the Efforts to Classify Americans (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, 2nd ed. (New York: Rout- Press, 2013); Mara Loveman, National Colors: Racial Classification ledge, 1994). and the State in Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 49. For overviews, see Hanchard and Chung, “From Race Rela- 2014). tions to Comparative Racial Politics,” and Melissa F. Weiner, 53. In their oft-cited work on racial formation, Omi and “Towards a Critical Global Race Theory,” Sociology Compass 6, no. Winant define racial project as “simultaneously an interpretation, 4 (2012): 332–50. representation or explanation of racial dynamics, and an effort to reorganize 50. Rogers Brubaker, “Ethnicity, Race, and Nationalism,” and redistribute resources along particular racial lines.” Omi and Winant, Annual Review of Sociology 35 (2009): 21–42. Racial Formation, 56, emphasis in original. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X19000191 Published online by Cambridge University Press  52 DEBRA THOMPSON ethnicity in comparative perspective.”54 In her 2009 precursors of the decennial census demonstrate the presidential address to the Canadian Political influence and significant evolution of two emergent Science Association, Miriam Smith argued that to transnational forces. First, the proliferation of a bio- more fully develop a field of “Canadian political logical conceptualization of race, and, second, the development,” political scientists must conceptualize birth of modern statistics and the eventual emergence diversity as a question of political power related to of an international community of statisticians devoted the protection of rights, the allocation of resources, to expanding and standardizing the collection of and access to political participation rather than a demographic statistics across the globe. At the same paradigm of folkloric multicultural recognition.55 time, actors within evolving colonial political institu- This article therefore seeks not only to contribute to tions interacted with these transnational ideas and the rich scholarship on race and APD, but also to sought to translate them in ways that aligned with acknowledge the substantial work that remains to be the priorities of both empire and colony. One such done to more fully comprehend the emergence, dyna- priority was the management of the conflict mism, and persistence of the Canadian racial order. between the French- and English-speaking denizens The remainder of this article is organized into four of British North America, while another was main- empirical sections that cover broad periods of time taining colonial racial hierarchies by carefully count- characterized by evolving racial worldviews and ing black and indigenous populations. These census-taking practices of the state. In section 2, I efforts, however, were often hampered by a lack of examine the pre-Confederation censuses of Canada administrative capacity as the colonial state attempted in terms of how the demands of empire shaped to imagine and reimagine the demographic compos- census imperatives. The third section considers the ition of its dominion.56 post-Confederation censuses as an integral element Canadian statehood was embryonic for much of the implicated in building the Canadian state and institu- nineteenth century, but Great Britain was a burgeoning tionalizing the Canadian nation as comprising “two empire, powered as much by information as by the raw founding races.” In section 4, I explore the classifica- materials and natural resources extracted from its col- tion standards employed within the racial origins onies. In practical terms, census tabulations provided question between 1900 and 1945, which reinforced London with a sense of the empire’s resources, a hierarchical racial order. The final section details wealth, territory, and population. Some of the earliest the ejection of the terminology of race from the censuses in modern history were conducted in what census in the postwar era and its replacement with would eventually become Canada and included race the more benign concept of ethnicity, once again as a noteworthy mode of classification. In 1767 both institutionalizing the national primacy of linguistic Nova Scotia (including what is now New Brunswick) difference. The article concludes with a brief explor- and Prince Edward Island (then called “St. John ation of the relevance of APD for the study of race pol- Island”) enumerated origin (English, Irish, Scotch, itics outside the United States. American, German, Acadian, and “not given”) and race (white, Indian, or Negro). By the early decades of the nineteenth century, the British government 2. COUNTING COLONIALS (1763–1860) sought to make enumeration a more regularized Counting and classifying by race in early colonial cen- affair. In 1817 the Parliamentary Select Committee suses was important to the imperial administration of on Finance, seeking to reduce colonial expenditure British North America during the pre-Confederation in the wake of the 1815 depression, asked for more era, the period delineated by the British acquisition of information on the financial returns of the colonies, New France following the Seven Years War until the and in 1822 each colonial governor was sent a “Blue provinces were united by Confederation in 1867. Book” in which he was to fill in details relating to The racial classifications featured in these early taxes, income and expenditures, military require- ments, birth, marriages, deaths, and other statistics.57 54. Miriam Smith, “Diversity and Canadian Political Develop- ment: Presidential Address to the Canadian Political Science Asso- ciation,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 42, no. 4 (2009), 841. 56. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the See also Debra Thompson, “Is Race Political?” Canadian Journal of Origins of Nationalism, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 1991), 163–64; Political Science 41, no. 3 (2008): 525–47; Nisha Nath, “Defining Nar- James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the ratives of Identity in Canadian Political Science: Accounting for the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Absence of Race,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 44, no. 1 Press, 1998), 81–82. (2011): 161–93; Yasmeen Abu-Laban, “Narrating Canadian Political 57. Bruce Curtis, “The Canada ‘Blue Books’ and the Adminis- Science: Toward a Revisionist History: Presidential Address to the trative Capacity of the Canadian State, 1822–67,” Canadian Historical Canadian Political Science Association,” Canadian Journal of Political Review 74, no. 4 (1993): 535–65; Sarah Preston, “The Colonial Blue Science 50, no. 4 (2017): 895–919. Books: A Major Resource in the Royal Commonwealth Society 55. Ibid, p. 835. See also Jack Lucas and Robert Vipond, “Back Library,” Bulletin of the Friends of Cambridge University Library 26–27 to the Future: Historical Political Science and the Promise of Can- (2006–2007), accessed June 24, 2016, https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/ adian Political Development,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 50, collections/departments/royal-commonwealth-society/catalogues- no. 1 (2017): 219–49. remote-access/rcs-official/rcs-0/rcs-2. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X19000191 Published online by Cambridge University Press  RACE, THE CANADIAN CENSUS 53 The census was an important though imperfect advocated by Superintendent of Statistics William means through which British imperial identity and Farr and Lord Stanley, the Secretary of State for War power were extended. In ideological terms, the sys- and Colonies, specifically required that a question tematic counting of bodies was, as Arjun Appadurai on race be included.63 Without independent political argues, not just an extension of the preoccupation institutions of its own at this point, the colonial with numeracy sweeping across Europe, but also administrators of British North America imple- worked to create a sense of imperial control and mented any statistical directives from the Crown, define what was controllable.58 The racial compos- though efforts were stymied by a lack of administrative ition of the various British colonies mattered a great capacity.64 deal in how British administrators viewed each The Act of Union in 1840, which united the col- colony’s worth to the empire and potential for inde- onies of Upper Canada (now Ontario) and Lower pendence. From the purview of the metropole, the Canada (now Quebec) under a model of responsible success of settler societies was determined in part by government,65 was a dramatic transformation of the whether the settlers could attain a demographic Canadian political landscape. In the context of a advantage over native and enslaved or free black pop- reluctant partnership imposed by imperial decree, ulations. In this context, “European and non- the census became even more important for the cen- European, or ‘white’ and ‘black’ or ‘colored’ gained tralization of political power and consolidation of potency as categories for understanding the knowledge. In her exploration of the cultural Empire.”59 Early census-taking efforts across the history of census taking in Great Britain, Kathrin empire varied considerably depending on local Levitan writes that “it is precisely because the Canad- issues and administrators, especially before processes ian colonies were inhabited by white-settler majorities were partially standardized in the 1860s. In spite of that the government in London was willing to give up local peculiarities of counting the population, by control of local census taking, just as it gave up control the 1830s the sheer number of people considered of other aspects of administration and governance.”66 to be “British subjects” was a source of imperial One of the first enactments of the new legislature of pride.60 From the colonial viewpoint, contributing the colony authorized the taking of a periodic to this growing population was a means of demon- census. Early attempts at a Dominion-wide census strating Canadian loyalty to the Crown. As the quickly became the target of sectarian animosity report of the 1861 Census of Prince Edward Island over representation in the equally partitioned Legisla- noted, “In these figures, our Island adds its quota to tive Assembly, which required a two-thirds majority to swell the vast and accumulating mass of Statistics pass laws. The Anglophone minority initially pro- now in-gathering, under Imperial auspices, from the moted the principle of equal representation, while remotest regions—Statistics which will be viewed as Francophones preferred representation by popula- a monumental record—valuable, because authentic tion, each group attempting to maximize its legislative —of the might and resources of that extended power. These respective positions would reverse when Empire, in whose unity and prosperity we all feel a increased Anglophone immigration created new deep and abiding interest.”61 settlement patterns that dwarfed the Quebecois Estimates on the racial composition of colonial population.67 Regardless, those who stood to lose populations were explicitly requested by the Colonial from a switch to representation by population would Office in the early nineteenth century, and classifica- often cry foul and claim census results were faulty— tion schemas of British colonies varied widely. The though this was, in fact, the truth—once the political first Blue Books of the 1820s and 1830s contained a implications of the data were made clear. The lack of threefold distinction between white, free colored, administrative machinery led to numerous census fail- and slave populations. Once slavery was abolished in ures in 1842, 1847, 1848, and 1850. When the 1847 1833, a white/colored dualism formed the basis for the majority of classification schemas throughout the empire.62 Initial proposals for taking a census of 63. Anthony J. Christopher, “The Quest for a Census of the British Empire, c. 1840–1940,” Journal of Historical Geography 34, the British empire in the mid-nineteenth century, no. 2 (2008), 274. 64. Curtis, The Politics of Population, 46–91. 65. Upper Canada became Canada West and Lower Canada 58. Arjun Appadurai, “Number in the Colonial Imagination,” became Canada East until they were each renamed during Confed- in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament, ed. Carol eration in 1867. A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer (Philadelphia: University 66. Levitan, A Cultural History of the British Census, 155. of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 314–39. 67. Estimates indicate that the population of Canada West in 59. Kathrin Levitan, A Cultural History of the British Census: Envi- 1842 was 487,053, while the population of Canada East in 1844 sioning the Multitude in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Palgrave was 697,084. By 1860–61, the respective populations were Macmillan, 2011), 154. 1,396,091 in Canada West and 1,111,566 in Canada East. Clearly, 60. Ibid., 161. the accuracy of population estimates from this time is questionable. 61. Ibid., 147. Statistics Canada, Introduction to the Censuses of Canada, 1665 to 1871, 62. Anthony J. Christopher, “Race and the Census in the Com- accessed March 27, 2020, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/ monwealth,” Population, Space and Place 11 (2005), 105. 98-187-x/98-187-x2000001-eng.pdf. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X19000191 Published online by Cambridge University Press  54 DEBRA THOMPSON Census and Statistics Act created a Board of Registra- among different Governments and Nations to follow tion and Statistics to oversee general statistical up these common inquiries, in a common spirit, by matters, its first Secretary, Walter Cavendish Crofton, a common method for a common end.”74 It was in was a patronage appointee who did little to advance this climate that the British Colonial Office pushed Canada’s statistical system beyond the status quo. colonial administrations, including those in Canada, Against the recommendations of an increasingly to adopt the census-making procedures of the Inter- robust international statistical community, census national Statistical Congress as a template in the late administration relied on the cooperation of local gov- 1850s.75 The development of Canadian statistics was ernments, which caused many problems in terms of influenced by these international discussions. the consistency required for an accurate enumer- Census officials attended the Fourth International ation.68 Statistical Congress of 1860 and were situated firmly These census failures were increasingly consequen- within this international network. There were also tial in the mid-nineteenth century precisely because bilateral discussions with the United States, where of the emergence of an international community of census officials regularly corresponded with their statisticians who saw the need to create and imple- Canadian counterparts and shared sample forms, ment scientific standards for counting populations instructions, and published reports.76 around the world. During the first World’s Fair, or Though the institutions and practices of census the “Great Exhibition,” in London in 1851, a small administration evolved with the help of the inter- circle of experts from European countries developed national statistical community, census-takers on the the idea of an international congress on statistics to ground still faced a great deal of ambiguity with work for greater comparability in statistical publica- regard to how, exactly, to racially enumerate the popu- tions.69 The International Statistical Congress, spear- lation. The 1844 Census, for example, included in its headed by Belgium’s social statistics pioneer, schedule a column labeled “persons of colour” (“per- Adolphe Quetelet, and the superintendent of the sonnes de couleur”), which enumerators were to leave American Census Office, Joseph Kennedy, was blank to identify the white population. Blacks could formed in 1853.70 Between 1853 and 1876, nine add- be counted by filling the column with the letter itional international statistical conferences were held “B”—an important distinction, particularly in throughout Europe, “an important phase in the keeping track of Canada’s former slave population acceptance of statistics as a guiding instrument of pol- and the Black Loyalists who had fought for Britain itical decision-making.”71 The meetings covered the during the American Revolution in return for their definitions of the principal branches of statistics freedom from American slavery and were expelled (demographic, economic, and social), the centraliza- to Canada for doing so.77 One census commissioner tion of statistical offices within member states, and the complained that the census form failed to differenti- field of comparative international statistics.72 Great ate between “full-blooded blacks” and “mulattoes”— Britain was a key participant in the formation of the yet another important demarcation, according to International Statistical Congress, in part because the dominant racial beliefs of the time. It was also Prince Albert (the consort of Queen Victoria) was unclear on which side of the color line were indigen- both a friend and former student of Quetelet, who ous peoples. The commissioner went on to lament, is widely regarded as the founder of international sta- “and as for the poor savages, the primitive children tistics. Prince Albert credited Quetelet for introdu- of the earth, we have great difficulty in knowing cing him to the ways that higher mathematics could what to do with them. What corner shall we put be applied to social phenomena.73 Speaking in his them in? This is a prickly question. Shall we blacken role as president of the International Statistical Con- their faces and line them up in the 39th and 40th gress in 1860, the prince stated that “these Inter- columns, among ‘people of colour’?”78 national Congresses pave the way to an agreement The idea that different races existed was a matter of common sense at the time. In fact, the 1849 instruc- tions from the General Register Office in Britain 68. Curtis, Politics of Population, 46–91. about how censuses should be administered in the 69. Walter F. Willcox, “Development of International Statistics,” colonies considered race to be as “sufficiently The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 27, no. 2 (1949): 143–53. 70. Joseph Camp Griffith Kennedy, “The Origin and Progress of Statistics,” Journal of American Geographical and Statistical Society 2 74. Quoted in Nixon, History of the International Statistical Insti- (1860): 92–120. tute, 7. 71. Nico Randeraad, “The International Statistical Congress 75. Curtis, Politics of Population, 11. (1853–1876): Knowledge Transfers and Their Limits,” European 76. Ibid., 21–22; David A. Worton, The Dominion Bureau of Sta- History