The Background to Census‐Taking and Vital Registration among Semi‐Literate Societies
| Published date | 01 July 1960 |
| Date | 01 July 1960 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1960.tb00179.x |
| Author | T. E. Smith |
The
Background
to
Census-
Taking
and
Vital
Registration
among
Semi-Literate
Societies
by
T. E.
SMITH
Secretary,
Institute of
Commomoealtli
Studies,
University
oj
London
The
Cocos
Islands
SOME
thirteen
or fourteen years ago,
during
the
course of my
career
in
the
Malayan
Civil Service, I
had
the
good fortune to spend
the
best
part
of
a
year
in
the
Cocos Islands, which
are
situated well
out
into
the
Indian
Ocean,
approximately
half
way
between Colombo
and
Fremantle.
It
was, I suppose,
in these small islands
that
my interest in
demography
was first aroused.
The
atoll
group
was first peopled
early
in
the
nineteenth
century
and
was
gradually
developed as a very isolated coconut
plantation
under
the
benevolently
auto-
cratic
rule
of
the
Clunies-Ross family.
During
the
latter
half
of
the
nineteenth
century,
the
labour
force in
the
islands consisted
partly
of
persons
of
Malay
stock descended from
the
original
group
of
settlers
and
partly
of
Bantamese
contract
labourers (often prisoners serving sentences) from
Java.
As
the
Cocos-
born
population
increased in size, the dependence on
contract
labour
decreased
and,
before
the
turn
of
the
century, all
immigration
ceased.
When
I was in
the
islands in 1946, all
but
two of
the
Cocos
Malay
population,
which
then
numbered
between 1,700
and
1,800, were local
born
and
very, very few of
them
had
ever been outside
the
islands.
For
aperiod
of
about
sixty years
ending
in 1950,
when
the
Singapore Govern-
ment
started
to
put
into
operation
ascheme for moving
the
surplus
population
to Borneo,
the
Malay
population
of
the
islands was
not
affected
at
all by
immigration
and
but
little affected by emigration.
From
time
to time,
the
occasional individual, family, or small
group
of
related families left Cocos to
settle elsewhere (usually in Singapore)
and,
on two occasions
during
the
sixty-
year
period, relatively large groups left
the
islands; in 1913, following a
murder,
a
number
of
the
remaining
Bantamese labourers, with
their
wives (some
of
whom
were
Cocos girls)
and
children, were
returned
to
Java;
and,
at
the
begin-
ning
of
World
War
II,
when
the
Clunies-Ross estate was
running
at
a loss after
continued
low
copra
prices, a
number
of Cocos Malays were encouraged to
settle in Singapore.
The
reader
will
appreciate
the
very
high
rate
of
population
growth
in
the
islands
if
it is
mentioned
here
that
the
1921
Malay
population
of
the
islands was 782,
and
that
this figure
had
increased by almost exactly
1,000
at
the
time
of
the
1947 census
of
population, giving an
average
annual
rate
of
increase
of
3.2
per
cent. Because
of
the
small
amount
of
emigration, this
rate
is
an
under-estimate
of
the
true
rate
of
natural
increase.
From
the
demographer's
point
of view,
the
really fascinating fact is
that
throughout
the
sixty-year period
mentioned
there
was a virtually complete
registration
of
live births, deaths
and
marriages
and
a
partial
registration
of
still births.
The
two
Malay
midwives
reported
births
each
week to
the
Clunies-
Ross estate office for registration
and
the
headman
of
the
Cocos
Malay
com-
munity
reported deaths
and
marriages each week.
With
these registration
records it is
of
course possible to construct
the
life history
of
every
individual
15°
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