UC Berkeley GAIA Books Title A Problem of Great Importance: Population, Race, and Power in the British Empire, 1918-1973 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/30c576h7 ISBN 978-1-938169-10-6 Author Ittman, Karl Publication Date 2013-10-01 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California A Problem of Great Importance The Berkeley SerieS in BriTiSh STudieS Mark Bevir and James Vernon, University of California, Berkeley, editors 1. The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain, edited by Simon Gunn and James Vernon 2. Dilemmas of Decline: British Intellectuals and World Politics, 1945– 1975, by Ian Hall 3. The Savage Visit: New World People and Popular Imperial Culture in Britain, 1710– 1795, by Kate Fullagar 4. The Afterlife of Empire, by Jordanna Bailkin 5. Smyrna’s Ashes: Humanitarianism, Genocide, and the Birth of the Middle East, by Michelle Tusan 6. Pathological Bodies: Medicine and Political Culture, by Corinna Wagner 7. A Problem of Great Importance: Population, Race, and Power in the British Empire, 1918– 1973, by Karl Ittmann A Problem of Great Importance Population, Race, and Power in the British Empire, 1918– 1973 karl iTTmann Global, Area, and International Archive University of California Press Berkeley loS angeles London The Global, Area, and International Archive (GAIA) is an initiative of the Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with the University of California Press, the California Digital Library, and international research programs across the University of California system. University of California Press, one of the most distinguished univer- sity presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2013 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress iSBn: 978-1938169-10-6 Manufactured in the United States of America 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of anSi/niSo z39.48– 1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper). For Lorri, Neave, and Caroline Contents Acknowledgments ix inTroducTion 1 1. The originS of colonial demography 15 2. The colonial office and The populaTion Question, 1918– 1939 48 3. War, populaTion, and The neW colonial STaTe 83 4. populaTion and The postwar empire 107 5. populaTion in a postcolonial World 147 6. BriTiSh populaTion policy in The postcolonial era 177 concluSion: populaTion and The legacieS of empire 191 Notes 201 Index 289 Acknowledgments This book has taken far longer to complete than I could have imagined when I began work on it more than a decade ago. Along the way I have incurred a number of debts to those who have helped me. The Limited Grant in Aid and Small Research Grant programs of the University of Houston provided financial support to undertake my research, as did the Center for Immigration Research at the University of Houston. The College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences gave me a semester’s leave in both 1998 and 2006 to allow me to write. My colleague Joe Pratt gener- ously gave funds from his endowment to allow me a research leave as a junior faculty member, which gave me the opportunity to begin this proj- ect with an extended stay in London. During my time in London, Dudley Baines and Paul Johnson and other members of the Economic History Department at the London School of Economics befriended me and helped me access the unrivaled collection of population writings at the British Library of Political and Economic Science. Chris Langford helped me test my ideas and allowed me to view the Population Investigation Committee papers. The staffs at the National Archives at Kew, the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, the London School of Economics, Rhodes House, Oxford, the Women’s Library, and Rice University Library greatly assisted my research. In particular, I thank Lesley Hall of the Wellcome Institute. A wonderful historian in her own right, she helped guide me through the rich collection of the Institute. I also thank the Galton Institute for permission to examine and quote from the papers of the Eugenics Society and the Family Planning Association for permission to quote from its papers at the Wellcome Institute. My intellectual debts are many. The work of Alison Bashford, John ix x / Acknowledgments Caldwell, Matt Connelly, Frederick Cooper, Dennis Cordell, Joseph Hodge, Dennis Hodgson, Greg Maddox, John Sharpless, Richard Soloway, and Simon Szreter shaped my understanding of the history of demography and the British Empire. Richard Soloway encouraged me to pursue this project, offered assistance numerous times, and generously agreed to read the manuscript. His untimely death deprived us of one of the brightest minds in our profession. My current and former colleagues patiently waited for this project to come to fruition. In particular I thank Sarah Fishman, Joe Glatthaar, Jackie Hagan, Jim Jones, Marty Melosi, and Joe Pratt. My friends Greg Maddox and Dennis Cordell listened to my ideas and helped guide me through African history. Greg was kind enough to read the manuscript as well as papers, grants, and book pro- posals. Matt Connelly and Adam McKeown raised my awareness of the global context of my work. James Vernon and Mark Bevir helped me clarify the themes of this book and pushed me to link them to the broader intellectual history of Britain in the twentieth century. My friends and family gave emotional and practical assistance over the many years I labored on this project. David Blackburn, Harvey Yunis, and Terry Lohrenz spent many Friday afternoons drinking beer and enduring yet another discussion of the book. My neighbors Stan O’Neal and Joellen Snow offered meals and sympathy when each was needed. My mother Leonore Ittmann, sister Pat Ittmann, brother Mike Ittmann, brother in-law Steve Kouris, sister-in-law Mary Murrey, and my nieces and nephew followed my progress and encouraged me. My wife’s fam- ily— Joe and Nelda White, Nila Pollard, Troy and Amanda White— came later to the party but always acted interested in what must have seemed an esoteric topic and tolerated a historian in their midst. My daughters Neave and Caroline put up with my absences and long hours, and they continue to cheer and inspire me. Finally I owe the greatest debt to my wife Lorri White, who has endured five years of being a “book widow.” She read and edited my manuscript soon after we met and gently pushed me over the finish line. Our marriage and life together made it possible to complete this project. Even more important, she has made my life immensely richer. For that I am forever grateful. Introduction In 1945, Robert Kuczynski, a leading figure in British demography, pub- lished an article in the Eugenics Review entitled “Demography: Science and Administration” in which he reviewed the history of British demography and lamented the weakness of the nation’s population statistics. He ended with a call for a renewed emphasis on the training of demographers and officials in order to incorporate the science of demography into the opera- tions of the state, arguing that “the increasing importance of the popula- tion problem will afford many opportunities of doing useful work in this country, and the great development schemes in the Colonies cannot be carried out effectively without the assistance of expert demographers.”1 Kuczynski embodied the changing nature of the discipline he helped establish in Britain. Born and educated in Germany, he worked in the United States before coming to the London School of Economics in 1933, retiring as reader in demography in 1941. Beginning in the late 1930s he worked with the Colonial Office and was appointed as demographic advisor in 1944, a position he held until his death in 1947. A specialist in mathematical demography, he helped popularize the use of the net reproduction rate (NRR) as a measure of fertility and wrote widely about vital statistics in the United States and Europe. Yet from the mid-1930s onward, he became a specialist in non-European demography and capped his career with the multivolume work A Demographic Survey of the British Empire.2 His belief in the scientific nature of his discipline and his con- viction that in the future it would play a crucial role in the British state at home and in the empire was widely shared by other demographers, officials, and private activists. To what extent then was Kuczynski’s vision realized? This book sug- gests that population science played a significant role in British colonial 1 2 / Introduction policy in the twentieth century as the imperial state attempted to control colonial populations using new agricultural and public health policies, supporting private family planning initiatives, and by imposing limits over migration and settlement. Demography was one of several disci- plines whose claims of scientific expertise offered officials new ways to understand colonial subjects as concerns mounted about the stability of imperial rule. The shift in demography in the early twentieth century toward quantitative methods raised the prospect of a science of population that could analyze and predict demographic trends. Colonial demography developed as a branch of the discipline in the interwar years as demog- raphers attempted to apply these methods to the study of non-Western populations.