The black population before 1900

There is no basis for an accurate estimate of the size of the African population for any date before the beginning of the twentieth century. A recent study by Etherington brought together various estimates made in the nineteenth century for different regions, and suggested as ‘only the roughest of guesses’ a total population of less than one million by the eighteenth century for the entire region bounded by the Kalahari, the Limpopo, and the Indian Ocean. A rough check on this estimate can be made by starting from the more comprehensive evidence available for the twentieth century.

When the first nationwide census was taken in 1904, the African population was stated to be 3,490,000. The addition of the population of the three British protectorates of Basutoland, Bechuanaland, and Swaziland would raise the total to a little over 4,000,000. A range of estimates for the African population of the entire region at earlier dates can be derived by backward extrapolation from this level at higher or lower rates of increase. One possible assumption is that the population increased at broadly the same rate as in the first half of the twentieth century, about 2.0 per cent per annum. This implies that a number of critical determinants of birth and death rates, including high infant mortality, excess mortality during periodic harvest failures or drought- and disease-related cattle deaths, and relatively long birth intervals associated with abstention during the period of suckling were common to both periods, and also that any beneficial effects of modern medical intervention and public health measures such as smallpox inoculation were offset by deteriorating living conditions, especially in the increasingly crowded rural areas.