Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T19:08:36.794Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Race, the Canadian Census, and Interactive Political Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2020

Debra Thompson Open the ORCID record for Debra Thompson [Opens in a new window]
Debra Thompson*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, McGill University
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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 designers 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 persistence of the Canadian racial order.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in American Political Development , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , April 2020 , pp. 44 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Acknowledgments: The author would like to thank the participants of the American, British and Canadian Political Development workshop, held at Oxford University in May 2016, for helpful comments on the original draft of this article, and the editors of Studies in American Political Development and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful critiques of the many subsequent iterations.

References

1. Kralt, John, “Ethnic Origins in the Canadian Census, 1871–1986,” in Ethnic Demography: Canadian Immigrant, Ethnic and Cultural Variations, ed. Halli, Shiva, Trovato, Frank, and Driedger, Leo (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990), 13–29Google Scholar; Boyd, Monica, Goldmann, Gustave, and White, Pamela, “Race in the Canadian Census,” in Race and Racism: Canada's Challenge, ed. Driedger, Leo and Halli, Shiva (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2000), 33–54Google Scholar. The most thorough examination of the history of the Canadian census more generally is Curtis, Bruce, The Politics of Population: State Formation, Statistics, and the Census of Canada, 1840–1875 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. These ideas are often discussed within and transmitted through international organizations, epistemic communities, and networks of state actors On the distinctions between “levels” of ideas, see Berman, Sheri, The Social Democratic Movement: Ideas and Politics in the Making of Interwar Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Finnemore, Martha and Sikkink, Kathryn, “Taking Stock: The Constructivist Research Program in International Relations and Comparative Politics,” Annual Review of Political Science 4 (2001): 391–416CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mehta, Jal, “The Varied Role of Ideas in Politics: From ‘Whether’ to ‘How,’” in Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research, ed. Béland, Daniel and Henry, Robert Cox (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 23–46Google Scholar.

3. Triadafilopoulos, Triadafilos, Becoming Multicultural: Immigration and the Politics of Membership in Canada and Germany (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

4. Checkel, Jeffrey, “Norms, Institutions, and National Identity in Contemporary Europe,” International Studies Quarterly 43, no. 1 (1999): 84–114CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Acharya, Amitav, “How Ideas Spread: Whose Norms Matter? Norm Localization and Institutional Change in Asian Regionalism,” International Organization 58, no. 2 (2004), 251CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. Lieberman, Robert C., “Ideas and Institutions in Race Politics,” in Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research, ed. Béland, Daniel and Henry, Robert Cox (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 214Google Scholar.

7. Acharya, “How Ideas Spread,” 245. See also Dobbin, Frank, Simmons, Beth, and Garrett, Geoffrey, “The Global Diffusion of Public Policies: Social Construction, Coercion, Competition, or Learning?” Annual Review of Sociology 33 (2007): 449–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. King, Desmond and Lieberman, Robert, “Finding the American State: Transcending the ‘Statelessness’ Account,” Polity 40, no. 3 (2008): 368–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Skowronek, Stephen, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Evans, Peter B., Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, and Skocpol, Theda, eds., Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. Orren, Karen and Skowronek, Stephen, The Search for American Political Development (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. Lieberman, “Ideas and Institutions in Race Politics,” 212.

11. Johnson, Kimberley S., “The Color Line and the State: Race and American Political Development,” in The Oxford Handbook of American Political Development, ed. Valelly, Richard, Mettler, Suzanne, and Lieberman, Robert (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)Google Scholar.

12. Ibid.

13. Novkov, Julie, “Rethinking Race in American Politics,” Political Research Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2008), 650CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. Orren and Skowronek, The Search for American Political Development.

15. Lowndes, Joseph, Novkov, Julie, and Warren, Dorian, eds., Race and American Political Development (New York: Routledge, 2008)Google Scholar.

16. Bensel, Richard, “The Tension Between American Political Development as a Research Community and as a Disciplinary Subfield,” Studies in American Political Development 17 (2003): 104–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar, emphasis in original.

17. Morgan, Kimberly J., “Comparative Politics and American Political Development,” in The Oxford Handbook of American Political Development, ed. Valelly, Richard, Mettler, Suzanne, and Lieberman, Robert (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)Google Scholar.

18. King, Desmond and Lieberman, Robert C., “American Political Development as a Process of Democratization,” in Democratization in America: A Comparative-Historical Analysis, ed. King, Desmond, Robert C. Lieberman, Gretchen Ritter, and Laurence Whitehead (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 3–27Google Scholar.

19. Robert C. Lieberman, “The ABCs of Political Development: Notes toward an ABCD Manifesto” (unpublished manuscript for ABCD Workshop, University of Toronto, October 2016).

20. The ABC political development workshops were organized along thematic lines: parties and legislatures (October 2015, University of Toronto), democratization and citizenship (May 2016, University of Oxford), and public policy (September 2016, University of Toronto).

21. Sheingate, Adam, “Institutional Dynamics and American Political Development,” Annual Review of Political Science 17 (2014): 461–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mettler, Suzanne and Valelly, Richard, “The Distinctiveness and Necessity of American Political Development,” in The Oxford Handbook of American Political Development, ed. Valelly, Richard, Mettler, Suzanne, and Lieberman, Robert C. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)Google Scholar.

22. Marx, Anthony, Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of South Africa, the United States, and Brazil (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Lieberman, Robert C., Shaping Race Policy: The United States in Comparative Perspective (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Thompson, Debra, The Schematic State: Race, Transnationalism, and the Politics of the Census (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23. Hochschild, Jennifer L. and Powell, Brenna Marea, “Racial Reorganization and the United States Census 1850–1930: Mulattoes, Half-Breeds, Mixed Parentage, Hindoos, and the Mexican Race,” Studies in American Political Development 22, no. 1 (2008): 59–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24. Gourevitch, Peter, “The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of Domestic Politics,” International Organization 32, no. 4 (1978): 881–912CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Katznelson, Ira and Shefter, Martin, eds., Shaped by War and Trade: International Influences on American Political Development (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25. Dobbin et al., “The Global Diffusion of Public Policies.”

26. Bayly, C. A., Beckert, Sven, Connelly, Matthew, Hofmeyr, Isabel, Kozol, Wendy, and Seed, Patricia, “AHR Conversation: On Transnational History,” American Historical Review 111, no. 5 (2006), 1444CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27. Ibid.

28. Ong, Aihwa, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

29. Gilroy, Paul, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London: Verso, 1993)Google Scholar.

30. Rodgers, Daniel T., Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Thelen, David, “The Nation and Beyond: Transnational Perspectives on United States History,” Journal of American History 86, no. 3 (1999): 965–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Singh, Nikhil Pal, Black Is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Werner, Michael and Zimmermann, Bénédicte, “Beyond Comparison: Histoire Croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity,” History and Theory 45, no. 1 (2006): 30–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tyrrell, Ian, Transnational Nation: United States History in Global Perspective Since 1789 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Seigel, Micol, Uneven Encounters: Making Race and Nation in Brazil and the United States (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31. Mills, Charles, The Racial Contract (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Fredrickson, George M., Racism: A Short History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Hirschman, Charles, “The Origins and Demise of the Concept of Race,” Population and Development Review 30, no. 3 (2004): 385–415CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baum, Bruce, The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race: A Political History of Racial Identity (New York: New York University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Smedley, Audrey, Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview, 3rd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Lake, Marilyn and Reynolds, Henry, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men's Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hesse, Barnor, “Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The Postracial Horizon,” South Atlantic Quarterly 110, no. 1 (2011): 155–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32. Hanchard, Michael and Chung, Erin Aeran, “From Race Relations to Comparative Racial Politics: A Survey of Cross-National Scholarship on Race in the Social Sciences,” Du Bois Review 1, no. 2 (2004): 331CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33. Berg, Manfred and Wendt, Simon, eds., Racism in the Modern World: Historical Perspectives on Cultural Transfer and Adaptation (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011)Google Scholar; Anievas, Alexander, Manchanda, Nivi, and Shilliam, Robbie, eds., Race and Racism in International Relations: Confronting the Global Colour Line (London: Routledge, 2015)Google Scholar.

34. Canada, Statistics, Canada Year Book 2007, Ethnic Diversity and Immigration (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 2007)Google Scholar.

35. Eric Grenier, “21.9% of Canadians Are Immigrants, the Highest Share in 85 Years: StatsCan,” Globe and Mail, October 27, 2017, http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/census-2016-immigration-1.4368970.

36. Cooper, Afua, The Hanging of Angélique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montreal (Toronto: HarperCollins, 2006)Google Scholar; McKittrick, Katherine, Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), ch. 4Google Scholar.

37. Walker, James W. St. G., “Race,” Rights, and the Law in the Supreme Court of Canada: Historical Case Studies (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Backhouse, Constance, Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Thobani, Sunera, Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Henry, Frances and Tator, Carol, The Colour of Democracy: Racism in Canadian Society, 4th ed. (Toronto: Harcourt Brace, 2010)Google Scholar; Walker, Barrington, Race on Trial: Black Defendants in Ontario's Criminal Courts, 1858–1958 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maynard, Robyn, Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present (Halifax, NS: Fernwood, 2017)Google Scholar.

38. Hawkins, Freda, Critical Years in Immigration: Canada and Australia Compared (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Knowles, Valerie, Strangers at Our Gates: Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy, 1540–1990 (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Kelley, Ninette and Trebilcock, Michael, The Making of the Mosaic: A History of Canadian Immigration Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Triadafilopoulos, Becoming Multicultural.

39. Leslie, John and Maguire, Ron, The Historical Development of the Indian Act (Ottawa: Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, 1978)Google Scholar; Registration, Indian and Directorate, Band Lists, The Indian Act, Past and Present: A Manual on Registration and Entitlement Legislation (Ottawa: Indian Registration and Band Lists Directorate, 1991)Google Scholar.

40. Alfred, Taiaiake, Wasa'se: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Green, Joyce, ed., Making Space for Indigenous Feminism (Black Point, NS: Fernwood, 2007)Google Scholar; Simpson, Leanne, Dancing on Our Turtle's Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg ReCreation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence (Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Coulthard, Glen, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Simpson, Audra, Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Border of Settler States (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Canada's Residential Schools: The Legacy, Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, vol. 5 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2015)Google Scholar.

42. Represented by the acronym 2SLGBTQQIA, or Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, and asexual.

43. Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (Vancouver: Privy Council Office, 2019), https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/final-report/.

44. Porter, John, The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class and Power in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45. Keith Banting and Debra Thompson, “The Puzzling Persistence of Racial Inequality in Canada,” in The Double Bind: the Politics of Racial and Class Inequalities in the Americas, Report of the American Political Science Association Presidential Task Force on Racial and Class Inequalities in the Americas [APSA], ed. Juliet Hooker and Alvin Tillery (Washington, DC: APSA, 2016), 105.

46. Dawson, Michael, Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African American Political Ideologies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 25Google Scholar. For a coalition-centered definition of racial orders, see King, Desmond and Smith, Rogers, “Racial Orders in American Political Development,” American Political Science Review 99, no. 1 (2005): 75–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47. Notable works include Smith, Rogers M., Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; King, Desmond S., In the Name of Liberalism: Illiberal Social Policy in the USA and Britain (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lieberman, “Ideas, Institutions, and Political Order”; Lowndes et al., Race and American Political Development; 2008; King, Desmond and Smith, Rogers M., Still a House Divided: Race and Politics in Obama's America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Francis, Megan Ming, Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013)Google Scholar; Murakawa, Naomi, The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014)Google Scholar; Johnson, “The Color Line and the State”; Frymer, Paul, Building an American Empire: The Era of Territorial and Political Expansion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017)Google Scholar; Thurston, Chloe, At the Boundaries of Homeownership: Credit, Discrimination, and the American State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48. Omi, Michael and Winant, Howard, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1994)Google Scholar.

49. For overviews, see Hanchard and Chung, “From Race Relations to Comparative Racial Politics,” and Weiner, Melissa F., “Towards a Critical Global Race Theory,” Sociology Compass 6, no. 4 (2012): 332–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50. Brubaker, Rogers, “Ethnicity, Race, and Nationalism,” Annual Review of Sociology 35 (2009): 21–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51. Katznelson, Ira, Black Men, White Cities: Race, Politics, and Migration in the United States, 1900–30, and Great Britain, 1948–68 (London: Oxford University Press, 1973)Google Scholar; Fredrickson, George, White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Fredrickson, George, The Comparative Imagination: On the History of Racism, Nationalism, and Social Movements (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Marx, Making Race and Nation; Winant, Howard, The World Is a Ghetto: Race and Democracy Since World War II (New York: Basic Books, 2001)Google Scholar; Bleich, Erik, Race Politics in Britain and France: Ideas and Policymaking Since the 1960s (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lieberman, Shaping Race Policy; Sawyer, Mark Q., Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Paschel, Tianna S., Becoming Black Political Subjects: Movements and Ethno-Racial Rights in Colombia and Brazil (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016)Google Scholar; Clealand, Danielle Pilar, The Power of Race in Cuba: Racial Ideology and Black Consciousness During the Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hanchard, Michael, The Spectre of Race: How Discrimination Haunts Western Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018)Google Scholar.

52. Lee, Sharon M., “Racial Classifications in the U.S. Census: 1890–1990,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 16, no. 1 (1993): 75–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nobles, Melissa, Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Robbin, Alice, “Classifying Racial and Ethnic Group Data in the United States: The Politics of Negotiation and Accommodation,” Journal of Government Information 27 (2000): 139–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hochschild and Powell, “Racial Reorganization and the United States Census”; King and Smith, Still a House Divided; Hochschild, Jennifer L., Weaver, Vesla, and Burch, Traci, Creating a New Racial Order: How Immigration, Multiculturalism, Genomics, and the Young Can Remake Race in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Prewitt, Kenneth, What Is Your Race? The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013)Google Scholar; Loveman, Mara, National Colors: Racial Classification and the State in Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53. In their oft-cited work on racial formation, Omi and Winant define racial project as “simultaneously an interpretation, representation or explanation of racial dynamics, and an effort to reorganize and redistribute resources along particular racial lines.” Omi and Winant, Racial Formation, 56, emphasis in original.

54. Smith, Miriam, “Diversity and Canadian Political Development: Presidential Address to the Canadian Political Science Association,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 42, no. 4 (2009), 841CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Thompson, Debra, “Is Race Political?” Canadian Journal of Political Science 41, no. 3 (2008): 525–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nath, Nisha, “Defining Narratives of Identity in Canadian Political Science: Accounting for the Absence of Race,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 44, no. 1 (2011): 161–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Abu-Laban, Yasmeen, “Narrating Canadian Political Science: Toward a Revisionist History: Presidential Address to the Canadian Political Science Association,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 50, no. 4 (2017): 895–919CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55. Ibid, p. 835. See also Lucas, Jack and Vipond, Robert, “Back to the Future: Historical Political Science and the Promise of Canadian Political Development,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 50, no. 1 (2017): 219–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56. Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins of Nationalism, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 1991), 163–64Google Scholar; Scott, James, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 81–82Google Scholar.

57. Curtis, Bruce, “The Canada ‘Blue Books’ and the Administrative Capacity of the Canadian State, 1822–67,” Canadian Historical Review 74, no. 4 (1993): 535–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Preston, Sarah, “The Colonial Blue Books: A Major Resource in the Royal Commonwealth Society Library,” Bulletin of the Friends of Cambridge University Library 26–27 (2006–2007)Google Scholar, accessed June 24, 2016, https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/departments/royal-commonwealth-society/catalogues-remote-access/rcs-official/rcs-0/rcs-2.

58. Appadurai, Arjun, “Number in the Colonial Imagination,” in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament, ed. Breckenridge, Carol A. and Veer, Peter van der (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 314–39Google Scholar.

59. Levitan, Kathrin, A Cultural History of the British Census: Envisioning the Multitude in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 154CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60. Ibid., 161.

61. Ibid., 147.

62. Christopher, Anthony J., “Race and the Census in the Commonwealth,” Population, Space and Place 11 (2005), 105CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63. Christopher, Anthony J., “The Quest for a Census of the British Empire, c. 1840–1940,” Journal of Historical Geography 34, no. 2 (2008), 274CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64. Curtis, The Politics of Population, 46–91.

65. Upper Canada became Canada West and Lower Canada became Canada East until they were each renamed during Confederation in 1867.

66. Levitan, A Cultural History of the British Census, 155.

67. Estimates indicate that the population of Canada West in 1842 was 487,053, while the population of Canada East in 1844 was 697,084. By 1860–61, the respective populations were 1,396,091 in Canada West and 1,111,566 in Canada East. Clearly, the accuracy of population estimates from this time is questionable. Statistics Canada, Introduction to the Censuses of Canada, 1665 to 1871, accessed March 27, 2020, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/98-187-x/98-187-x2000001-eng.pdf.

68. Curtis, Politics of Population, 46–91.

69. Willcox, Walter F., “Development of International Statistics,” The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 27, no. 2 (1949): 143–53CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

70. Kennedy, Joseph Camp Griffith, “The Origin and Progress of Statistics,” Journal of American Geographical and Statistical Society 2 (1860): 92–120Google Scholar.

71. Randeraad, Nico, “The International Statistical Congress (1853–1876): Knowledge Transfers and Their Limits,” European History Quarterly 41, no. 1 (2011), 62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72. Nixon, James William, A History of the International Statistical Institute, 1885–1960 (The Hague: International Statistical Institute, 1960), 6–10Google Scholar.

73. Ibid., 7; Willcox, “Development of International Statistics,” 145.

74. Quoted in Nixon, History of the International Statistical Institute, 7.

75. Curtis, Politics of Population, 11.

76. Ibid., 21–22; Worton, David A., The Dominion Bureau of Statistics: A History of Canada's Central Statistical Office and Its Antecedents, 1841–1972 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1998), 13Google Scholar.

77. Walker, James W. St. G., The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783–1870 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

78. Quoted in Curtis, Politics of Population, 55–64.

79. Ibid., 94.

80. Gould, Stephen Jay, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981)Google Scholar; Stepan, Nancy, The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain, 1800–1960 (Oxford: Macmillan, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Young, Robert, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London: Routledge, 1995)Google Scholar; Hirschman, “The Origins and Demise of the Concept of Race”; Baum, The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race; Smedley, Race in North America.

81. Morton, Samuel, Crania Americana; or, a Comparative View of the Skulls of Various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America: To Which Is Prefixed an Essay on the Varieties of the Human Species (Philadelphia: J. Dobson, 1839)Google Scholar; Nott, Josiah C., “Diversity of the Human Race,” Debow's Review 10 (1851): 113–32Google Scholar; Agassiz, Louis, “Sketch of the Natural Provinces of the Animal World and Their Relation to the Different Types of Man,” in Types of Mankind: Or, Ethnological Researches, Based upon the Ancient Monuments, Paintings, Sculptures, and Crania of Races, and upon Their Natural, Geographical, Philological, and Biblical History, ed. Nott, J. and Gliddon, G. (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1854)Google Scholar; Nott, Josiah C. and Gliddon, G. R., Types of Mankind: Or, Ethnological Researches, Based upon the Ancient Monuments, Paintings, Sculptures, and Crania of Races, and upon Their Natural, Geographical, Philological, and Biblical History (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1854)Google Scholar; de Gobineau, Joseph Arthur, The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races, with Particular Reference to Their Respective Influence in the Civil and Political History of Mankind (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1856)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82. Landon, Fred, “The Negro Migration to Canada after the Passing of the Fugitive Slave Act,” Journal of Negro History 5, no. 1 (1920), 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is unclear how many blacks were actually in Ontario in 1850s and 1860s. The Anti-Slavery Society assumed in 1852 that the black population was approximately 30,000. Samuel Howe concluded in 1863 that there were no more than 15,000 to 20,000 blacks living in the province, though he admitted that most contemporaries thought the figure to be much higher. The 1861 Census Report gave a population of 11,223, but census rolls include entries on 17,053 blacks in Canada West (Ontario) alone. A decade later, the 1871 Census recorded approximately 13,500. See Wayne, Michael, “The Black Population of Canada West on the Eve of the American Civil War: A Reassessment Based on the Manuscript Census of 1861,” Histoire sociale/Social History 28, no. 56 (1995): 465–85Google Scholar.

83. Gagan, David P., “Enumerator's Instructions for the Census of Canada, 1852 and 1861,” Histoire sociale/Social History 7, no. 14 (1974), 360Google Scholar.

84. Howe, Samuel G., The Refugees from Slavery in Canada West: Report to the Freedmen's Inquiry Commission (Boston: Wright and Potter Printers, 1864), 18Google Scholar; Furrow, Matthew, “Samuel Gridley Howe, the Black Population of Canada West, and the Racial Ideology of the ‘Blueprint for Radical Reconstruction,’” Journal of American History 97, no. 2 (2010): 344–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85. Thompson, Debra, “Racial Ideas and Gendered Intimacies: The Regulation of Interracial Relationships in North America,” Social and Legal Studies 18, no. 3 (2009): 353–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86. Curtis, Politics of Population, 109.

87. Randeraad, “The International Statistical Congress,” 54.

88. Ibid.; Nixon, A History of the International Statistical Institute.

89. Cohen, Patricia Cline, A Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Porter, Theodore M., The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820–1900 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Stigler, Stephen M., The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty before 1900 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Woolf, Stuart, “Statistics and the Modern State,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 31, no. 3 (1989): 588–604CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hacking, Ian, The Taming of Chance (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schweber, Libby, Disciplining Statistics: Demography and Vital Statistics in England and France, 1830–1885 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90. Curtis, Politics of Population, 238.

91. Ibid, 247.

92. Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Eighth Census of Canada, 1941: Administrative Report of the Dominion Statistician (Ottawa: King's Printer, 1941), 10.

93. Curtis, Politics of Population, 261.

94. Worton, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, 4, 17.

95. Thompson, “Is Race Political?” 530.

96. Triadafilopoulos, Triadafilos, “Building Walls, Bounding Nations: Migration and Exclusion in Canada and Germany, 1870–1939,” Journal of Historical Sociology 17, no. 4 (2004), 390CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

97. Thompson, John Herd and Weinfeld, Morton, “Entry and Exit: Canadian Immigration Policy in Context,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 538 (1995), 186CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

98. Canadian promotional activities also took place across Europe at this time but were stymied by European governments that were opposed to the emigration of their nationals. For example, Russia forbade the emigration of its citizenry, and emigration propaganda was prohibited in Germany, Austria-Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, the Scandinavian countries and was restricted in Belgium and France. Kelley and Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic, 80.

99. Ibid., 107.

100. Triadafilopoulos, “Building Walls, Bounding Nations,” 396. The bias against Central and Eastern Europeans is illustrated in the words of Frank Oliver, Sifton's successor as minister of the Interior: “There is nothing we more earnestly resent than the idea of settling up the country with people who will be a drag on our civilization and progress. We did not go out to that country simply to produce wheat. We went to build up a nation, a civilization a social system that we could enjoy, be proud of and transmit to our children; and we resent the idea of having the millstone of this Slav population hung around our necks in our efforts to build up, beautify and improve this country, and so improve the whole of Canada.” Cited in Hawkins, Critical Years in Immigration, 8.

101. House of Commons, Debates, May 12, 1882, 1477 (Can.).

102. Kelley and Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic, 94–98.

103. Ward, Peter W., White Canada Forever: Popular Attitudes and Public Policy toward Orientals in British Columbia, 2nd ed. (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Backhouse, Constance, “The White Women's Labor Laws: Anti-Chinese Racism in Early Twentieth-Century Canada,” Law and History Review 14, no. 2 (1996): 315–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

104. Leslie and Maguire, The Historical Development of the Indian Act, 23.

105. Indian Registration and Band Lists Directorate, The Indian Act, Past and Present, 7–19.

106. Lawrence, Bonita, “Gender, Race, and the Regulation of Native Identity in Canada and the United States: An Overview,” Hypatia 18, no. 2 (2003), 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

107. Hesse, “Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.”

108. Scott, Corrie, “How French Canadians Became White Folks, or Doing Things with Race in Quebec,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 39, no. 7 (2016): 1283–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

109. Pierre Vallières, Nègres blanc d'amérique, autobiographie précode d'un ‘terroriste’ Québécois/White Niggers of America: The Precocious Autobiography of a Quebec ‘Terrorist,’ trans. Joan Pinkham (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1971).

110. Census of Canada 1870–71 (Ottawa: I. B. Taylor, 1871).

111. Curtis, Politics of Population, 285–86.

112. Ibid., 285.

113. Prévost, Jean-Guy and Beaud, Jean-Pierre, Statistics, Public Debate and the State, 1800–1945 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012), 63–90Google Scholar.

114. Coats, Robert Hamilton, “Beginnings in Canadian Statistics,” Canadian Historical Review 27, no. 2 (1946): 109–130CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Worton, Dominion Bureau of Statistics.

115. Eugenics was truly a global movement both in terms of the proliferation of the discourse and its political consequences. Though the most violent and coercive implementation of eugenicist policies occurred in Nazi Germany preceding and during the Second World War, at the turn of the century eugenics received wide and popular support. Varying eugenic policies were proposed or implemented in Canada, the United States, Great Britain, Sweden, the Soviet Union, Germany, Australia, Norway, France, Finland, Denmark, Japan, Iceland, and Switzerland. The transnationalism of eugenicist ideas is also evidenced by the three international eugenics conferences organized by the British Eugenics Education Society and the U.S. Department of State, held in London in 1912, New York in 1921, and New York in 1932 with participants from around the world. See, for example, Adams, Mark B., ed., The Wellborn Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil and Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Stepan, Nancy, The Hour of Eugenics: Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Dikötter, Frank, The Discourse of Race in Modern China (London: Hurst, 1992)Google Scholar; Kevles, Daniel J., In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Larson, Edward John, Sex, Race, and Science: Eugenics in the Deep South (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Spektorowski, Alberto, “The Eugenic Temptation in Socialism: Sweden, Germany, and the Soviet Union,” Comparative Studies in History and Society 46, no. 1 (2004): 84–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bashford, Alison and Levine, Phillippa, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Hansen, Randall and King, Desmond, Sterilized by the State: Eugenics, Race, and the Population Scare in Twentieth-Century North America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

116. McLaren, Angus, Our Own Master Race: Eugenics in Canada, 1885–1945 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1992), 24Google Scholar.

117. Woodsworth, James S., Strangers within Our Gates, or Coming Canadians (Toronto: Doreen Stephens, 1909)Google Scholar.

118. Kelley and Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic, 134–35.

119. McLaren, Our Own Master Race, 48; Valverde, Mariana, The Age of Light, Soap, and Water: Moral Reform in English Canada, 1885–1925 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 107–108Google Scholar.

120. Siegfried, André, The Race Question in Canada (London: Eveleigh Nash, 1907)Google Scholar. See also Henri Bourassa (1913) “Le langue française et l'avenir de notre race” (the French language and the future of our race) and even the much later 1968 autobiography of Vallières, Nègres blanc d'amérique/White Niggers of America.

121. Baum, Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race.

122. Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Sixth Census of Canada, 1921: Instructions to Commissioners and Enumerators (Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1921).

123. “Nationality, Orientals and Others,” letter from R. H. Coats, Dominion Statistician, to Dr. Helen R. Y. Reid, Chairman, Division on Immigration, National Committee for Mental Hygiene, December 10, 1930, National Archives of Canada (NAC), RG31 Accession 1989–90/133, box 29, file 7267.

124. Census and Statistics Office, Fifth Census of Canada, 1911: Instructions to Officers, Commissioners, and Enumerators (Ottawa: King's Printer, 1911), 27.

125. Memorandum for Dr. Coats, The Necessity of Taking the Eighth Decennial Census of Canada in 1941, November 27, 1939, NAC RG31, vol. 1417, Records of the Assistant Dominion Statistician, Census Material, 1891–1940.

126. “Nationality, Orientals and Others,” Letter to R. B. Bennett, from H. Langley, Secretary, Maple Leaf Association, January 7, 1931, NAC RG31 Accession 1989–90/133, box 29, file 7267.

127. “Nationality, Orientals and Others,” Memorandum for Mr. Macphail, Chief, Division of Census and Vital Statistics, from R. H. Coats, Dominion Statistician, May 26, 1932, Re: Letter to the Canadian National Committee for Mental Hygiene, NAC RG31 Accession 1989–90/133, box 29, file 7267.

128. Memorandum for Mr. Coats, from Chief, General Statistics Branch, May 12, 1926, NAC RG31, vol. 1417, Records of the Assistant Dominion Statistician, Racial Origin.

129. Fourth Census of Canada, 1901: Instructions to Chief Officers, Commissioners and Enumerators (Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1901), 14.

130. Memorandum for the Honourable Minister of Trade and Commerce—the Northwest Census of Population and Agriculture, 1916, and Cognate Subjects, September 16, 1915, NAC RG31, vol. 1417, Records of the Assistant Dominion Statistician, Census Material 1891–1940.

131. Andersen, Chris, “From Nation to Population: The Racialisation of the ‘Métis’ in the Canadian Census,” Nations and Nationalisms 14, no. 2 (2008): 347–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

132. Memorandum for the Honourable Minister of Trade and Commerce—the Northwest Census of Population and Agriculture, 1916, and Cognate Subjects, September 16, 1915, NAC RG31, vol. 1417, Records of the Assistant Dominion Statistician, Census Material 1891–1940.

133. Titley, E. Brian, A Narrow Vision: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Administration of Indian Affairs in Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

134. Thompson, “Racial Ideas and Gendered Intimacies.”

135. Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Sixth Census of Canada, 1921.

136. Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Seventh Census of Canada, 1931: Instructions to Commissioners and Enumerators (Ottawa: King's Printer, 1931); Eighth Census of Canada, 1941.

137. McLaren, Our Own Master Race.

138. Tanser, H. A., “Intelligence of Negroes of Mixed Blood in Canada,” The Journal of Negro Education 10, no. 4 (1941): 650–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

139. House of Commons, Debates, May 8, 1922, 1555 (Can.).

140. Barkan, Elazar, The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States between the World Wars (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

141. Klinkner, Philip and Smith, Rogers, The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

142. Boas, Franz, The Mind of Primitive Man (New York: Macmillan, 1911)Google Scholar. Note that the challenge to biological racialism in the academy, including the extensive body of work produced by W. E. B. Du Bois, predated the Second World War, but was only taken up in the postwar era.

143. UNESCO, The Race Question (Paris: UNESCO, 1950).

144. Lauren, Paul Gordon, Power and Prejudice: The Politics and Diplomacy of Racial Discrimination, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Füredi, Frank, The Silent War: Imperialism and the Changing Perception of Race (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

145. Dudziak, Mary, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Borstelmann, Thomas, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

146. Memorandum Re: Population Card, Cabinet Document No. 139-50, May 6, 1950, NAC RG2 vol. 148, file D-25-3-C, Privy Council Office of Canada, Department of Trade and Commerce, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Census, 1951.

147. Letter from Herbert Marshall, Dominion Statistician to M. W. Mackenzie, Deputy Minister, Department of Trade and Commerce, March 10, 1950, NAC RG31 vol. 1517, file 123, Records of the Assistant Dominion Statistician (Walter Duffet) 1961 Census—Origin or Ethnic Question.

148. Ibid.

149. Clément, Dominique, Canada's Rights Revolution: Social Movements and Social Change, 1937–1982 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Triadafilopoulos, Becoming Multicultural.

150. Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Census of Canada, 1951: Instructions to Commissioners and Enumerators (Ottawa: King's Printer, 1951).

151. Ninth Census of Canada, 1951: Volume X, General Review and Summary Tables (Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1956), 138.

152. Ibid., 128.

153. Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Census of Canada, 1951, 44.

154. Ninth Census of Canada, 1951, 131.

155. Haque, Eve, Multiculturalism Within a Bilingual Framework: Language, Race, and Belonging in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

156. House of Commons, Debates, April 30, 1946, 1043–46 (Can.).

157. Ibid.

158. House of Commons, Debates, May 25, 1959, 3975–76 (Can.). See also January 20, 1961, 1280–89; January 23, 1961, 1301–302; January 24, 1961, 1356–57; May 4, 1961, 4352–54.

159. January 6, 1959, NAC RG2 vol. 2744, Cabinet Conclusions, 1959. January 6, 1959, no. 2-59.

160. Though “Canadian” was an acceptable answer to the origin question on the 1951 census, only those respondents who insisted on the designation to enumerators were counted in this way. Prior to 1951 neither “Canadian” nor “American” were considered acceptable racial origins.

161. House of Commons, Debates, April 30, 1946, 1043–46 (Can.).

162. François-Albert Angers, “Entre Nous” [Between Ourselves], L'Action Nationale, 47, no. 9-10 (May-June 1959) [trans.].

163. Queries about the Census Origin Question, April 28, 1961, NAC RG31 vol. 1517, file 123, Records of the Assistant Dominion Statistician (Walter Duffett) 1961 Census—Origin or Ethnic Question.

164. Letter from C. D. Howe, Minister of Trade and Commerce, to Louis St-Laurent, Prime Minister, May 6, 1950, NAC RG2 vol. 148, file D-25-3-C, Privy Council Office of Canada, Department of Trade and Commerce, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Census, 1951.

165. Kelly, Karen, Collecting Census Data on Canada's Visible Minority Population: A Historical Perspective (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 1995)Google Scholar.

166. Thompson, The Schematic State, ch. 5.

167. Prévost and Beaud, Statistics, Public Debate and the State.

168. Fox, Cybelle and Guglielmo, Thomas A., “Defining America's Racial Boundaries: Blacks, Mexicans, and European Immigrants, 1850–1945,” American Journal of Sociology 118, no. 2 (2012): 327–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

169. Banting and Thompson, “The Puzzling Persistence of Racial Inequality in Canada.”

170. Ibid.

171. King and Smith, Still a House Divided.

172. Francis, Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State.

173. Smith, “Diversity and Canadian Political Development,” 849.