How many inhabitants existed in the Portuguese Overseas Empire in 1800? What was the weight of the slave population in those territories? Were there more Europeans in Angola or in the Portuguese India? And which where the regions with higher rates of mortality?
Based on an extensive set of statistical maps issued by order of the Portuguese Crown from 1776 onwards, the research team of the Counting Colonial Populations. Demography and the use of statistics in the Portuguese Empire, 1776-1875 project intents to answer to several of these questions. The “International Workshop The Demography of the Portuguese Empire. Sources, methods and results, 1776-1822” corresponds to the first global meeting of the research team.
A group of specialist – among historians, demographers and staticians – convenes to discuss the first demographical monographs of the Portuguese colonial territories. Starting from a common structure, these demographical studies seek to offer a first picture of the colonial populations, with emphasis on the quantity and quality of the sources, and the social composition of the inhabitants and their demographical behaviour.
Organised by
CHAM / NOVA FCSH | UAc
