Rarotonga Population from Contact to the 1880s

Abstract

International audience

A rapid conversion of Rarotonga's population allows using missionary data on baptisms and deaths of converts as civil registration data on births and deaths, from the late 1830s. In 1830, a year affected by a dysentery, the population declined by about 25 per cent. There was a severe mortality crisis in 1838-1843, due to tuberculous cervical lymphadenitis, a disease that also affected Tahiti, the Marquesas and Maui. The good quality of data enables us to assess population trends during the crisis, which is a unique case in Pacific islands in the first half of the 19 th century. Decline rates reached 10 per cent yearly during the crisis and were still 2.7 per cent in 1844-1848, resulting nearly in a halving of the population. Decline continued at about 3 per cent until 1854 and deaths still excessed births in the 1870s, and probably later, due to minor epidemics and lingering endemic diseases. But in-and out-migration do not allow to assess later decline from censuses. We retrodicted population from the 1854 census, based on missionary reports on dysentery, a war, famines and widespread endemic diseases reported from their arrival in 1823, and estimate the population at about 12,000 in 1820 and there are estimates of 13,000 in the contact-era. Decline is 87.5 per cent to 1880. Thus, constant decline is well assessed for most of the 19 th century. A similar situation occurred in Hawai'i, based on census data from 1831, and for Tahiti from the late 18 th century based on missionary reports and estimates, and official censuses from 1848 to 1881. Population density was 194 persons per sq/km at contact.