Collection Cahiers du CIEQ
Sous la direction de Richard Marcoux
en collaboration avec Jennifer Dion
Presses de l'Université Laval (PUL), 2009

ACHETER LE LIVRE NUMÉRIQUE >
 

Comprend la Déclaration de
Québec sur la sauvegarde
et la mise en valeur des
recensements africains

TÉLÉCHARGER [PDF] >
AUTRES COMMENTAIRES

 

« Mémoires et démographie. Regards croisés au Nord et au Sud represents the latest collective installment in efforts to understand the histories of population in Africa, and the first undertaking spearheaded by demographers, and notably Richard Marcoux. The earliest initiatives, by historians, demographers, and other social scientists, date to 1977 and 1981 when proceedings appeared from the seminal conferences on African historical demography convened at the Centre of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Thematic issues of Cahiers d’études africaines and Annales de démographie historique followed in 1987. Two more focused essay collections followed in a volume that I edited with the late Joel W. Gregory in 1987 and another edited by Bruce Fetter in 1990.1 It is my fervent hope that Mémoires et démographie will encourage other scholars—and demographers in particular—to follow in what has become a persistent, if low-profile mission to understand better African populations in what the revered English historical demographer Peter Laslett called “past time.”2 Indeed, another new edited volume, The Demographics of Empire, edited by Karl Ittmann, Dennis D. Cordell, and Gregory Maddox will join Memoires et demographie in late 2010.3 I congratulate Richard Marcoux and Jennifer Dion, along with all my colleagues and friends who have contributed to this fine collection. Do let us continue. We all know that African populations have a history, even if the evidence available for understanding it does not always take the forms that are familiar to us today. »

Dennis Cordell, Professor of History and Adjunct Professor of Anthropology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, USA

1 Christopher Fyfe and David McMaster (editors), African Historical Demography, v.1., v.2; Cahiers d’études africaines  (Démographie historique) 28, 1-2, No 105/106 (1987); Annales de démographie historique 1987 (Paris, 1988); Dennis D. Cordell and Joel W. Gregory (editors), African Population and Capitalism: Historical Perspectives (Madison:; The University of Wisconsin Press, 1994); Bruce Fetter (editor), Demography from Scanty Evidence (Boulder: Lynn Rienner, 1990).
2 Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost: England before the Industrial Age (New York: Scribner, 1965).
3 Karl Ittmann, Dennis D. Cordell, and Gregory H. Maddox (editors), The Demographics of Empire: The Colonial  Order and the Creation of Knowledge in Africa (Athens and London: Oho University Press, In press).