African Fiscal Systems as Sources for Demographic History: the Case of Central Angola, 1799–1920

Abstract

In evaluating statistical information found in reports of European travellers, historians have not paid sufficient attention to the possibility that African states possessed reasonably competent fiscal systems. This is demonstrated by a study of the demographic information about the central highlands of Angola collected in the 1850s by the Hungarian traveller Lázló Magyar, who probably used oral fiscal records about the numbers of villages in the area to make a detailed series of population estimates.Our study of the population data left by Magyar suggests that it is reliable and can be used to show population trends in central Africa from 1800 to 1900. Population appears to have increased rapidly in the central highlands during this period, probably because of the importation of slaves, while it decreased dramatically after 1850 in the lands of the Lunda empire to the east.