Patterns of population decline following European contact and colonization: The cases of Tahiti and the Marquesas

Abstract

Recent archaeological data assess that Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands were densely populated at contact with the Europeans and then experienced a tremendous decline. This phenomenon is most often attributed to epidemics, while a steady negative increase is rarely mentioned. This paper shows that the population of Tahiti was most probably around 110,000 – or even reached 180,000 – at contact, based on a retrodiction from the 1881 census using data on epidemic mortality and annual decline rates observed in the second half of the nineteenth century in Tahiti, the Marquesas, and other Eastern Polynesian islands in similar situations, according to missionary, administrative, and medical reports. Our ‘model’, or reconstitution, provides estimates on the impact of both types of mortality. Due to no exposure to childhood and other diseases common on the continents, the Polynesians had low immunity, as shown by age-specific death rates until the 1918 flu and the 1951 measles epidemics. Following the European contact, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), tuberculosis (TB), and other introduced infectious diseases resulted in a steady population decline due to reduced birth rates and very high death rates. Health services were available for the Europeans soon after the takeover, however the natives got access to health services much later with their sporadic and fragmental provision. The constant negative increase extended far beyond the colonial period, including after effective drugs were discovered in the 1880s, becoming the main contributor to the overall demographic decline in the Marquesas, where health services were missing most of the time before 1924, mostly in the South-Eastern group.