A reopening of the discussion on the Borah and Cook pre-Columbian figures was long overdue. It is very much to the credit of David Henige and the HAHR that an opportunity should now be offered for a reappraisal of those estimates. Professor Henige points out the unusual character of the pre-Colui-nbian estimates and mentions that they are up to ten times higher than the values previously accepted by historians. This is certainly important, but it seems even more important and appropriate that the Borah and Cook estimates should be considered in a wider demographic context. The eight million estimated by Borah and Cook would give Hispaniola the same as Spain and twice the of the British Isles in the sixteenth century. Similarly, the twenty-five million they estimate for central Mexico (covering a surface of about a quarter of present-day Mexico) is approximately half the value recorded for China at that time and equivalent to the of all the European possessions of Charles V, from Germany to Spain.' In the context of present-day populations, Hispaniola reached the 1492 figure only in the last censuses of 1970 and 1971. Central Mexico had a of only twenty million in 1900 and would not have reached the 1518 figure until the last census of 1970 (after more than forty years of population explosion), in spite of the enormity of the metropolis of Mexico City with a of over seven million.2
Read full abstract
Jan 1, 1982
+ 1
Open Access