On the Contact Population of Hispaniola: History as Higher Mathematics

THE most dramatic recent development in Latin American historical demography has been the changing interpretation of the size of the population of the New World at the arrival of the Europeans.2 Figures as much as ten times greater than those most commonly advanced only a few decades ago are widely accepted today. In this trend the work of Sherburne Cook and Woodrow Borah, particularly for central Mexico, has been exceptionally influential, as shown by the incorporation of their postulated figures into works of a general nature.3 Willingness to accept extremely high population figures (seventy-five million or more) for the aboriginal New World appears to have reached a point where proponents of middle-range figures (thirty-five to seventy-five million) often seem to be functioning as devil's advocates, while those favoring even lower figures are voices crying in the proverbial wilderness. Why such a consensus is developing is not at all clear, but it would seem to be attributable in part to the tenacity of the advocates of a high population and in part to bedazzlement by their extensive use of quantitative tools. In any case, it is not principally the result of any