The British Empire

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X.—THE BRITISH EMPIRE.

The British Empire may be considered as consisting of three portions; firstly, the United Kingdom; secondly, British India and Ceylon; and, thirdly, all other British Possessions, Dependencies, and Colonies.

The population of the United Kingdom, as we have already seen, amounted in 1881 to 34,884,848 persons. The population of Ceylon and British India, exclusive of the Feudatory and Native States, was 206,837,886; while the inhabitants of the remaining Dependencies, Possessions, and Colonies, numbered 12,464,896. Thus the aggregate population of the whole Empire consisted of 254,187,630 persons, a total which would be increased to 304,005,549, and would fall very little short of the estimated population of the whole of Europe, were it thought proper to include in the British Empire the Feudatory and Native States of India with their 49,817,919 inhabitants (see Appendix A., Tables 47 and 48).

In 1871 the population of the British Empire, excluding these Indian States, was reckoned at 234,802,593¹ persons, so that the increase in the course of the decade 1871-81, whether by growth of former dependencies or by the addition of new dependencies, amounted to 19,385,037 persons, being in the ratio of 8.3 per cent.

The 19,385,037 persons who were added to the population were distributed as in the following Summary and Comparative Table:—

—			Population in 1871.	Population in 1881.	Increase.	Rate of Increase per cent.
UNITED KINGDOM			31,484,661	34,884,848	3,400,187	10.80
COLONIES, POSSESSIONS, DEPENDENCIES:—
	In Europe*		320,851	327,805	6,954	2.17
	In North America		3,829,670	4,520,415	690,745	18.04
	In West Indies and Central America		1,088,596	1,243,861	155,265	14.26
	In South America		194,294	254,532	60,238	31.00
	In Africa		1,813,450	2,579,163	765,713	42.22
	In Asia:—
		British India†	191,307,070	204,108,762	12,801,692	6.69
		Ceylon	2,405,287	2,763,984	358,697	14.91
		Straits and Other Settlements	433,119	590,084	156,965	36.24
	In Australasia		1,925,595	2,914,176	988,581	51.34
BRITISH EMPIRE			234,802,593	254,187,630	19,385,037	8.26
* Including the Islands in the British Seas. † Aden and Perim are here included in order to facilitate comparison with the figures for 1871, when no separate return was made of the population of those places.

The territory occupied by the 254,187,630 inhabitants of the British Empire is estimated as consisting of slightly over eight millions of English square miles, an area more than twice as large as Europe, larger than North America, almost half as large as Asia, and not very far short of one-sixth of the land surface of the earth. Of these eight millions of square miles, somewhat more than three and a half millions are in America, and form nearly a quarter of that continent; three millions more square miles are in Australasia; somewhat less than a million are in Asia; a quarter of a million are in Africa; while the portion that lies in Europe constitutes a very inconsiderable fraction of the whole, amounting to no more than 120,960 square miles, of which 120,537 form the United Kingdom.

We have the honour to be,

Sir,

Your most obedient Servants,

BRYDGES P. HENNIKER, Registrar General. WILLIAM CLODE. WILLIAM OGLE.

F. J. WILLIAMS, Secretary.

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¹ The figure given in the Census Report of 1871 was 234,762,593. To this, however, have to be added 40,000 as the mean estimated number of native Indians in British Columbia. See Census Report 1871, vol. iv. p. 162, foot-note.

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