The Star Online (http://www.thestar.com.my)
Interesting facts, 4 July 2010
NATIONS have been counting their citizens for centuries. Governments of every era have recognised the need to collect information on their most valuable asset: people. Slaves, peasants and serfs, nobles, clergymen and monarchs have all taken part in censuses.
•Archaeologists have unearthed ancient records of censuses in Egypt dating back to 3000BCE.
The world’s oldest census data were discovered in China dating back 4,000 years and counting 13 million people. However, data from the Han Dynasty conducted in 2CE is considered to be an accurate representation of the country at that time and accounts for 75.67 million people.
•The word census is derived from the Latin word censere, meaning “to estimate” or “to assess”. During Roman Empire days, a census was used primarily to keep track of the population for taxation purposes and also used to compile a list of adult males who would be drafted into military service.
•Roman emperor Caesar Augustus is known to have conducted a census of Roman citizens in 28BCE, 8BCE, and 14CE. One such census was famously recorded in the Bible a census ordered by Augustus required every man in the empire to return to “his place of origin”. This resulted in Jesus’ parents, Joseph and Mary, journeying 150km from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Joseph’s ancestral home of Bethlehem to register themselves, thus fulfilling the prophecy of the baby Jesus being born there.
•The British Statistics Office detailed that the first thorough survey of England occurred in 1086 when William the Conqueror ordered the production of the Domesday Book. This detailed inventory of land and property was a massive undertaking at the time. It took many years to complete, and provides a remarkable picture of life in Norman Britain. The first modern census was commissioned in 1801.
•The American founding fathers deemed a census so important that it is mandated in the American Constitution, with the first census conducted in 1790, seven years after it had won its independence from the British.
•Abdul Rahman Hasan, the Malaysian Statistics Department’s research and development division director, and Norfariza Hanim, assistant director of the Population and Housing Census division, explain in a paper that Malaysia had its first census on April 5, 1891, covering the Straits Settlements of Penang, Malacca and Singapore, and the Protected Malay States of Perak, Pahang, Negeri Sembilan and Selangor.
The second census was conducted in 1901 and again in 1911 and 1921, which then expanded to cover whole of Peninsular Malaysia and Brunei. The then British Government held the 1931, 1947 and 1957 censuses before the first census conducted by the Malaysian Government took place in 1970.
•A complete census for Peninsular Malaysia in 1911 recorded a population of 2,339,051 while the last census in 2000 recorded the population at 18,523,642, which translates to a growth rate of 2.3% annually within a period of 89 years.
Information from various online sources, including Wikipedia.
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