Census population and average annual growth rate

Year	Pop.	±% p.a.
1901	17,535	—
1911	18,994	+0.80%
1921	20,127	+0.58%
1931	27,789	+3.28%
1939	30,814	+1.30%
1950	37,403	+1.78%
1960	42,640	+1.32%
1970	52,976	+2.19%
1980	54,670	+0.32%
1990	58,460	+0.67%
2000	62,098	+0.61%
2010	64,319	+0.35%
2016	63,779	−0.14%
Source:[1]

This is a demography of the population of Bermuda including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population, including changes in the demographic make-up of Bermuda over the centuries of its permanent settlement.

History

From settlement until the nineteenth century, the largest demographic group remained what in the United States is referred to as white-Anglo (or white Anglo-Saxon Protestant). The reason Black slaves did not quickly come to outnumber Whites, as was the case in continental and West Indian colonies at that time (such as Carolina Colony and Barbados), was that Bermuda's seventeenth century agricultural industry continued to rely on indentured servants, mostly from England, until 1684, thanks to it remaining a company colony (with poor would-be settlers contracting to provide a fixed number of years' labour in exchange for the cost of transport). Spanish-speaking Blacks began to immigrate in numbers from the West Indies as indentured servants in the mid-seventeenth century, but White fears at their growing numbers led to their terms of indenture being raised from seven years, as with Whites, to 99 years. Throughout the next two centuries, frequent efforts were made to lower the Black population.

Free Blacks, who were the majority of Black Bermudians in the seventeenth century, were threatened with enslavement as an attempt to encourage their emigration, and slave owners were encouraged to export enslaved Blacks whenever a war loomed, as they were portrayed as unnecessary bellies to feed during times of shortage (even before abandoning agriculture for maritime activities in 1684, Bermuda had become reliant on food imports).

In addition to free and slaved Blacks, seventeenth century Bermuda had large minorities of Irish indentured servants and Native American slaves, as well as a smaller number of Scots, all forced to leave their homelands and shipped to Bermuda.^[2] Native Americans sold into chattel slavery in Bermuda were brought from various parts of North America, including Mexico, but most particularly from the Algonquian areas of the Atlantic seaboard, from which natives were subjected to genocide by the English; most famously following the Pequot War and Metacomet's War. The Irish and Scots are usually described as prisoners-of-war, which was certainly true of the Scots. The Irish shipped to Bermuda following the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland included both prisoners-of-war and civilians of either sex ethnically cleansed from lands slated for resettlement by Protestants from Britain, including Cromwell's soldiers who were to be paid with Irish land. In Bermuda they were sold into indentured servitude. The Scots and the Irish were ostracised by the white English population, who were particularly fearful of the Irish, who plotted rebellions with Black slaves, and intermarried with the Blacks and Native Americans.^[3] The majority white-Anglo population, or at least its elites, became alarmed very early at the increasing numbers of Irish and non-whites, most of whom were presumed to be clinging to Catholicism (recusancy was a crime in Bermuda, as it was in England).

Despite the banning of the importation of any more Irish after they were perceived to be the leaders of a foiled 1661 uprising intended to be carried out in concert with black slaves, the passing of a law against miscegenation in 1663, the first of a succession of attempts to force free blacks to emigrate in 1656 (in response to an uprising by enslaved blacks), and frequent encouragement of the owners of black slaves to export them, by the eighteenth century the merging of the various minority groups, along with some of the white-Anglos, had resulted in a new demographic group, "coloured" (which term, in Bermuda, referred to anyone not wholly of European ancestry) Bermudians, who gained a slight majority by the nineteenth century.

Some islanders, especially in St David's, still trace their ancestry to Native Americans, and many more are ignorant of having such ancestry. Hundreds of Native Americans were shipped to Bermuda. The best-known examples were the Algonquian peoples, who were exiled from the New England colonies and sold into slavery in the seventeenth century, notably in the aftermaths of the Pequot War and King Philip's War, but some are believed to have been brought from as far away as Mexico.

During the course of the eighteenth century, Bermuda's population was boiled down to two demographic groups: White and Coloured.

The population of Bermuda on the 1 January 1699 was 5,862, including 3,615 white (with 724 men able to bear arms) and 2,247 coloured (with 529 men able to bear arms).

The population of Bermuda on 17 April 1721, was listed as 8,364, composed of: "Totals:—Men on the Muster roll, 1,078; men otherwise, 91; Women, 1,596; boys, 1,072; girls, 1,013. Blacks; Men, 817, women 965; boys 880; girls, 852."^[4]

The population of Bermuda in 1727 was 8,347, and included 4,470 white (910 men; 1,261 boys; 1,168 women; 1,131 girls) and 3,877 coloured (787 men; 1,158 boys; 945 women; 987 girls).

The population of Bermuda in 1783 was 10,381, and included 5,462 white (1,076 males under 15; 1,325 males over 15; 3,061 females) and 4,919 coloured (1,153 males under 15; 1,193 males over 15; 2,573 females).^[5]

By 18 November 1811, the permanent population of Bermuda was 10,180, including 5,425 coloured and 4,755 white:

A return of the white and coloured population of the Bermuda Islands this 18th day of November, 1811 (Source: Robert Kennedy, (Colonial) Secretary's Office, February 4, 1812)
Whites					Enslaved Coloured					Free Coloured					Whites		Enslaved Coloured		Free Coloured		Whites	Enslaved Coloured	Free Coloured	White and Coloured Population
Males under 16	Males above 16	Females under 16	Females above 16	Absent	Males under 16	Males above 16	Females under 16	Females above 16	Absent	Males under 16	Males above 16	Females under 16	Females above 16	Absent	Males	Females	Males	Females	Males	Females	Total male and female	Total male and female	Total male and female	Grand Total
699	893	745	2,137	361	961	1,082	1,012	1,408	673	76	69	105	190	17	1,728	2,883	2,225	2,480	151	295	4,755	4,974	451	10,180

By 1831, the permanent population of Bermuda (not including the thousands of Royal Navy sailors and marines or British Army and Board of Ordnance soldiers based in Bermuda, or the 1,500 convicts shipped from Britain and Ireland to labour at the Royal Naval Dockyard) was 11,250, including 7,330 white and free coloured, and 3,920 enslaved (coloured).

Population of Bermuda (Census of 1843)[6]
	White		Coloured
Parish	Males	Females	Males	Females	TOTAL
St. George's	260	375	394	578	1,607
Hamilton	152	209	303	327	991
Smith's	81	122	113	126	442
Devonshire	120	208	173	224	729
Pembroke	422	572	444	641	2,079
Paget	176	276	189	231	867
Warwick	170	267	201	256	895
Southampton	125	232	231	300	888
Sandys	213	354	414	451	1,432
GRAND TOTAL					9,930

Population of Bermuda (Census of 1851)[6]
	White		Coloured
Parish	Males	Females	Males	Females	TOTAL
St. George's	365	436	431	659	1,891
Hamilton	177	200	330	387	1,094
Smith's	103	135	128	148	514
Devonshire	129	217	208	230	784
Pembroke	431	606	495	703	2,235
Paget	195	293	233	347	1,038
Warwick	180	270	241	283	983
Southampton	145	218	246	308	917
Sandys	231	329	520	556	1,636
GRAND TOTAL					11,092

Population of Bermuda (data from Censuses 1871–1939)
	Coloured			Portuguese			White (* Includes Portuguese)
Year	Females	Males	Sub-Total	Females	Males	Sub-Total	Females	Males	Sub-Total	All Females	All Males	TOTAL
1861	3,875	2,951	6,826	–	–	–	2,666*	1,958*	4,624*	6,541	4,909	11,450
1871	4,112	3,284	7,376	–	–	–	2,607*	2,118*	4,725*	6,719	5,402	12,101
1891	5,026	4,297	9,323	–	–	–	2,951*	2,739*	5,690*	7,977	7,036	15,013
1911	6,408	5,895	12,303	–	–	–	3,516*	3,175*	6,691*	9,924	9,070
1931			16,436	–	–	–			11,353*			27,789 gross
1939 Emergency	9,894	9,424	19,318	1,101	1,521	2,622	4,606	4,253	8,859	15,601	15,213	30,814 excluding regular forces and HMD establishment 35,423 gross

The term coloured was generally used in preference to black, with anyone who was of wholly European ancestry (at least Northern European) defined as white, leaving everyone else as coloured. This included the multi-racial descendants of the previous minority demographic groups (Black, Irish and Native American) that had quickly blended together, along with some part of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant majority, as well as the occasional Jew, Persian, East Asian or other non-White and non-Black Bermudian.^[7]

It was largely by this method (mixed-race Bermudians being added to the number of Blacks, rather than added to the number of Whites or being defined as a separate demographic group) that Coloured (subsequently redefined after the Second World War as Black) Bermudians came to outnumber White Bermudians by the end of the eighteenth century, despite starting off at a numerical disadvantage, and despite low Black immigration prior to the latter nineteenth century. The scale of White relative to Black emigration in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries also doubtlessly played a factor. Roughly 10,000 Bermudians are estimated to have emigrated, primarily to the North American continental colonies (particularly: Virginia; Carolina Colony, which later became South Carolina and North Carolina; Georgia; and Florida) before United States independence in 1783. This included white Bermudians from every level of society, but particularly poorer, landless ones as Bermuda's high birth rate produced population growth that could not be sustained without emigration. Many free black Bermudians also emigrated, but this was less likely to be voluntary given that they would be leaving families behind and generally faced poorer prospects outside of Bermuda (although white fear of the growing number of blacks did result in free blacks being coerced to emigrate, though how many did is not recorded).

Enslaved black Bermudians, by comparison, had little choice but to go were they were taken, and more affluent white Bermudians who settled on the continent or elsewhere often brought slaves with them, as was the case with Denmark Vesey (born in the West Indies, who was enslaved for years to a Bermudian who then resettled with him in South Carolina). Given the choice, enslaved black Bermudians consequently generally chose not to emigrate, even when it would have meant freedom. Abandoning their families in Bermuda was too great a step. Enslaved adult black Bermudian men, like white Bermudian men, were generally sailors and or shipwrights, and hired themselves out as did free men, or were hired out, with their earnings usually divided between themselves and the slave masters, who used the enslaved man's family bonds to Bermuda to control him; allowing slaves to carry out a small degree of control over their economic life and to accumulate meager savings also worked to discourage slaves from escaping overseas, where they might find freedom, but also likely face poverty and social exclusion.^[8]

By example, in 1828 the ship Lavinia stopped in Bermuda on a voyage from Trinidad to Belfast, Ireland, and signed on twelve enslaved Bermudian sailors as crew. On reaching Belfast, where slavery was illegal, in September, eleven of the enslaved Bermudians were brought before a magistrate with members of the Anti-Slavery Society in attendance after a member of the Society of Friends had reported their presence (the twelfth, Thomas Albouy, failed to appear as he was on watch duty aboard the Lavinia and unwilling to abandon his post). Each man was asked individually whether he wished to remain in Ireland as a free man. Their replies were:

• Benjamin Alick (written Alik): "I wish to go back to my family and friends"
• Richard Place: "I wish to return to my mother"
• Francis Ramio: "I wish to return to my wife"
• Joseph Varman: wished to return
• James Lambert: wished to return
• Thomas Williams: wished to return to his wife and child
• Joshua Edwards: wished to remain free in Ireland
• Robert Edwards: wished to remain free in Ireland
• Joseph Rollin: wished to remain free in Ireland
• John Stowe (written Stow): "I wish to go back to my family"
• George Bassett: "I am much obliged to the gentlemen for their offer of freedom, but I wish to return to my friends"

The Royal Gazette, on 13 December 1926, quoted a contemporary Irish newspaper as having described the enslaved Bermudians as they spoke English very well, and were stout, healthy men, clean and well dressed. They told the magistrate that in Bermuda their employment was not arduous, they did very little work on the Sabbath day, and they all attended a place of worship. They were usually hired out by their masters, who got two-thirds of their wage and they got the other third. They knew before they left Bermuda that they might be freed in Great Britain, but they had no complaint to make of their condition and, when they spoke of returning to their families, they indicated "the finest emotions and susceptibilities of affection".^[9]

Other contributing factors to the changing ratio of the coloured to white population during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries included the greater mortality of Whites from disease in the late seventeenth century, and patriarchal property laws that transferred a woman's property to her husband upon her marriage. This, combined with the shortage of white males due to the steady outflow of marriageable white sailors from Bermuda who settled abroad or were lost at sea, resulted in a sizeable contingent of ageing and childless white spinsters for which Bermuda was noted well into the twentieth century.

Considerable written material (letters, official reports, petitions, et cetera, and, from 1783, the content of Bermudian newspapers) that survives in archives and museums gives insight into the social, economic and political life of Bermuda between its settlement in the seventeenth century and the mid-nineteenth century. Most of the Bermudians mentioned by name in these documents, however, tend to have been the more prominent white males. The views expressed about Bermudians, certainly in official correspondence from governors, naval and military officers, and other representatives of the imperial government, were often negative, resulting from the antagonistic relationship with Bermuda's native elites, whose economic interests often were not aligned with imperial interests (this was not necessarily always the case for poorer whites and free or enslaved coloured Bermudians). After the American War of Independence, there was deep distrust of Bermuda's local government and the merchant class that dominated it due to the prominent Bermudians who had schemed with the continental rebels, supplying them with ships and gunpowder, and continuing to trade with them in violation of the law. Although it was observed that enslaved coloured Bermudians were generally less likely to revolt than slaves in other colonies, the experience of various slave revolts in other British colonies during the preceding decades and the then ongoing uprising of slaves in Saint Domingue (now Haiti) during the French Revolution, the facts of which it was believed that well-travelled enslaved Bermudian sailors were particularly well-acquainted with and would be inspired by, combined with the relative freedom of movement and association of Bermuda's slaves, meant they were seen as a potential threat by officers of the British Government. As it was also perceived that slaves were not vital to the colony as slave-ownership was common among less well-to-do white households in which much of the work performed by slaves should, and elsewhere would, have been carried out by the more common class of whites themselves (this may have been true of household slaves, who acted as servants and tended small adjacent plots of vegetables grown for the subsistence of the household, which was virtually the only agriculture carried out in Bermuda between 1684 and the 1840s, but most able-bodied enslaved men were actually engaged in maritime activities that were essential to Bermuda's economic survival), it was also felt that the threat of a slave revolt was an unnecessary one.

This was not the only instance where the assumptions of officers of the British government, who were usually aristocrats or from the most privileged class of commoners, coloured their views of Bermudians and Bermudian society. A frequent comment made of Bermudians in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century was that they were lazy or indolent. Most frequently cited in evidence of this was the apparent failure of Bermudians to fell the cedar forest cloaking the archipelago in order to adopt any manner of intensive agriculture. Numerous governors attempted to encourage agriculture, with little success due partly to the stigma in Bermuda against working the land. What was not obvious to many outside observers was Bermuda's shortage of wood, specifically Bermuda cedar, upon which its maritime economy relied. Bermuda's shipbuilders struggled not to exhaust this precious resource, and land-owning Bermudians counted cedars on their property as wealth which accrued interest over decades as the trees grew, and the remaining forest was consequently protected.

The voices of Bermudians themselves, at least of the poorer ones, the enslaved, and the women, were not generally recorded in the documents that were handed down by those generations.

Bermuda was a popular subject for playwrights, authors and poets in England during the early years of its colonisation, given the drama of its unintended settlement through the wreck of the Sea Venture and its being by far the more successful of the Virginia Company's two settlements until the 1620s. However, as Virginia developed and new colonies were established in the West Indies, Bermuda slipped from the view of writers and the public in England (nearly a century after its settlement, Bermuda, along with the rest of the Kingdom of England, united with the Kingdom of Scotland to become the Kingdom of Great Britain). Although rarely mentioned in histories or other reference books between the latter seventeenth century and the nineteenth century, Bermuda's designation as an Imperial fortress, Britain's primary naval and military base in the region of North America and the West Indies following US independence, and the emergence of the tourism industry in the latter nineteenth century, brought many erudite visitors and short-term residents, some already published authors, and more comprehensive ethnographic information on the people of Bermuda was included in many subsequently published recollections, travel guides, and magazine articles, such as the book BERMUDA; A COLONY, A FORTRESS AND A PRISON; OR, Eighteen Months in the Somers Islands, published anonymously (the author, Ferdinand Whittingham, was identified only as A FIELD OFFICER who had served in the Bermuda Garrison) in 1857,^[10] though the authors' observations often gave more reliable insight into the assumptions and nature of their own societies and classes.

In 1828, Purser Richard Otter of the Royal Navy published Sketches of Bermuda, or Somers' Islands,^[11] a description of Bermuda based on his own observations while serving there, assigned to the North America and West Indies Station. Of his reasons for writing the account, he wrote in the preface:

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