Mortality from the influenza pandemic of 1918  19 in Indonesia Siddharth Chandra Michigan State University The influenza pandemic of 1918  19 was the single most lethal short-term epidemic of the twentieth century. For Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, the most widely used estimate of mortality from that pandemic is 1.5 million. We estimated mortality from the influenza pandemic in Java and Madura, home to the majority of Indonesia’s population, using panel data methods and data from multiple quinquennial population counts and two decennial censuses. The new estimates suggest that, for Java alone, population loss was in the range of 4.26  4.37 million, or more than twice the established estimate for mortality for all of Indonesia. We conclude that the standing estimates of mortality from influenza in Java and Indonesia need to be revised upward significantly. We also present new findings on geographic patterns of population loss across Java, and pre-pandemic and post-pandemic population growth rates. Keywords: 1918  19; Asia; epidemiology; excess mortality; Indonesia; influenza; Java; mortality; pandemic; population growth [Submitted October 2011; Final version accepted August 2012] Introduction With an estimated population of 237.6 million in 2010 (Badan Pusat Statistik 2010), Indonesia ranks as the fourth most populous country in the world. Indeed, within South East Asia, ‘Indonesia is the giant of the region, both physically and demogra- phically’ (Hirschman 1994, p. 391), and within Indonesia, the island of Java, which accounts for 136.6 million people (Badan Pusat Statistik 2010), is both the most populated and the most densely populated major island in the world. For these reasons, the demographic study of Indonesia and Java is a subject of great interest. Any event with a significant demographic impact on Java is also likely to influence the global impact of the event. The primary goal of the study presented here was to use modern statistical methods to estimate the loss of population from the influenza pandemic of 191819 in Java, Indonesia. The international influ- enza pandemic of 191819, dubbed the ‘mother of all pandemics’ (Taubenberger and Morens 2006), was the single most devastating short-term epidemic of the twentieth century. Estimates of worldwide mortality range from 24.7 to 100 million (Patterson and Pyle 1991, p. 19; Johnson and Mueller 2002, p. 114). Emphasizing the pervasive problem of under- reporting of deaths, Johnson and Mueller (2002, pp. 1078) discussed the considerable difficulties faced by scholars who have undertaken to estimate mortality from the pandemic in different parts of the world. Not surprisingly, ‘[a] recurring feature of the work on the pandemic in the last couple of decades has been the consistent upward revision of mortality figures’ (Johnson and Mueller 2002, p. 108), and ‘some regions reported mortality rates for the entire population as high as 510 percent’ (ibid.). In light of the magnitude of the pandemic as a demographic event and the sheer size of Java’s population, the lack of attention paid to the pan- demic in Java is surprising. Widjojo’s classic treat- ment of the demography of Indonesia mentioned the influenza pandemic of 191819 in passing (1970), and Boomgaard and Gooszen’s otherwise detailed documentation of the data, key phenomena, and sources of material on Indonesian demography during the colonial era also paid little attention to it (1991). The exception to this pattern is Brown (1987), who focused on the pandemic in Indonesia, lamenting that, given its sizeable impact, ‘the episode has attracted remarkably little attention’, and ‘[n]o writers have subsequently taken on the Population Studies, 2013 Vol. 67, No. 2, 185193, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2012.754486 # 2013 Siddharth Chandra