2025/12/09 by Michael Goebel · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Argentine historical studies #Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies #History of Colonial Brazil
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/ssh.2025.10101
openalex created_date 2025/12/09 · openalex publication_date 2025/12/09 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/07
Abstract This article proposes a mixed-method approach to examine historical censuses with regard to race. It does so by exploring various kinds of demographic records from nineteenth-century Buenos Aires in order to test the conventional hypothesis of a significant census underenumeration of the city’s population of African descent. Starting from the overall progression of census results, the article is divided into three parts. The first of these deals with potential under-coverage, the second with the possibility of classificatory changes, and the third with vital statistics, largely derived from parish books. With special attention to two censuses of the 1850s, it concludes that Buenos Aires’s Afro-descendant population likely did suffer serious demographic decline between 1840 and 1890.