I. THE CREATION OF MODERN DEMOGRAPHIC STATISTICS

The existence of a specialized administrative organization depends on the political, economic, and social development of a country, and is indispensable for the availability of modern statistics. As more than one author has pointed out, quantitative assessments of its population reflect a government's capacity to rule. The first Spanish attempts to obtain such quantitative knowledge are found in the so-called Relaciones ordered by Philip II in the second half of the sixteenth century; they described both European and American territories of the Crown. These early attempts, however, lacked continuity.