Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2022
Increasingly, historians of and in the Latin American countries are turning to quantitative data and analysis. TePaske (1972, 1975), Smith (1973), and McGreevey (1972, 1974) comment on work that has been and is being done and on problems inherent in quantification. The problems that students face as quantifiers of the past may be summarized under the rubrics: (1) sources, (2) methodology, (3) training, and (4) financing. It is with the first of these that this article is concerned, especially with sources for quantifying the nineteenth century after independence, a period neglected almost as much as the seventeenth century used to be, at least insofar as the smaller countries are concerned, except for their politics and personages.