Editing New Spain (section)

===Population in early 1800s===
[[File:Mapa del Virreinato de la Nueva España (1819).svg|thumb|upright=1.5|New Spain in 1819 with the boundaries established at the [[Adams–Onís Treaty]]]]
[[File:Cabrera Pintura de Castas.jpg|thumb|170px|''Español'' and ''Mulata'' with their ''Morisco'' children, 1763 by [[Miguel Cabrera (painter)|Miguel Cabrera]]]]
[[File:Cabrera 15 Coyote.jpg|thumb|170px|''Mestizo'' and ''India'' with their ''Coyote'' children, 1763]]
While different intendancies would conduct censuses to get insights into their inhabitants (namely occupation, number of persons per household, ethnicity etc.), it was not until 1793 that the results of the first national census would be published. That census is known as the "Revillagigedo census" because its creation was ordered by the Count of the same name. Most of the census' original datasets have reportedly been lost; thus most of what is known about it comes from essays and field investigations made by academics who had access to the census data and used it as reference for their works, such as Prussian geographer [[Alexander von Humboldt]]. Each author gives different estimates for the total population, ranging from 3,799,561 to 6,122,354<ref>{{harvp|Navarro y Noriega|1820}}</ref><ref>{{harvp|von Humboldt|1811}}</ref> (more recent data suggest that the population of New Spain in 1810 was 5 to 5.5&nbsp;million individuals)<ref>{{harvp|McCaa|2000}}</ref> and not much variation in ethnic composition, with Europeans ranging from 18% to 23% of New Spain's population, Mestizos ranging from 21% to 25%, Amerindians ranging from 51% to 61% and Africans being between 6,000 and 10,000. It is concluded then, that across nearly three centuries of colonization, the population growth trends of Europeans and Mestizos were steady, while the percentage of the indigenous population decreased at a rate of 13%–17% per century. The authors assert that rather than Europeans and Mestizos having higher birthrates, the reason for the indigenous population's decrease lies with their higher mortality, due to living in remote locations rather than in cities and towns founded by the Spanish colonists, or being at war with them. It is also for these reasons that the number of indigenous Mexicans presents a greater variation between publications, with their numbers in a given location estimated rather than counted, leading to possible overestimations in some provinces and underestimations in others.<ref name="Lerner1968">{{cite book|last=Lerner|first=Victoria|title=Consideraciones sobre la población de la Nueva España: 1793–1810, según Humboldt y Navarro y Noriega|trans-title=Considerations on the population of New Spain: 1793–1810, according to Humboldt and Navarro and Noriega|language=es|url=http://aleph.org.mx/jspui/bitstream/56789/29809/1/17-067-1968-0327.pdf|year=1968|pages=328–348|access-date=24 August 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170731104825/http://aleph.org.mx/jspui/bitstream/56789/29809/1/17-067-1968-0327.pdf|archive-date=31 July 2017|url-status=dead}}</ref>

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="float:center; text-align:center;"
|-
!Intendancy/territory
!European population (%)
!Indigenous population (%)
!Mestizo population (%)
|-
|align="left"| [[State of Mexico|México]] (only [[State of Mexico]] and capital)
| 16.9%
| 66.1%
| 16.7%
|-
|align="left"| [[Puebla]]
| 10.1%
| 74.3%
| 15.3%
|-
|align="left"| [[Oaxaca]]
| 06.3%
| 88.2%
| 05.2%
|-
|align="left"| [[Guanajuato]]
| 25.8%
| 44.0%
| 29.9%
|-
|align="left"| [[San Luis Potosí]]
| 13.0%
| 51.2%
| 35.7%
|-
|align="left"| [[Zacatecas]]
| 15.8%
| 29.0%
| 55.1%
|-
|align="left"| [[Durango]]
| 20.2%
| 36.0%
| 43.5%
|-
|align="left"| [[Sonora]]
| 28.5%
| 44.9%
| 26.4%
|-
|align="left"| [[Yucatán]]
| 14.8%
| 72.6%
| 12.3%
|-
|align="left"| [[Guadalajara]]
| 31.7%
| 33.3%
| 34.7%
|-
|align="left"| [[Veracruz]]
| 10.4%
| 74.0%
| 15.2%
|-
|align="left"| [[Michoacán|Valladolid]]
| 27.6%
| 42.5%
| 29.6%
|-
|align="left"| [[New Mexico|Nuevo México]]
|  ~
| 30.8%
| 69.0%
|-
|align="left"| [[Baja California|Vieja California]]
|  ~
| 51.7%
| 47.9%
|-
|align="left"| [[Alta California|Nueva California]]
|  ~
| 89.9%
| 09.8%
|-
|align="left"| [[Coahuila]]
| 30.9%
| 28.9%
| 40.0%
|-
|align="left"| [[Nuevo León]]
| 62.6%
| 05.5%
| 31.6%
|-
|align="left"| [[Nuevo Santander]]
| 25.8%
| 23.3%
| 50.8%
|-
|align="left"| [[Texas]]
| 39.7%
| 27.3%
| 32.4%
|-
|align="left"| [[Tlaxcala]]
| 13.6%
| 72.4%
| 13.8%
|-
|}
~<small>Europeans are included within the Mestizo category.</small>

Regardless of the imprecision related to the counting of indigenous peoples living outside of the colonized areas, the effort that New Spain's authorities put into considering them as subjects is worth mentioning, as censuses made by other colonial or post-colonial countries did not consider American Indians to be citizens/subjects. For example the censuses made by the [[Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata]] would only count the inhabitants of the colonized settlements.<ref name=scarecrow>''Historical Dictionary of Argentina''. London: Scarecrow Press, 1978. pp.&nbsp;239–40.</ref> Another example would be the censuses made by the United States, that did not count Indigenous peoples living among the general population until 1860, and indigenous peoples as a whole until 1900.<ref>[https://www.archives.gov/research/census/native-americans/1790-1930.html "American Indians in the Federal Decennial Census"]. Retrieved on 25 July 2017.</ref>
[[File:Retrato de familia Fagoaga Arozqueta - Anónimo ca.1730.jpg|thumb|An 18th-century portrait of the Fagoaga Arozqueta family, an upper-class family of [[Basques|Basque]] descent from Mexico City]]
Once New Spain achieved independence, the legal basis of the [[castas|colonial caste system]] was abolished and mentions of a person's caste in official documents was also abandoned, which led to the exclusion of racial classification from future censuses, and made it difficult to track demographic development of each ethnicity in the country. More than a century would pass before Mexico conducted a new census on which a person's race was listed, in 1921,<ref>{{cite report|url=http://www.inegi.org.mx/prod_Serv/contenidos/espanol/bvinegi/productos/censos/poblacion/1921/EUM/RCGH21I.pdf|publisher=Departamento de la Estadistica Nacional|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304060335/http://www.inegi.org.mx/prod_Serv/contenidos/espanol/bvinegi/productos/censos/poblacion/1921/EUM/RCGH21I.pdf |archive-date=4 March 2016|title=Censo General De Habitantes (1921 Census)|page=62}}</ref> but even then, due to its huge inconsistencies with other official registers as well as its historic context, modern investigators have deemed it inaccurate.<ref>[https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20171010154747/http://istmo.mx/2016/07/04/el-mestizaje-es-un-mito-la-identidad-cultural-si-importa/ "El mestizaje es un mito, la identidad cultural sí importa"] ''Istmo'', Mexico, Retrieved on 25 July 2017.</ref><ref name="MexicoRacista1">{{cite book |author1= Federico Navarrete |title=Mexico Racista |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=FC_4CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT86|access-date=23 February 2018 |date=2016 |publisher= Penguin Random house Grupo Editorial Mexico |isbn=978-6073143646 |page=86}}</ref> Almost a century after the 1921 census, Mexico's government has begun to conduct ethno-racial surveys again, with results suggesting that the population growth trends for each major ethnic group haven't changed significantly since the 1793 census.