ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a discussion of the demography of the Americas in 1800-a
simple set of numbers that was trampled to so much dust by the unprecedented wave of
immigrants who arrived just a few decades later. In an attempt to put the technological
changes of the 19th Century into perspective, the chapter ends with an invitation consider
the houses of ordinary people before industrialization takes command. In between the
questions of who lived where and how in the Americas in 1800, this chapter contemplates
the various physical expressions of the church and the state-the two principal cultural
institutions that structured daily life for everyone. Much change is on the horizon at the
beginning of the 19th Century, not the least of which is independence from colonial gov-
ernance. The Declaration of Independence by the 13 colonies of the British Empire inau-
gurated the post-colonial era in 1776. Subsequent independence movements throughout
the Americas almost always ignited violence, which tended to spread from urban centers
to their hinterlands and involve everyone everywhere in often vaguely defined armed
conflicts. Profound changes erased, replaced or repurposed many buildings and radically
restructured the urban and rural landscapes of the colonial era-but this story must wait
for the chapters that follow. This chapter tries to capture the moment just before all that
happened.
