95

In the nineteenth-century, the newly established Greek State attempted to develop modern services, partly based on the relevant French patterns and models, in order to better understand the evolution of the Greek population: the aim was to monitor the population's natural movement and to undertake censuses at regular intervals. However, the low cultural level of clergymen and regional administrators seriously hindered this attempt and led to a more or less deficient maintenance of the archives. The reconstitution of the evolution of the population of Athens and of the broader region of Attica and Biotia during the second half of the 19th century was further impeded by the instability of the municipal administrative structures. At the middle of the century, Athens, the new capital, was a small city of 40,000 residents and Piraeus no more than a town of 6,500 residents. By 1896, the population of Athens had tripled while that of Piraeus had increased fivefold. The natural movement statistics dispersed in various archives do not facilitate the explanation of this increase, which greatly surpassed that of the nearby rural areas (with the exemption of the mining city of Lavrio). The birth and marriage data, as well as the birth and marriage rate statistics, are not reliable. The natural population movement evaluation was usually negative. The only possible explanation to the significant population increase in the future Greater Area of Athens is the existence of a considerable migration movement from the islands and other Greek regions, and to a lesser extent fromthe nearby villages.