Evaluation of old cadastres
Introduction
The cadastre, real estate cadastre or territorial cadastre (derived from the Greek word κατάστιχον, 'registry') is an administrative record dependent on the State in which rural, urban and special characteristics real estate is described. Among the characteristics of the cadastre is that it is a statistical record to determine the geographical extension and wealth of some district, and that in tax matters it is a support to determine the collection of state taxes, as stated in the records.
The cadastre assigns real estate a unique and mandatory identifier for each of these called "cadastral reference", "cadastral key", "real estate identifier" among some other equivalent terms in each country.
Background
In Ancient Rome, King Servius Tullius established the Roman Census, with the main purpose of imposing the Tributum soli (Property Tribute), which was basically the contribution to the kingdom that nobles and landowners paid "per head" according to the real estate assets they owned.
Cadastre was, and still is, understood to be the record of real estate (location, dimensions, use and valuation) and its owners, which is used to establish the amount of the tax imposed on real estate according to its production, its income or its value, and rights such as easements "Easement (right)") and mortgages.
Records of the use of this type of records are kept in Babylon and Greece where it was used as a tax base, also in Egypt where, apart from the tax function, it was used as a data reserve on the dimensions and locations of the plots for the "staking out" of them after the cyclical flooding of the Nile.
Another example of a cadastre is the Domesday Book, created by William I of England, "The Conqueror", used to know the resources of his kingdom.
The book Becerro de las Behetrías de Castilla is the oldest known Spanish cadastre, a faithful reflection of the Castilian territorial organization and which should have served as the basis for a future reform.
In Europe is where the cadastres are more precise and perfect, examples of this are those of France and Holland (the first organized by Napoleon Bonaparte), Germany, the United Kingdom, and of course Spain, which implemented it after the War of the Spanish Succession in the territories related to the archduke: Catalonia and the kingdoms of Aragon, Valencia and Mallorca, as well as in America during the colonial era. In 1749, what is possibly the most important example of the pre-statistical era in the world began: the Cadastre of Ensenada, which included the population census and many other data.