I'm trying to understand population growth in Europe

I really have problems understanding the differences in population growth in Europe.

I mean, the basic stuff is obvious:

More advanced agricultural technologies and medicine increase population growth, while war famine and better education/industrialization decrease it.

Still, there are numerous cases I just can't wrap my head around:

France for example was for centuries the largest European country in terms of population, it was even the third most populous nation in the world, after China and India for a long time.
But after about 1800 population growth just plummeted. French population, for example, grew only by 8.6% between 1871 and 1911, while German population grew by 60% and British population by 54% with comparable living conditions.
Not only that, but France had extremely low emigration numbers compared to Britain and Germany and lots of private societies and the government supporting programs for population growth.

Why was that?

Another strange example is Russia: Between 1722 and 1762 the population grew from 14 million to 19 million, while almost doubled from 19 to 35.5 between 1762 and 1800, in roughly the same time. It doubled again between 1800 and 1860, an absolutlely insane population growth compared to the rest of Europe.

Can someone explain that to me? I looked up Wikipedia, and while it provided the raw numbers, there wasn't really an explanation.

My best guess is that the agricultural revolutions, which didn't spread to France, bumped up Germany and England's populations, which in the case of the latter was aided by the wealth h extracted from The Empire. In Russia, my guess is that Russia got wealthier (in relation to what they were before) quicker, and didn't that Russian peasant lady who had 60 children live then? Of course, there is no single explanation for any of these, and someone in another thread said that no one really knows.

I always assumed it was because France's population had previously gone through their boom, and had limited agricultural potential to continue to expanding the food supply.

There's also the case that Britain and Germany had healthy industrialisation during the end of the 19th Century, whereas France's industrialisation had been pretty slow. That means the French were less wealthy and couldn't afford as many kids.

The lack of growth in France can almost completely blamed on one man: Napoleon. Maybe that is not entirely fair, because France before (and to a smaller degree after) his rule always fought more and bigger wars than many other countries. The strong centralisation on Paris also worked against the spread of modern methods and infrastructure, while in Germany a lot of cities competed to become a metropolis. None really managed, but a lot of advances were spread quickly that way.

But Napoleons "success" in reducing the French manpower pool is unparalleled. Not only did in his reign a higher percentage of the French male population die than in the world wars. He also managed to stifle any chance of a rebound by passing laws which prevented it. For example he established the partition of lands as binding law in case of inheritance at the same time that custom was dying out in the German lands having it previously. Thus Germany could introduce modern agriculture which was not possible in France

One possibility may have simply been the rural peasant population were pretty contented. They may have been dirt poor by modern standards but it is perceived economic status rather than actual that seems to govern the amount of time invested in having children.

Britain and German however saw large numbers of people driven from the land and into the cities where they worked in low paid jobs. The new urban poor continued to have largish families of about 3.5 chldren.

Then again it may have been the other way around. The large French rural community may have been having as many babies but they were beyond reach of effective public health and improvements in medicine and so continued to suffer high infant mortality and thus stagnant population growth.

I am fairly confident though it is a long time since I looked at the data that child mortality dropped off sharply in the two more industrialised and urbanised nations in the C19th. If it failed to do so in France that might be an indicator one way or the other.

Oswald Spengler would say, that France was just the first western country were Culture turned into Civilisation. Britons and Germans still followed their natural instinct for expanding their bloodlines and families. Rationalist French couldn´t just find a good reason anymore why they needed more then one child or a child at all.

historyfool said:

But Napoleons "success" in reducing the French manpower pool is unparalleled. Not only did in his reign a higher percentage of the French male population die than in the world wars. He also managed to stifle any chance of a rebound by passing laws which prevented it. For example he established the partition of lands as binding law in case of inheritance at the same time that custom was dying out in the German lands having it previously. Thus Germany could introduce modern agriculture which was not possible in France

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France's population did grow at a fairly decent clip from 1811-1866, though, going from 30 million to 38 million. This was similar to its growth rate in the previous century. It was really over the last third of the 19th century (and first half of the 20th) when France's growth rates were barely positive at all.

freivolk said:

Oswald Spengler would say, that France was just the first western country were Culture turned into Civilisation. Britons and Germans still followed their natural instinct for expanding their bloodlines and families. Rationalist French couldn´t just find a good reason anymore why they needed more then one child or a child at all.

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But even if so, how were they so effective at limiting the number of births? This was long before modern birth control methods.

De von Of said:

Another strange example is Russia: Between 1722 and 1762 the population grew from 14 million to 19 million, while almost doubled from 19 to 35.5 between 1762 and 1800, in roughly the same time. It doubled again between 1800 and 1860, an absolutlely insane population growth compared to the rest of Europe.

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Don't forget that Russia got much bigger during that time. About half of that growth came from annexations, leaving us with an increase of about 7 million - not very dissimilar from the previous one.

Zaius said:

Don't forget that Russia got much bigger during that time. About half of that growth came from annexations, leaving us with an increase of about 7 million - not very dissimilar from the previous one.

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If that were the explanation, first we need to determine the geographical boundaries used in comparing the population growth. I'd assume these measures use the boundaries of modern Russia regardless of its past political borders, as the OP also makes a comment about France once being the third most populous country after China and India, which could not have been the case during the last few decades that India as we know it has existed as a recognizable, independent political entity. Comparing Russia at the beginning of its expansion to the completed Russian Empire at its largest extent is not useful so I doubt the demographer did that.

Also, to chalk Russia's population growth up to annexed populations, you'd expect a much larger percentage of ethnic minorities in Russia, but even in 1989, the Soviet Union which was more or less the same borders as the former Russian Empire, minus miniscule Alaska and a few other small border discrepencies, was still over 70% Slavic (more than 80% in Russia alone), with ethnic Russians comprising majorities or significant minorities in most parts of the country. That's also not counting Russian immigration abroad. The Russian population growth rate is still remarkable.

pa_dutch said:

If that were the explanation, first we need to determine the geographical boundaries used in comparing the population growth. I'd assume these measures use the boundaries of modern Russia regardless of its past political borders, as the OP also makes a comment about France once being the third most populous country after China and India, which could not have been the case during the last few decades that India as we know it has existed as a recognizable, independent political entity. Comparing Russia at the beginning of its expansion to the completed Russian Empire at its largest extent is not useful so I doubt the demographer did that.

Also, to chalk Russia's population growth up to annexed populations, you'd expect a much larger percentage of ethnic minorities in Russia, but even in 1989, the Soviet Union which was more or less the same borders as the former Russian Empire, minus miniscule Alaska and a few other small border discrepencies, was still over 70% Slavic (more than 80% in Russia alone), with ethnic Russians comprising majorities or significant minorities in most parts of the country. That's also not counting Russian immigration abroad. The Russian population growth rate is still remarkable.

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Russification. A significant portion of the previous people there now consider Themselves Russian. Also most of the migration away was the minorities eg the Russian jews.

I think at least some of the couse was the centralization that France had around Paris, whereas Germany had tons of large towns completing for becomming large cities, and Britain, beyond London, made the effort to get Merseyside, Plymouth and other places to become cities in their own rights, France never really got beyond having Paris, and everything else being somewhere around it.

Try looking at some of the older railways, in Germany and England they crisscrossed, while in France it was like spokes out of Paris, were if you were to get from A to B, more often than not you had to do it via Paris, even if it was longer to Paris than between the two cities.

This in turn meant that it was much harder for France to effectively industrialize (even if it was in the shape of agricultural revolution) as the logistic system between the different parts of the country weren't anywhere near as efficient as in Germany or Britain, where goods much more easily could be transported between the secondary cities, hence it being much harder for trade to be made between them.

One thing not mentioned yet is that France was the one European country not to adopt new world crops to a significant extent, like potatoes and corn. This put them at a disadvantage in agricultural output compared to the rest of Europe.

De von Of said:

But after about 1800 population growth just plummeted. French population, for example, grew only by 8.6% between 1871 and 1911, while German population grew by 60% and British population by 54% with comparable living conditions.

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Rise of the middle class and expendable income, so less families. And contraceptives.

funnyhat said:

France's population did grow at a fairly decent clip from 1811-1866, though, going from 30 million to 38 million. This was similar to its growth rate in the previous century. It was really over the last third of the 19th century (and first half of the 20th) when France's growth rates were barely positive at all.

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The growth rate in between 1811 and 1866 kind of proves my point, though of course a number of other factors made the growth rate even worse in the later part of the century. Despite the losses inflicted by Napoleon on the French the technological advances they could adopt were sufficient to reach the same population growth as in the previous century. But they were unable, mainly because his laws prevented most modern technologies to be adopted on a wide scale, to expand the population growth. Meanwhile Germany and Britain adopted tons of modern agricultural, medical and other technologies with the result that their population growth took a huge jump. France had the same population growth, but the German population in the first half of the century grew as much as in the previous 150 years together, that means three times as fast.

AussieHawker said:

Russification. A significant portion of the previous people there now consider Themselves Russian. Also most of the migration away was the minorities eg the Russian jews.

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Large-scale assimilation of Uralic peoples into Slavic culture certainly took place in premodern western Russia, but if you're suggesting that significant numbers of Turkic Muslims and Tungusic or Mongolic animists in the Asian parts of Russia changed their identities and religions to Slavic Russian Orthodox Christian in the past two centuries, you'll have to prove it. Certainly significant numbers of people converted their religion or changed their language, but aside from intermarriage they didn't become ethnic Russians.

There are not one but several factors explaining the weak french demographic growth.

But the main factor is certainly a cultural specificity because France was the only country in Europe to have such a weak demography. In the early 20th century, France had become the oldest country in Europe.

The french demography began to slow down in fact since the 18th century but it is from the 19th century on to WW2 that the french demography was exceptionnally weak.

What must be pointed at is that the figures mentioned underestimate the weakness of the french demography compared to that of european countries. Many european migrants came to France from the the 19th century on (from Belgium, Poland, Italy), while on the opposite millions of british, germans, italians, spanish, left Europe for the Americas.

Scholars think the main factor was cultural, to put it in more neutral words like Spendler. I vaguely remember that Theodore Zeldin has written very clever things about this in his "History of french passions".

One should not blame wars. The napoleonic wars did not make more victims than the wars of Louis XIII and Louis XIV or than WWI.

One should not either blame the weaknesses of transports and communications, or the real lack of modernization of agriculture : many european countries suffered the same flaws but had a very strong demography.

The french were the first in Europe to stop reproducing like rabbits. This may have to do with the legal system that imposed the right of equal treatment between children in inheritance. This may have been the choice of many french people who did not want to leave the region where they were born and prefered to leave poorly in rural areas and not have many children than leaving their region.

I point to this in particular : the point was not even abbout not leaving its country but not leaving its region or its village. Even today, many many french people don't want to leave the region where they were born and live.

The french were the first in Europe to stop reproducing like rabbits. This may have to do with the legal system that imposed the right of equal treatment between children in inheritance. This may have been the choice of many french people who did not want to leave the region where they were born and prefered to leave poorly in rural areas and not have many children than leaving their region.

I point to this in particular : the point was not even abbout not leaving its country but not leaving its region or its village. Even today, many many french people don't want to leave the region where they were born and live.

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Agreed: one of the big objectives of the current administrative reorganisation of France (halve the number of region) is so that people might have a real shot at spending their whole life in their region and not suffer from it.

On the "live poorly" part, a peasant back in the day would not live poorly, French climate is clearly not the worst, there is a strong variety of crops and by that time, a lot of the swamps had been dried up so less malaria. I mean they would not live in richess or whatever but their existence would measure quite favourably compared to a city worker

pa_dutch said:

Large-scale assimilation of Uralic peoples into Slavic culture certainly took place in premodern western Russia, but if you're suggesting that significant numbers of Turkic Muslims and Tungusic or Mongolic animists in the Asian parts of Russia changed their identities and religions to Slavic Russian Orthodox Christian in the past two centuries, you'll have to prove it. Certainly significant numbers of people converted their religion or changed their language, but aside from intermarriage they didn't become ethnic Russians.

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Indeed, you're absolutely right. Nonetheless, we shouldn't overlook the russification of the Slavic minorities - mostly Polish and Ukranian - that were resettled in Siberia.

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With regard to France, most demographics accept a change of the French mentality after the revolution, but then I ask myself, why?
I personally associate its 19th century low fecundity rate with an early enforcement of social and civil rights (particularly inheritance law) in French society after the revolution.

It was only at the end of the 19th century that the French and British demographic pyramids were again similar. That is to say, when both nations legislation was somehow equivalent, both regarding economic rights of the capitalists (e.g. limited liability) and social rights for the proletariat.

Just remembered something. Inheritance law was a real handicap in French industrial development, it didn't help the accumulation of capital necessary to widespread industrialization. IMHO this difficulty was surmounted only in 1850's with the liberalization of the limited liability partnership : the father's patrimony that was normaly divided between his X sons started to be isolated in a separate and independent legal personality - that's to say only the shares are divided during a succession and the economic activity continues.

Nonetheless, if the LLC has solved the problem of accumulation of capital, the succession rights further divided land and avoided a massive rural exodus during the 19th century (in the UK the urban population was already the majority by the beginning of the 1800's whereas by the 1950's 30% of France's population was still rural.) Therefore, we can conclude that the French decadence is somehow related to its failure to make a transition to the urban life in the 19th century.

Finally, I'd also add that the over-centralization of administration in Paris was probably also a factor. Medium-size cities were not as important to 19th century France as they were to Britain or Prussia/Germany.

Didn't Napoleon institute a law that increased the age at which male youths could marry because he wanted them to serve in the army first? This presumably meant they never got the chance to have kids THEN serve, but served and largely died before having kids?

The history of Russia is one of settlement and expansion, the founding of new towns and cities, and the expansion of villages to city size. I forget the place that is now in Ukraine and was founded by a Welsh industrialist but its a good example.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf