AHC: French population >250 million by present day.

French population started high but stalled early due to hitting the Malthusian limits. So you have to change those to get any real increase population. A better plough , crops , farming methods etc coupled with railways/canals to transport it to the cities and a means to employ the surplus population are the minimum needed.

France's population followed a normal pattern until about 1800. It was in the XIX century that French demography became an outlier: French families had fewer children than other Europeans, especially in the second half of the century. That was most likely due to cultural factors (egalitarian inheritance laws, increased secularization) rather than a lack of resources. During this same period much poorer countries like Italy saw their populations boom.
 
France's population followed a normal pattern until about 1800. It was in the XIX century that French demography became an outlier: French families had fewer children than other Europeans, especially in the second half of the century. That was most likely due to cultural factors (egalitarian inheritance laws, increased secularization) rather than a lack of resources. During this same period much poorer countries like Italy saw their populations boom.
AFAIK I've seen people blame the general lack of industrialization too, maybe that compounds with the inheritance laws(so it's not like all non-industrial countries would have had low fertility rates)
 
Wealth != population growth. Very poor countries get massive population booms if child mortality is reduced or food supply increases.
Actually France being poor would be the best way to achieve this scenario of >250 million population in present day borders of France. This enables a poor unidustrialized France to have high fertility rates for a few generations.

You can see this in most of Africa and Asia from 1950-today, there are massive population explosions in third world, poor countries.

However that would require industrialisation to not be adopted by France. Perhaps a Euroscrew or Asia-wank could work in order to achieve this. Industrialisation starts in for example China and Europe stays confined to its own corner of the world or gets colonized.
 
Agree with the upthread comments that indicate that a higher population France seems quite doable with a France that follows a similar demographic trajectory to the European norm and doesn't go into a low cycle in the 1800s and 1900s. (Though still topping out at less than 230 million!).

You'd also see much more emigration if France kept a more typical demographic trajectory and a much more French United States and probably a number of other New World countries.
On the point of industrialisation, as I understand it, the big early difference between France and Britain, was that France had much higher shares of population in agriculture and lower agricultural productivity per worker.

That is, France actually largely had no major problems keeping pace in science and industrial technology or productivity in industry, but a large share of the French population were in fairly low productivity agriculture until quite late (the early 20th century).

See - https://ourworldindata.org/employment-in-agriculture

Also lower integration into trade measured by volumes (though France apparently did not have higher tariffs than Britain).

A France that followed both the kind of normative demographic history, and in agricultural productivity and employment, would be a much different culture today. Or at least it seems to me, much of France's distinctive modern day culture and identity is intertwined with combining quite a strong sense of the nation, engagement with ideas of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment with stress on reason (as a legacy of the French revolution), a fairly secularized fairly laissez-faire attitude to fertility and children, and a quite "backwards" population structure with a relatively large share of population in rural agriculture, more focused on quality produce than productivity and output. (French posters may correct my stereotype).

(In contrast to England certainly, where the population has had a high industrial working class and service sector for a long time and so culture has been quite focused around identities built around this, the culture is not really as much oriented to rural England or food production, and is somewhat skeptical and not as engaged with certain kinds of Enlightenment ideas.)
 
Why would the US have to cease to exist? We can grow a lot more food then we do. The US National Forest and Park Services would have to be smaller, that is all. Also a less industrialized US means LESS food not more. A big reason US farmland is so productive is that the US is heavily industrialized. Modern farming takes modern fertilizer, tractors, pesticides, herbicides and high yield hybrid seed. All that needs industrialization.
Not cease to exist but you could see a POD where Louisiana is more productive earlier on.
If Louisiana is the breadbasket of Europe, and that the continent can no longer feed itself, it becomes strategically more important.
You'd want it strategically locked do nobody can pressure you
 
Agree with the upthread comments that indicate that a higher population France seems quite doable with a France that follows a similar demographic trajectory to the European norm and doesn't go into a low cycle in the 1800s and 1900s. (Though still topping out at less than 230 million!).

You'd also see much more emigration if France kept a more typical demographic trajectory and a much more French United States and probably a number of other New World countries.
On the point of industrialisation, as I understand it, the big early difference between France and Britain, was that France had much higher shares of population in agriculture and lower agricultural productivity per worker.

That is, France actually largely had no major problems keeping pace in science and industrial technology or productivity in industry, but a large share of the French population were in fairly low productivity agriculture until quite late (the early 20th century).

See - https://ourworldindata.org/employment-in-agriculture

Also lower integration into trade measured by volumes (though France apparently did not have higher tariffs than Britain).

A France that followed both the kind of normative demographic history, and in agricultural productivity and employment, would be a much different culture today. Or at least it seems to me, much of France's distinctive modern day culture and identity is intertwined with combining quite a strong sense of the nation, engagement with ideas of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment with stress on reason (as a legacy of the French revolution), a fairly secularized fairly laissez-faire attitude to fertility and children, and a quite "backwards" population structure with a relatively large share of population in rural agriculture, more focused on quality produce than productivity and output. (French posters may correct my stereotype).

(In contrast to England certainly, where the population has had a high industrial working class and service sector for a long time and so culture has been quite focused around identities built around this, the culture is not really as much oriented to rural England or food production, and is somewhat skeptical and not as engaged with certain kinds of Enlightenment ideas.)


The Enlightenment hit much of the rest of Europe just as much as France.
 
If France follows Britain and Germany demographically, they can go from 30 million in 1815 to 120 million in 1914. Avoiding any WWI style events, they could maintain a positive fertility rate without much nudging until the 1980s. Along with sizable increases in life expectancy, they could probably hit 250 million without immigration or North Africa by today.
 
No, Great Britain (the island) had a population of 10 million (roughly) in 1800. Subtract maybe 3 million for Scotland and Wales, and you have a natural increase in England from about 7 million to about 50 million. That's a 700% increase, give or take (Scotland and Wales were different). France's was about 25 million in 1800. So, with a post 1800 POD somehow, you could have a French population of about 175 million; not to even get into how France produces (and always has produced) massively more food, even allowing for its larger size. No one is really sure why France's population didn't grow much (relatively) in the 19th century; there are a load of competing theories. Go back farther, say, 1700, England's population was maybe 5 million. France's was about 25. You have 250 million right there, without a huge POD. You would require liberalisation of internal trade, no controls over the grain trade (France had huge issues with local famines because they couldn't move food easily), massive adoption of the potato, greater colonial dominance for wealth generation and probably fewer wars, but you could do it. You also have complete, utter and total French domination of Europe; you don't lose that kind of innate military and cultural aggression because you have greater tools to realise it. People these days think Germany used to be aggressive (discount WW2 and it wasn't), but it's tendencies were a pale shadow of France's. And that spoken as an avowed Francophile

No wonder we British were always wanting a good fight. :happyblush We said 'put them up', you laughed and we just snapped out fingers and crippled your nation, by blockading you with our fleet. :relievedface: It was great wearing the 'world crown' even if it were only for 100 years. :closedeyesmile:
 
Wealth != population growth. Very poor countries get massive population booms if child mortality is reduced or food supply increases.

Yes, but your Malthusian argument doesn't make sense for France in the XIX century. It is not that French infant mortality was exceptionally high. The birth rate was low. Marriages were happening later and there is evidence of early birth control methods being used.
 

Decius00009

Banned
No wonder we British were always wanting a good fight. :happyblush We said 'put them up', you laughed and we just snapped out fingers and crippled your nation, by blockading you with our fleet. :relievedface: It was great wearing the 'world crown' even if it were only for 100 years. :closedeyesmile:
Ummmm ... that was Germany in World War One, dude. The British blockade during the Revolutionary Wars was about making sure the French couldn't concentrate their naval assets again after Trafalgar. The British naval blockade devastated places like Bordeaux, but it didn't damage the broader French economy that much
 
The Malthusian argument doesn't really work given how low population density is to England, yet with very similar soil and weather.
 
The Malthusian argument doesn't really work given how low population density is to England, yet with very similar soil and weather.
Well it does work to explain maybe pre-1800 patterns, France was already one of the most advance country in the agricultural sector, one can't expect France to really be much stronger on that front, the deal is the 1800-2000 period and also the borders of the French state, you need a very expansionistic France, especially considering that England was pretty reliant on foreign food supply as was Germany during the late industrial era.
 
Ummmm ... that was Germany in World War One, dude. The British blockade during the Revolutionary Wars was about making sure the French couldn't concentrate their naval assets again after Trafalgar. The British naval blockade devastated places like Bordeaux, but it didn't damage the broader French economy that much

Yea, but it did not allow it to grow either, international trade would have been a beneficiary to Napoleon's war funding. I was not just talking about Napoleon either, the Anglo-French rivalry goes back to the last Millennium. I still think we should be married after the Hundred years war, Henry V had won, he ruled half of France and only dysentery got in his way. It was only in 1956 you were asking for Elizabeth II to be your queen, how romantic!!:rolleyes: We should have accepted and Churchill would have because he proposed the exact same proposal in 1940. The French marriage to Germany is leading to EU current difficulties and Brexit is basically a re-birth of our original methodology to explore the world rather than meddle in the continent. Let us see how far we are willing to go!!!:'(:confounded::perservingface: (French-German marriage is too mainland dominated.)
 
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Decius00009

Banned
still think we should be married after the Hundred years war, Henry V had won, he ruled half of France and only dysentery got in his way

Ummmm... what the actual fuck? Lad, you win a war when your enemy accepts defeat and asks for terms. Now, the Dauphin might have come close at one point (his mother in law stopped him), but he was still in the field and the Burgundian attachment to the English cause was patchy. And Henry V was far from a great commander - he nearly botched Harfleur and lost maybe a third of his army to disease and desertion because he absolutely failed to maintain adequate supply lines. Agincourt was a great victory, but D'Albret was a moron who should have known better than to charge English archers.
 
Ummmm... what the actual fuck? Lad, you win a war when your enemy accepts defeat and asks for terms. Now, the Dauphin might have come close at one point (his mother in law stopped him), but he was still in the field and the Burgundian attachment to the English cause was patchy. And Henry V was far from a great commander - he nearly botched Harfleur and lost maybe a third of his army to disease and desertion because he absolutely failed to maintain adequate supply lines. Agincourt was a great victory, but D'Albret was a moron who should have known better than to charge English archers.

In regards to the Hundred Years War, all's well that ends well, hey.x'D:extremelyhappy:XD What I cannot believe is Churchill, he retired in 1955. One year... if he could have just served up until 1960. I don't believe in Brexit but I understand it. (Which not many people do.)
 
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To someone living in the Netherlands, France seems so extremely empty in many places. Driving from orleans to Toulouse one encounters in 500 km only one sizable city, Limoges. And it is incredible that the biggest cities in a departement like the Ardeche, Aubenas and Privas, have 10.000 habitants, in many parts of Europe they would be called villages.

Still the country is lush and green looks like it coukd support much more people
 
To someone living in the Netherlands, France seems so extremely empty in many places. Driving from orleans to Toulouse one encounters in 500 km only one sizable city, Limoges. And it is incredible that the biggest cities in a departement like the Ardeche, Aubenas and Privas, have 10.000 habitants, in many parts of Europe they would be called villages.

Still the country is lush and green looks like it coukd support much more people
Well virtually all countries in Europe can support more people, either through food imports or use of all the land that was reforested in the 20th century.
 

Vuu

Banned
250 millions is too high tbh, (non Deccan) India, south China have insane density because of rice, although effective rice padding does require intensive irrigation infrastructure and importantly a much more tropical climate

I think the only part of Western Europe that can reach extremely high densities without industry would be northern Italy, which could be as densely populated as the kanto plains... Easily 50 millions. (As a side note greater Ukraine has the potential to have 300 millions people, and he Mississippi bassin could be as populated as China)

You would have to increase france’s population before the industrial revolution, because even in the best case it’s would be like Germany and then only have 120 millions people by today, and there is no consensus on the forum on the plausibility of it in the first place (IMO france has more han enough land, but I think it would have benefited by more clericicalism, a poorer population, and less stability maybe as a continuing unreformed kingdom of France? - think two Siciles, although you would also have to prevent emigration.)

Avoiding the black death may help, but the population did rebound IRL. No religion war also could help.

Hm, interesting numbers... Do you have data on the Pannonian basin?
 
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