Can a France without demographic decline keep the Maghreb?

[Socrates]

Why would this actually work?

The better weather is something that someone from northern France could have by going to southern France.

The booming cities is something that you're assuming will happen, not something that will be an obvious consequence.

The cheap property and the cheap labour contradict each other. Will Algerian Muslims remain in Algeria, providing an abundance of labour if a shortage of available property, or will they be expelled, providing an abundance of property if a shortage of labour?

Keep in mind that, historically, a hunger for land has not marked France. If anything, agricultural France has attracted immigrants from an early date.

Yes because in our timeline France had a huge fertility drop in the late 18th century. The whole basis of this POD is that does not happen and France's population around 1900 is not 40 million but over 100 million. That makes metropolitan France much more crowded, pushing up land prices, making it less attractive to live, and encouraging immigration.

The cheap labour and cheap immigration do not contradict each other, as we see in places like South Africa over the last 150 years. Even before apartheid, people could buy up cheap land even outside areas of population clearing. That's especially the case where rural land adjacent to a city is converted to urban homes. You don't need the local population kicked out the country, or even moved districts (though that is plausible and not out the norm for colonial powers). Their incomes are so much lower, they can be bought out.

Yes, you would need to move beyond a planter agricultural class, but you can just do more urban cities becoming French.

 

[rfmcdonald]

Yes because in our timeline France had a huge fertility drop in the late 18th century. The whole basis of this POD is that does not happen and France's population around 1900 is not 40 million but over 100 million. That makes metropolitan France much more crowded, pushing up land prices, making it less attractive to live, and encouraging immigration.

100 million was never specified in the first post of this thread. "Tens of millions", yes, but how many tens of millions?

(I would also suggest putting slow French population growth down to patterns of land inheritance misses the point somewhat. Why is land scarcity supposed to be less effective incentive for population control than, well, land scarcity?)

At any rate, simply having a high rate of population growth nationally does not at all mean that a particular territory under the authority of that country will end up being resettled. Look to France's east, in Germany, where the eastern provinces remained recalcitrantly Polish. Why did this happen, when belle époque Germany's population nearly doubled? Put simply, Germany did not want to settle in substantial numbers as farmers in the Polish provinces, migrants preferring German cities or overseas destinations. (That emigration is what people in the Polish provinces did, for that matter.)

A France with relatively high rates of population growth is likely to be a source of more emigration, but why is Algeria likely to be preferred? Why not Argentina and Uruguay, or the United States, or Canada, places offering relatively high wages in a familiar setting? Why Algeria?

The cheap labour and cheap immigration do not contradict each other, as we see in places like South Africa over the last 150 years.

It does. The inexpensiveness of African labourers, already present in South Africa by the millions, prevented South Africa from developing along the lines of Canada or Argentina, with an overwhelmingly white population occupying every different niche in the economy and natives being shut out. Instead, it became a place where African labour was always present. This prevented the country from being a particularly attractive destination for unskilled labourers.

Why did South Africa attract immigrants anyway? It was not agriculture, but rather the wealth associated with its abundant mineral riches, wealth which supported the construction of an urban-industrial economy. It did manage to attract skilled migrants, and still does.

Algeria lacks this natural abundance, its oil only starting to be exploited in the 1950s and its other resources not being found in the fabulous abundance of, say, gold in the Rand. Without this, where is the incentive for migrants?

Even before apartheid, people could buy up cheap land even outside areas of population clearing. That's especially the case where rural land adjacent to a city is converted to urban homes. You don't need the local population kicked out the country, or even moved districts (though that is plausible and not out the norm for colonial powers). Their incomes are so much lower, they can be bought out.

This sort of thing happened in our history, too. Even then, and even with rapid population growth on the northern rim of the Mediterranean that was the source for new European immigrants to Algeria, the immigrant proportion never got above 15% and was 1%.

Yes, you would need to move beyond a planter agricultural class, but you can just do more urban cities becoming French.

Even that is going to take many more immigrants than is practicable, especially when the rapid growth of Algerian Muslims--something that dates to the 1870s--is taken into account. The example of Oran (French-language Wikipedia), a city that went from being more than 85% European in 1921 to two-thirds European on the eve of independence, thanks to migrants, is indicative. There are just too many Algerian Muslims for Algeria's major cities to not end up overwhelmingly non-European. Even if all the pieds noirs had stayed in the early 1960s, they would make up only 3-4% of the population. Even if their numbers had doubled--how? why?--they would barely breach the 5% mark.

 

[Viriato]

Algeria did attract a large number of seasonal migrants from southern Spain, usually as agricultural workers. This took place between the 1880s and 1920s, peaking in the 1913 when some 30,000 Spanish labourers entered Algeria. The majority were seasonal and would travel back and forth for the harvest, mostly going to Oran and Algiers departments and coming from southern Spain. Perhaps one-tenth of the annual migrants settled permanently, making Oran in particular a more Spanish city than French.

For whatever reason, the bulk of immigrants to Algeria were from Southern Spain, Sicily, Malta, Corsica and to a lesser extent Languedoc, meaning the climate and agriculture was often identical to their land of origina. There were migrants from Paris during the 19th century, many being convicts and others being businessmen, but the poor Mediterranean migrants predominated.

With World War I, the number of European immigrants to Algeria fell, and this trend was exacerbated by the Depression and World War I. By 1954, 78% of the non-Muslim population was born in Algeria, 12% in France or other French territories and 10% elsewhere. If France had experienced the same issues as the rest of western Europe during the 19th century, that being increasing industrialisation allowing the overall economy to grow along with a decline in mortality rates, leading to a huge increase in population this might have led to larger numbers settling in Algeria. Large-scale emigration as a result of smaller land-holdings in France would have done this, with more land being usurped in North Africa and possibly an early push into Tunis and Morocco.

 

[Faeelin]

But why would people want to be smallholding peasants in Algeria? Why not go where there's more money?

 

[Faeelin]

100 million was never specified in the first post of this thread. "Tens of millions", yes, but how many tens of millions?

(I would also suggest putting slow French population growth down to patterns of land inheritance misses the point somewhat. Why is land scarcity supposed to be less effective incentive for population control than, well, land scarcity?)

At any rate, simply having a high rate of population growth nationally does not at all mean that a particular territory under the authority of that country will end up being resettled. Look to France's east, in Germany, where the eastern provinces remained recalcitrantly Polish. Why did this happen, when belle époque Germany's population nearly doubled? Put simply, Germany did not want to settle in substantial numbers as farmers in the Polish provinces, migrants preferring German cities or overseas destinations. (That emigration is what people in the Polish provinces did, for that matter.)

This is a super good point. The German right hated that people left Poland to move to America and had no desire to move there.

 

[Viriato]

But why would people want to be smallholding peasants in Algeria? Why not go where there's more money?

Usually migration is in chains, meaning there is already someone there etc. People from Murcia for instance, overwhelmingly went to Algeria, and few went to Argentina (unlike the Galicians and Basques). Also, most transoceanic migrants had some sort of savings or at least the ability to pay the passage. Algeria and Tunisia were cheaper and coupled with the short distance was the reason that emigrants from some Italian villages in Sicily chose North Africa rather than the United States or Argentina as a destination.

 

[Viriato]

This is a super good point. The German right hated that people left Poland to move to America and had no desire to move there.

Really? I had the impression that they hated that people were leaving the Eastern Provinces to head west, leading the German proportion of the population decreasing. In fact, they probably would have preferred more Polish emigration overseas, as Poles in Germany tended to stay within the empire, with many migrating westward to the industrial Ruhr. At the onset of World War II, 51% of the ethnic Polish population in the former Poland was under Russian Rule, 27% under Austrian, and 22% under German Rule.

However, if we look at the 1899-1910 immigration of nearly 1 million Poles to the U.S. 50% came from Russia, 46% from Austria, and a mere 4% from the German Empire, meaning less than 45,000 ethnic Poles left the German Empire for the U.S. The bulk of Poles came from Austrian Galicia and the Russian Kingdom of Poland. In fact, Germany had 1,26 million foreigners by 1910 and many in the East were Poles from Austria working as seasonal labourers on the estates of the region as the ethnic Poles and to a lesser extent Ukrainians. They were being strictly regulated as the German government was fearful that they would settle permanently, making Silesia, East Prussia and Posen even more Slavic.

 

[Socrates]

Why did the Algerian Muslim population suddenly increase so quickly post-1870, in a population boom that did not affect the Pied Noirs?

 

[Socrates]

Oh, and on point about French inheritance law changes, it is correct this is disputed. After starting this thread I did more research. I found a very good econometrics paper showing that it was mainly down to social structures breaking down in provincial revolutionary France, in a way that reduces incentive to have children. Either way, it was clearly revolution-linked. No revolution and it happens much later, in line with Germany and UK, towards end of 1800s. That would easily be enough to get the French population to 80 to 100 million during colonial period. It does not seem difficult to get many million more Pied Noirs from that, although obviously dependent on North African economies.

 

[Viriato]

Why did the Algerian Muslim population suddenly increase so quickly post-1870, in a population boom that did not affect the Pied Noirs?

Sanitation was improved and the French did implement quarantines etc. and though the Muslim population was poorer and faced discrimination, it did benefit from these improvements. Prior to that period, Algeria's population remained stagnant and even declined, in many ways it was similar to medieval Europe in that respect (though for a longer period). During the 1860s the last rebellions, along with plagues were experienced in Algeria, and from that point on the population began to increase, albeit slowly. During the 1890s cholera was brought to Algeria and there were only 58 deaths, showing that the management of outbreaks had greatly improved.

We may have the idea that colonial powers were genocidal, but by the late 19th and early 20th centuries for the most part the paternalistic view of improving the livelihood of the indigenous populations. Usually this was wrapped up in a view of an attitude of racial superiority that viewed the goal of the coloniser as one of bringing civilisation. For the most part, this did result in lower infant mortality rates, and fewer famines etc.

By the 1960s and 1970s the average Algerian woman had 8 children, a huge number, and only fell to 6 in 1985 and just under 5 by 1990. It has stayed at under 3 since 2000 however, though has been rising slightly since then, meaning Algeria's population will continue to rise for the foreseeable future.

 

[funnyhat]

Oh, and on point about French inheritance law changes, it is correct this is disputed. After starting this thread I did more research. I found a very good econometrics paper showing that it was mainly down to social structures breaking down in provincial revolutionary France, in a way that reduces incentive to have children. Either way, it was clearly revolution-linked. No revolution and it happens much later, in line with Germany and UK, towards end of 1800s.

I could be mistaken, but wasn't French fertility dropping even before the Revolution? (This is not to say that changes brought by the Revolution weren't additional factors.)

 

[Viriato]

Below is a comparison of France and England with the average number of children per woman.

 

[funnyhat]

Below is a comparison of France and England with the average number of children per woman.

View attachment 284997

OK, so it looks like the Revolutionary/Napoleonic changes were indeed important. It's interesting that fertility rates above three children per woman back then were scarcely enough to keep the population growing.

Is there any explanation for the surge in English fertility from 1770-1820?

 

[Viriato]

OK, so it looks like the Revolutionary/Napoleonic changes were indeed important. It's interesting that fertility rates above three children per woman back then were scarcely enough to keep the population growing.

Is there any explanation for the surge in English fertility from 1770-1820?

This occurred not only in England but in Germany, the Netherlands and other northern European countries as well. This seems to be because during the early industrial revolution people were working at younger ages and getting married and having children at younger ages in England and Germany. The availability of jobs meant that many men no longer waited to save for farmland to get married and start a family. Note that the rise in Germany occurred during the 1860s and 1870s, during the early stages of widespread industrialisation there, much like in England earlier.

In France it seems that the revolutionary wars that the change in inheritance laws coupled with the might have played some part in the stagnation of the birth rate. The conscription of men into the army coupled with the redistribution of land seems to have made output per acre decline in France. The absence of so many men in the 1790s seems to have delayed marriage and killed off potential fathers, and this would continue for an entire generation. By 1815, around 900,000 men had died, most of them young.

 

[Socrates]

You can't really say it was early industrialisation causing the change as it did not happen in England until much later, when industrialisation was well under way, while France had barely any industrialisation at all at this point - and the fertility decline occurred across the country, not just in the more modern parts.

The plausible contributors are changes in inheritance laws, mass conscription, and increased social mobility. Either way, its clearly revolution linked.

 

[Socrates]

Sanitation was improved and the French did implement quarantines etc. and though the Muslim population was poorer and faced discrimination, it did benefit from these improvements. Prior to that period, Algeria's population remained stagnant and even declined, in many ways it was similar to medieval Europe in that respect (though for a longer period). During the 1860s the last rebellions, along with plagues were experienced in Algeria, and from that point on the population began to increase, albeit slowly. During the 1890s cholera was brought to Algeria and there were only 58 deaths, showing that the management of outbreaks had greatly improved.

We may have the idea that colonial powers were genocidal, but by the late 19th and early 20th centuries for the most part the paternalistic view of improving the livelihood of the indigenous populations. Usually this was wrapped up in a view of an attitude of racial superiority that viewed the goal of the coloniser as one of bringing civilisation. For the most part, this did result in lower infant mortality rates, and fewer famines etc.

By the 1960s and 1970s the average Algerian woman had 8 children, a huge number, and only fell to 6 in 1985 and just under 5 by 1990. It has stayed at under 3 since 2000 however, though has been rising slightly since then, meaning Algeria's population will continue to rise for the foreseeable future.

This makes sense, and I understand Napoleon III pushed this sort of agenda. So to stop the disparity between populations, you don't need genocide, you just need more disregard for the natives and less of a paternalistic philosophy. And if the colon population was much larger, they might seize more power from the metropole and have more right wing views a la 20th Century South Africa.

 

[Viriato]

You can't really say it was early industrialisation causing the change as it did not happen in England until much later, when industrialisation was well under way, while France had barely any industrialisation at all at this point - and the fertility decline occurred across the country, not just in the more modern parts.

The plausible contributors are changes in inheritance laws, mass conscription, and increased social mobility. Either way, its clearly revolution linked.

The inheritance laws of France did create a parcelization of farms, but a system of landed proprietors. Whereby in 1892 there were 5.7 million farms in the country with a total of 122 million acres, a much larger number than in England. Of these, 39% were less than 2.5 acres, 46% were 2.5 to 25 acres in size, 12.5% between 25 and 100 acres, and less than 2.5% exceeding 100 acres in size. Also, 79.8% of farmers in France cultivated their own land, with only 13.8% being tenant farmers renting land, and mere 6.4% being share croppers. In contrast in England, around 82% of farmers were tenant farmers by the late 1880s.

The theory that some historians have put forward was that in the early period of industrialisation in places like Great Britain and Germany there was an uptick in births due to the average age of first marriage decreasing. This coupled with the increase in capital allowed for the formation of families at an earlier age. In England, between 1600-1649 the average for males was 28, for females it was 26, by 1800-1849 it had decreased to 25 for males and 23 for females, some believe that the growth in non-farm wages accounted for this. In France the average age of first marriage rose from 24.5 for women in 1680-1689 to 26.5 years old by 1780-1789 and around 10% of women never married. However, like England the average age of first marriage for women did decline in France to 23.9 by 1880-1889, so though marital age decreased in France, so did fertility.

On major difference between England and France was the increase in improvement of agriculture leading to better crop yields during the 18th century and leading to a large migration to urban areas. In France, this did not occur, and crop yields only improved during the 19th century.

By 1831, only 28% of England and Wales' population was employed in agriculture, and 50% lived in urban areas. Urbanisation in France was slower and perhaps the lack of available, and in 1841 85% of France's inhabitants lived in towns smaller than 3,000. By 1911, this was still the case for 65% of the population.

 

[Johannes Parisiensis]

Could integrating the native intelligentsia by extending political rights create a larger pro-French section of the Arab population?

As for the inheritence laws, maybe allowing farmers to entail their lands to one heir could make the landless others go either to the towns or the colonies.

 

[rfmcdonald]

Really? I had the impression that they hated that people were leaving the Eastern Provinces to head west, leading the German proportion of the population decreasing.

Exactly. Despite nationalist urgings, and government campaigns, Germans did not move east to settle and thoroughly Germanize the Polish provinces. Even though Germans far outnumbered Poles in the country as a whole, the German population nearly doubling in the belle époque, this rapid population growth just did not translate into Germans moving east into traditionally Polish territories. They just did not offer migrants good prospects, or at least not prospects as good as what they could find in other destinations.

This makes sense, and I understand Napoleon III pushed this sort of agenda. So to stop the disparity between populations, you don't need genocide, you just need more disregard for the natives and less of a paternalistic philosophy.

You would need less regard for the natives, yet enough regard to avoid being risky to the colons--the French officials who oversaw the health campaigns were aware that controlling cholera among the Muslims was necessary if you want to control cholera among the colons. An Algeria where cholera and other infectious diseases are more rampant is going to be less attractive to migrants, certainly more risky.

A question: What does "stop the disparity" mean? A somewhat larger colon population might be imaginable, but parity between the two is impossible.

And if the colon population was much larger, they might seize more power from the metropole and have more right wing views a la 20th Century South Africa.

You mean, as OTL?

Usually migration is in chains, meaning there is already someone there etc. People from Murcia for instance, overwhelmingly went to Algeria, and few went to Argentina (unlike the Galicians and Basques). Also, most transoceanic migrants had some sort of savings or at least the ability to pay the passage. Algeria and Tunisia were cheaper and coupled with the short distance was the reason that emigrants from some Italian villages in Sicily chose North Africa rather than the United States or Argentina as a destination.

Certainly. These choices would, I suggest, relate substantially to political issues. If France had withdrawn from Algeria in 1830 in the aftermath of the July Revolution, I would be willing to bet that Murcians would emigrate to Algiers in lesser numbers. Conversely, if it was Italy that established a protectorate over Tunisia, that country might well have been a preferred choice for more Sicilians.

In the case of Algeria, I'm not sure how much further migration can be amped up. It was a French territory under solid French control for more than a century, located on the other side of the Mediterranean from the metropole, with a colonial policy that actively encouraged both urban and rural settlement, and open to immigrants from other neighbouring countries (Italy, Spain, Malta) at a time when emigration from these countries was nearing a peak.

 

[rfmcdonald]

Could integrating the native intelligentsia by extending political rights create a larger pro-French section of the Arab population?

That--a conscious policy of trying to assimilate young Algerians into the French-Algerian polity and into French polity--strikes me as much more likely to make lasting changes. This policy could also exist independent of any demographic boom in France.

As for the inheritence laws, maybe allowing farmers to entail their lands to one heir could make the landless others go either to the towns or the colonies.

It could. Overseas, too.