Challenge: Highest Possible World Population by 2014

What PODs, post-1400, could have led to a much higher number of people being alive today? The POD must be a human event, not a geological event. How many deaths could have been avoided? How many new births might have occurred?

I think one of the most important factors would be stopping or reducing the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which killed millions not only in the process of enslavement but in the warfare that resulted from it (American Civil War for instance). However, I don't know if there's any POD that could do this. Preventing the smallpox epidemics among American Indians would help a lot, but this might not be possible after 1400. Any war that can be prevented should be, but I'm really more interested in demographic and technological changes. A more scientifically advanced world will probably be a more populous one. So maybe this question is partly asking, how can you speed up the scientific revolution. Medicine and agriculture are probably the most important fields.

Thank you for taking part in this discussion. I look forward to hearing your responses.
 
You need more advanced medicine. And there should somehow avoid multiple devastating wars and totalitarian regimes.
 
The fastest way to get max population is to get rid of monogamous cultures (e.g. European) and replace them with polygamous cultures (e.g. Middle Eastern/Indian/Chinese). Other things that could help: more rulers/kings (so more harems) and conservative societies (so massive focus on family/procreation).

Wars/totalitarian regimes/medicine are probably not as important as one might like to think. China lost millions of people in the mid-17th century, but managed to recover in 150 years. Slavery cost 20 million over the course of three centuries; this deficit can be filled in within a couple generations if we have "max population" cultures settle in Africa/America.

My take:

1. 1400. Timur turns north (instead of towards the Ottomans OTL) and unites the Golden Horde under his banner. Seeking to best Genghis Khan, he careens his horde+cannons into Central Europe through Russia, exterminating/pastoralizing Poland, Germany, France and Hungary. Central Europe turns into a wasteland. (0.35bn OTL/0.3bn here)

2. 1402. Without Timur to stop them (as they were in OTL after the Battle of Ankara), Ottomans capture Constantinople and, claiming to be heirs of Rome, capture the city. This inaugurates a new jihadist spirit throughout the Islamic world, and Islam once again begins its terrifying expansion - Sub-Saharan Africa (Morocco/Mamluks), India (Delhi/Gujarat), Europe (Ottomans/Morocco/Granada). The last bastions of Christendom crumble before this renewed onslaught. (0.35bn OTL/0.3bn here)

4. 1405. With no Timurid horde to escape from, the Oirats and other Mongols are not pressured to invade Ming China. The Emperor Yongle can thus focus on his most pressing task - finding his nephew the Jianwen Emperor, whose throne he usurped in 1402. Tens of fleets are sent to scour the world's seas. Through them, China learns of the existence of the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia and Siberia. (0.35bn OTL/0.3bn here)

5. 1410. Yongle, still having not found Jianwen, continues rounding up and executing Jianwen-sympathizers. The numbers are in the hundreds of thousands and contain many of China's intellectual elite (same as OTL). Xie Jin daringly intercedes on behalf of the prisoners and argues for transportation to the newly-discovered lands is an alternative. Yongle agrees and China begins dumping prisoners in Australia and Siberia. His successors continue Yongle's maritime and settlement policy. (0.35bn OTL/0.275bn here)

6. 1500. Numerous jihadist states being set up along trade routes in Mali, Nigeria and Tanzania. Without Portugal to interrupt Arab shipping, Arab traders eventually round the Cape and colonize it. Meanwhile, Muslim Europe fractures and collapses after a series of internecine wars: city-states now abound in the region (just like in Moorish Spain OTL). Rulers soon figure out that more people = better odds versus their neighbors. Population in Muslim Europe is nearing pre-Timur levels and is continuing to increase, Muslim leaders drawing on Greek and Roman texts to build canals, aqueducts, etc. (0.425bn OTL, 0.4bn here)

7. 1600-1700. Ming penal colonies become fully fledged states in their own right, the sheer abundance of land in these virgin lands acting as a major pressure valve for stability as dispossessed farmers simply move outwards in search of new land. Similarly, excess population in Islamic Europe is 'drained away' by continued colonization at the frontiers: Scandinavia, Scotland, Russia, even in Brazil and Southern Africa. Despite the constant wars, this period is relatively stable and will be known for its cultural and scientific achievements (probably equivalent to the Renaissance). (0.545bn OTL, 0.625bn here)

8. 1700. Ming Chinese colonize California and begin mining its gold and silver. This proves to be disaster for the world as the influx of precious metal destabilizes the world, disrupting the Ming and Ottoman Empires, who both totter and collapse spectacularly. Known as a "Global Thirty Years' War", Old World nations fall on each other and create a bloodbath not seen since the days of Timur. Desperate peoples fleeing war expand Muslim/Chinese enclaves in America, its native inhabitants dying from smallpox. In addition, the bleakness of this period generates millennarian movements throughout Islam once again, and gazis conquer numerous tribes/nations in the Dar al-Harb (House of War): Kongo in Africa, the Aztecs/Inca in America, perhaps Burma/Tibet in Asia. On the other side of the world, Chinese settlement crosses the Rockies and pours into the Great Plains. (0.6bn OTL, 1.0bn here)

9. 1800s. Utterly exhausted with war, Islamic and Chinese societies move to more 'regulated' forms of combat (like how European wars in the 1700s became much less bloody than in the 1600s). This an age of first recovery and then prosperity - accelerating further as increasing trade links result in greater production, which eventually sparks off an Industrial Revolution in the 1850s, Western Europe and central China (where the major Song steelworks were) being the first places to boom. (0.9bn OTL, 1.8bn here)

10. 1900s. Massive progress in science, medicine and agriculture. These are not followed by corresponding advances in belief, however: the Islamic world takes these developments as sign of God's power (which also offers people relief from 'technological shock') and China retains its age-old belief in familial piety, which technology does nothing to erode. In both cultures, the constant presence of harems continues to devalue women and while a few strong-willed ones do break from the mould, the majority remain comfortable being family matriarchs. Nationalism never occurs; and so wars remain frequent and small-scale as the political world remains deeply fractured. Any remaining areas uncolonized (Canada, Amazonia, Congo and Siberia) are taken over. (1.6bn OTL, 3.0bn here)

11. 2000: (6.0bn OTL, 11.0bn here)

12. 2013: (7.0bn OTL, 12.0bn here) - I think a population in the low-teens is probably reasonable as a max for human population on Earth (esp. an industrialized population, though in this world I doubt consumerism would exist) - any more than that and Mother Nature will quickly slap you back down. Life in this world will be pretty bad, I suspect, especially if you are a woman.

Hopefully I didn't alter human psychology too much (war still happens,for example).
 
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Delay the Frequent Contact between Eastern Asia and Europe and have the American Indians somehow recover from Small Pox.
 
The fastest way to get max population is to get rid of monogamous cultures (e.g. European) and replace them with polygamous cultures (e.g. Middle Eastern/Indian/Chinese). Other things that could help: more rulers/kings (so more harems) and conservative societies (so massive focus on family/procreation).
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Would this really work? It seems to me that it would result in more reproductively idle women as high-status men find it more convenient to corral more women than they'll usually have the time and inclination to impregnate, leaving the reproductive potential of lower-status men wasted. Do you mean to suggest that three women will end up having more children, total, if they're all married to the same man than to three different men?
 
The fastest way to get max population is to get rid of monogamous cultures (e.g. European) and replace them with polygamous cultures (e.g. Middle Eastern/Indian/Chinese). Other things that could help: more rulers/kings (so more harems) and conservative societies (so massive focus on family/procreation).
You do realize that the number of wives a man can have does nothing to increase the number of fertile women, right? Whether you have fifty women married to fifty men or fifty women married to one man, their potential for having offspring is the same. Polygamy actually hurts in some ways, because it forces a single household to support more children. One man and three women will be hard pressed to equal both the economic and reproductive output of three couples, especially if the man is the lone breadwinner (sexism in favor of males will be a factor, probably even more so with increased polygamy). One salary can only support so many children, so three women with three men means three salaries, and thus thrice the money to support children with. People don't tend to procreate as much when they can't support any more children.

The biggest factor is making people choose to procreate, and making their offspring survive to adulthood. The former can be done with religion or nationalism, while the latter mostly depends on having adequate food and water supplies. Medicine helps, but not nearly as much as food supplies. Making it socially acceptable to have children out of wedlock will also probably help, simply because casual sex and accidental pregnancy will help to bring people who aren't really interested in marriage into the population of active procreators. Making people marry young will also help, for fairly obvious reasons.
 
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Polygamy by itself obviously doesn't make for more fertile women. But the social implications of polygamy (I think) is the devaluation of women and force them into a subordinate position vis-a-vis males. I don't think anybody can disagree that women were more socially disadvantaged in preindustrial China or India as compared with Europe during the same time. This has additional ramifications - such as having multiple children in order to get a boy.

I suspect that given the choice, most women would prefer not to have tons and tons of babies. Limiting the ability of women to have a say in reproduction is necessary if you want max pop.

European culture also became more and more individualistic as it industrialized, which is something that hardly maxes pop. Obviously we can only speculate what an industrialized, non-Westernized Chinese culture would have in terms of family, but it's probably not going to abandon all that Confucian teaching about 'filial piety' etc etc at a whim.

Avitus has it right when he says that the key is making people want to procreate. But an industrialized Western culture is least likely to do that, at least compared with an Islamic, Indian or Chinese culture. (Obviously you can argue whether an Islamic/Indian/Chinese culture would have industrialized at all, to which my answer is 'yes'.)
 
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Polygamy by itself obviously doesn't make for more fertile women. But the social implications of polygamy (I think) is the devaluation of women and force them into a subordinate position vis-a-vis males. I don't think anybody can disagree that women were more socially disadvantaged in preindustrial China or India as compared with Europe during the same time. This has additional ramifications - such as having multiple children in order to get a boy.

I suspect that given the choice, most women would prefer not to have tons and tons of babies. Limiting the ability of women to have a say in reproduction is necessary if you want max pop.

European culture also became more and more individualistic as it industrialized, which is something that hardly maxes pop. Obviously we can only speculate what an industrialized, non-Westernized Chinese culture would have in terms of family, but it's probably not going to abandon all that Confucian teaching about 'filial piety' etc etc at a whim.

Avitus has it right when he says that the key is making people want to procreate. But an industrialized Western culture is least likely to do that, at least compared with an Islamic, Indian or Chinese culture. (Obviously you can argue whether an Islamic/Indian/Chinese culture would have industrialized at all, to which my answer is 'yes'.)
I need to look into the era more (not my forte, I just have rudimentary knowledge), but the early industrial era was actually marked by a massive European population boom (it is well documented in threads concerning post Napoleonic France, largely because France didn't participate in either the boom or the industrialization to the extent its neighbors did, and suffered accordingly), so European industrial society is capable of producing rapid population growth. Also note that you can have western culture and a not particularly industrial society, resulting in places like much of Latin America that still manage to post considerable population growth.
 
I'm not saying Europe can't ever post population growth (early industrial area boom was due to medicine - fewer babies dying and more people living longer) but it won't grow fast enough in both the pre-industrial and post-industrial age. I mean, Western Europe is no less fertile (maybe even more so) than the North China plain, but China had twice the number of people compared with Europe by the 1600s. And I can't imagine the Chinese having more extramarital affairs or much more amazing medicine.

I guess the point is that for max pop, you need both industrialization and a culture that implies a duty for women to bear children. For Europe, you can have one or you can have the other. The roots of European civilization are too deeply rooted in Greek philosophy and Christianity for the ideas of individualism and freedom to be purged from it.
 

SunDeep

Banned
Well, you could argue that any historical alterations to human genetics in an ATL would have to either emanate from ASB's or a human POD. Bearing this in mind, you could have had a huge effect by having a few random individuals at a relatively early stage of human development surviving to pass their genes, along with the chance mutations conferring them genetic immunity to some of the pathogens which would later be responsible for some of OTL's deadliest pandemics, on to future generations. Take away the Black Death, Smallpox, Yellow Fever, Typhus... The list is endless, and when you think of the casualty list and the fatality rates...
 
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