French population growth close to level with rest of Europe

France was, as late as 1800, the most populated country in Europe.

Per wiki(I think it's accurate), in 1816 France had a population of 30,000,000(Comparable to Russia, well above Britain, Austria and Prussia). By 1911 it was only 41,000,000, putting it well below Germany, Austria, Russia and on par with Britain(Below it counting Dominions).

What if France has a modest population growth? Maybe 40,000,000 by the time of the Franco-Prussian War, 60,000,000 by WWI era, 70,000,000 before WWII era? I'm not sure what could have caused this. But it would give France a larger Industrial Base, a larger Army and and more reserves in all of the previously mentioned wars.

How could this have effect French history, European History, and World history?
 
I think part of the issue is that population growth historically tends to keep pace with economc carrying capacity. France had led Europe in many respects, unifying its economy, expanding the manufacturinfg sector, meliorating lands and creating an intensive agriculture early on. Thus while e.g. the German states and Russia had lots of room to expand into in the course of their unification, urbanisation and modernisation, France was there already. In a situation like that, you tend to get late marriages, low birth rates and generally careful husbanding of family resources.

If France had had higher birth rates in the 19th century, it would have been an even more unstable country. It would also - that's historically much more interesting - have had very significant emigration, most likely to Algeria (as per OTL), the United States, Latin America and possibly Canada and Australia. Note that the Catholic conservative parties were devastated at France's low birth rate and blamed it for everything from perverted artists, prostitution and defeat against Prussia in 1870 to lagging behind Britain in industrial development.
 

Hendryk

Banned
If France had had higher birth rates in the 19th century, it would have been an even more unstable country. It would also - that's historically much more interesting - have had very significant emigration, most likely to Algeria (as per OTL), the United States, Latin America and possibly Canada and Australia.
Emigration would indeed have been the primary outlet for excess population. By the early 20th century, the US and Argentina, among others, would likely have sizeable French immigrant communities. Not sure what the emigrants' primary destination would be, though--of course Quebec and Algeria have the advantage of not requiring to learn a new language, but I don't think it would have been so much of a factor in the 19th century, any more than it was for, say, the Germans, the Scandinavians or the Italians. Besides, depending on the region of origin, the emigrants probably would speak a local patois rather than standard French, which only reached France's peripheral regions and the more isolated rural areas in the late 19th century.

Note that the Catholic conservative parties were devastated at France's low birth rate and blamed it for everything from perverted artists, prostitution and defeat against Prussia in 1870 to lagging behind Britain in industrial development.
Not that it made any difference, which goes to show that even in the absence of modern birth control, when a given population wants to avoid expanding, it can find ways to do it.
 
I think part of the issue is that population growth historically tends to keep pace with economc carrying capacity. France had led Europe in many respects, unifying its economy, expanding the manufacturinfg sector, meliorating lands and creating an intensive agriculture early on. Thus while e.g. the German states and Russia had lots of room to expand into in the course of their unification, urbanisation and modernisation, France was there already. In a situation like that, you tend to get late marriages, low birth rates and generally careful husbanding of family resources.

If France had had higher birth rates in the 19th century, it would have been an even more unstable country.

Not sure I agree with this.

If expanding your manufacturing sector, meliorating lands and creating an intensive agricultural sector see's a reduction in birth rates, why should we not see it in Britain? England after all went from perhaps 8-10 million in 1800 through to 30 million by 1900. France meanwhile had almost negligiable growth. If anything the fact is that France did not expand her industrial sector as compared with Britain or Germany and she remained a society composed primarilly of agricultural petit-bourgeois.

A comparrison with the significant growth in Belgium and the Netherlands might also be interesting, although they are perhaps too small.

While I agree that the low birth rates was clearly intentional, claiming it is due to France having reached a more advanced state of modernity compared with other nations in Europe seems questionable.

I was told recently that one of the possible reasons was the laws with regard to property. In that even today (not completely sure about this), property has to be divided up equally between all children, with only a third within the gift of the parents. The obviously result for family wealth would be devestating if a farm was divided up between five people, then another five people and so on. The natural result of this was to have fewer children, only two or three perhaps, or even arrangements where certain members of the family would have no children but stay and work on the farm.

Such property laws are however not an aspect of modernity but a cultural oddity. France was also urbanizing at a considerable rate in the 19th century, so the claim it had already been accomplished seems a false one. Consider the growth of Paris alone, from perhaps half a million in 1800 to 2.7-3 million in 1900.

I am also not completely convinced that a greater population would lead to a more unstable France. Again the comparrison with Britain enters. Although even Italy and Germany, barring the establishment of nations, were less unstable than France.
 
Not sure I agree with this.

If expanding your manufacturing sector, meliorating lands and creating an intensive agricultural sector see's a reduction in birth rates, why should we not see it in Britain? England after all went from perhaps 8-10 million in 1800 through to 30 million by 1900. France meanwhile had almost negligiable growth. If anything the fact is that France did not expand her industrial sector as compared with Britain or Germany and she remained a society composed primarilly of agricultural petit-bourgeois.

A comparrison with the significant growth in Belgium and the Netherlands might also be interesting, although they are perhaps too small.

While I agree that the low birth rates was clearly intentional, claiming it is due to France having reached a more advanced state of modernity compared with other nations in Europe seems questionable.

I was told recently that one of the possible reasons was the laws with regard to property. In that even today (not completely sure about this), property has to be divided up equally between all children, with only a third within the gift of the parents. The obviously result for family wealth would be devestating if a farm was divided up between five people, then another five people and so on. The natural result of this was to have fewer children, only two or three perhaps, or even arrangements where certain members of the family would have no children but stay and work on the farm.

Such property laws are however not an aspect of modernity but a cultural oddity. France was also urbanizing at a considerable rate in the 19th century, so the claim it had already been accomplished seems a false one. Consider the growth of Paris alone, from perhaps half a million in 1800 to 2.7-3 million in 1900.

I am also not completely convinced that a greater population would lead to a more unstable France. Again the comparrison with Britain enters. Although even Italy and Germany, barring the establishment of nations, were less unstable than France.

I don't really know much about the intricate details of French succession and inheritance laws, however I was under the impression that the system of dividing up property equally among the children was something used in almost all of continental Europe and that only Anglo-Saxon common law nations were different on this issue. I remember reading something like this in an article about why continental Europe has more family business dynasties than the UK.

So the article's hypothesis was (and we're talking about major industrial companies here, etc) that the European system of dividing up shares of the company in small parcels among many relatives led to family-run businesses being run more professionally rather like publicly-listed corporations. This compared to the UK where one child could end up in charge of a business and effectively run it into the ground.

Not that that is much related to this topic but it is an interesting point.
 
An expanded French population would only create more peasant farmers. France's industrial development was slow and would neither meet the needs of the expanding population nor create more jobs in the industrial sector. France didn't even register as a significant industrial power until the latter half of the 19th Century, but was quickly outdone by neighbouring Germany anyway.
For a larger population to bolster France's power we would need to see an earlier and more extensive industrial revolution. Perhaps the earlier development of a large coal and steel industry in the Ruhr valley coupled with ship building in the Atlantic ports which could stimulate the growth of railways and draw workers out of the countryside and into rapidly expanding new industrial towns. With a large domestic market and labour force, France could easily have outproduced Great Britain if there was enough ambition and enterprise from the middle classes.
 
I don't really know much about the intricate details of French succession and inheritance laws, however I was under the impression that the system of dividing up property equally among the children was something used in almost all of continental Europe and that only Anglo-Saxon common law nations were different on this issue. I remember reading something like this in an article about why continental Europe has more family business dynasties than the UK.

I think the laws are still largely in place today, I have directly witnessed this happening, on a family farm, where there where around seven siblings, after their parents died it was divided among them, which is obviously going to cause problems. (Along those lines anyway).
 
Inheritance law probably played a role, but given large parts of Germany and Italy that experienced massive population growth iuse the same system, it can't have been decisive on its own. Note also that French population growth at the time was hardly marginal and that it had already been well under way in the 18th century. I think one major factor must have been that French agriculture already was quite intensive and population comparatively dense. A lot of the things that went on in Britain, Germany, Italy and Russia, where new arable was created and marginal land cultivated, had already happened in much of France (Northern France was an exception - it boomed much the same was England and Belgium did in population terms). Urbanisation also had already happened in many regional centres and with industrial production slower to take root (that, inmturn, has roots in fiscal policy, law, social structure and historical accident), there weren't that many jobs to be had. The peasant class couldn't well be expanded much - they were already working on the narrowestr of margins in many places - and much of France was prime wheat land, where the introduction of maize and potatos could not fuel population booms the way it could in Britain or Italy. Not having that many children is a typical reaction to not having that many opportunities.
 
Wasn't the nearly continuous war France waged against Europe (or Europe waged against France, depending on pov) from 1789 to 1815 a major factor? I seem to remember the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars being described as a "demographic catastrophe" that stunted France's population growth in the 19th century.
 
Wasn't the nearly continuous war France waged against Europe (or Europe waged against France, depending on pov) from 1789 to 1815 a major factor? I seem to remember the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars being described as a "demographic catastrophe" that stunted France's population growth in the 19th century.

That's a very good point. How bad was it, though? Significantly worse than e.g. in Bavaria, Spain, the Rhineland or Northern Italy?
 
Besides, depending on the region of origin, the emigrants probably would speak a local patois rather than standard French, which only reached France's peripheral regions and the more isolated rural areas in the late 19th century.

On the other hand, it could be argued that the French dialects in Canada were derived from the local "patoix" (?) in France (though also, the impact of 17th-century French could also be reflected in there). A good example of that is Acadian French, which is almost wholely derived from the dialects of the former French provinces of Maine, Anjou, and (primarily) Poitou. Thus, in the case of Canada (especially if the destination was either Québec or Atlantic Canada/Newfoundland), one would not need to relearn French because of how close the development of Canadian French was to these dialects.
 
Well I think the bodycount for the Napoleonic wars was certainly high, with some believing it saw as many French killed as in WW1. That would be about 1.4 million or somewhere around that region.

On the otherhand its not as if the wars saw lots of French killed and no one else. A larger number of "Europeans" died, most of whom were probably German, although you probably have half a million or so Russians and Spaniards, and they obviously didn't suffer any demographic collapse.

I am not really sure about the idea that a larger population would lead to more peasants. It seems to me you will get an industrial revolution more on the British model. These people will have no opportunities in their rural homes, so shall have to flood into cities and there they will have to find employment. From that comes industrialisation.

Hobsbawm in the age of Empire, states that there were only 78 cities (population 10,000 or over) in France in 1800, rising to 165 by 1850 and 232 by 1890. England by comparrison had gone from 44 to 148 to 356 by 1890.

In terms of urban population percentage England rose from 20.3% in 1800 to 61.9% in 1890. France meanwhile had grown from 8.8% to 25.9%. By comparrison however Germany had grown only from 5.5% to 28.2% and Austria/Bohemia had urbanized less than France, going from 5.2% to 18.1%.

So again, France certainly did change over the 19th century. She became far more urbanized. It was just this didn't occur at the same time as the population boom which was occuring elsewhere in Europe.
 
On the other hand, it could be argued that the French dialects in Canada were derived from the local "patoix" (?) in France (though also, the impact of 17th-century French could also be reflected in there). A good example of that is Acadian French, which is almost wholely derived from the dialects of the former French provinces of Maine, Anjou, and (primarily) Poitou. Thus, in the case of Canada (especially if the destination was either Québec or Atlantic Canada/Newfoundland), one would not need to relearn French because of how close the development of Canadian French was to these dialects.
The question is how comfortable the British government would feel about large numbers of French emigrating to Quebec? There was a concerted effort to marginalize the French-language in the Dominion until well into the 20th century, which would be at odds to the acceptance of a mass influx of native-French speakers. I think it more likely that the demographic 'overflow' would go to continuing French colonies such as Algeria, Indo-China, Lebanon (? not sure of that one) which would, of course, have much larger geo-political effects in the long run. Can you imagine the effect of a predominately European country in SE Asia would be, instead of an ethically Asian one with Europeans in charge of most things? Or in the Middle East?

Or perhaps Russia? The ruling class all spoke French as the language of the elite and educated, and the peasants speaking Russian were fairly disadained. Russia had lots of empty land that might be suitable for French settlement... maybe in the N. Caucasus', as a hedge against the spread of Islam/Persians from the south... except there would need to be a Catholic/Orthodox reconciliation... tricky, but it might work...
 
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A remember reading on SHWI a long time ago, that part of the problem with the French population stagnation was the land redistribution during and after the French Revolution hurt the population somehow and discouraged population growth. I can't remember the precise details, alas.

Anyone know anything about this?
 
The question is how comfortable the British government would feel about large numbers of French emigrating to Quebec? There was a concerted effort to marginalize the French-language in the Dominion until well into the 20th century, which would be at odds to the acceptance of a mass influx of native-French speakers.

New England might end up a major recipient of French immigration. Quebecois settled in large numbers in the Vermont, New Hampshire, and parts of Massachusetts, so the "path of least resistance" community would exist. I don't think that this would effect the history of the region too much, since the immigrants are just as poor and Catholic as the Irish and Italians. Perhaps a few more Notre Dame parochial schools and churchs.

I think it more likely that the demographic 'overflow' would go to continuing French colonies such as Algeria, Indo-China, Lebanon (? not sure of that one) which would, of course, have much larger geo-political effects in the long run. Can you imagine the effect of a predominately European country in SE Asia would be, instead of an ethically Asian one with Europeans in charge of most things? Or in the Middle East?

The French "overflow" that emigrated to the French colonies is going to go primarily to Algeria. Algeria was the natural target of a French regime looking for near abroad expansion. If the French population is larger, and that leads to larger numbers of French settling in Algeria, then this will have pretty serious knock-on effects when (if?) colonialism declines.

I don't see Lebanon, since the French didn't actually rule the region until relatively late in the game (post-Versailles). I don't seem Vietnam either, though for different reasons. Vietnam was already mostly settled, and the was OTL the most profitable part of the French colonial empire. So why mess around with that?

Perhaps the French, with a bit more of a focus on "settler" colonies and the OTL relationship with Egypt (which would still exist ATL), take a bigger role in East Africa? French colonies covering the Horn of Africa, with OTL Kenya as an add on? French control of the Horn of Africa would probably make Egypt look a bit (only a little bit) less useful to the British Empire once the Suez Canal is built, since French control of the Gulf of Aden would allow them to potentially sever the Suez route to India.

Still, French control of East Africa, combined with the control the French already had of most of West Africa, would mean the French probably establish some kind of protectorate over the Ethiopians and move more quickly towards control of the Sudan. This state of affairs would make the chances of Egypt being attached to the French empire much more likely.

Or perhaps Russia? The ruling class all spoke French as the language of the elite and educated, and the peasants speaking Russian were fairly disadained. Russia had lots of empty land that might be suitable for French settlement... maybe in the N. Caucasus', as a hedge against the spread of Islam/Persians from the south... except there would need to be a Catholic/Orthodox reconciliation... tricky, but it might work...

No. This is ASB.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
Just a little fact, Britain had a population of 10 million in 1800 (interesting enough united Ireland had a population of 5 million, the same as today), while Spain had 11 million, today UK has around 60 millions, while Spain have 40 millions. So Carlton is correct the growth was less possible in the warmer climate in South Europe, than the cold and wet North European climate, where potatoes thrieved.
 
New England might end up a major recipient of French immigration. Quebecois settled in large numbers in the Vermont, New Hampshire, and parts of Massachusetts, so the "path of least resistance" community would exist. I don't think that this would effect the history of the region too much, since the immigrants are just as poor and Catholic as the Irish and Italians. Perhaps a few more Notre Dame parochial schools and churchs.

Not just those areas - they were also prominent in Rhode Island as well, primarily from Woonsocket to Pawtucket. In addition, although probably a later phenomenon, some of the mill owners were from either France or Belgium.
 
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