What would a more populous France look like?

[Teutoberg Forest]

France was the most populated nation in Europe before the Revolution, but a combination of factors limited it's population growth in the 1800's, leading to it falling behind Russia, Germany, and the UK. If France was able to achieve a large enough rate of population growth, what parts of France would be more populated? There would certainly be bigger cities, but which areas stood the most to gain from normal demographic growth?

My guess would be that areas such as Alsace, the Rhone, and perhaps Brittany would have been more industrialized, so perhaps cities such as Strasbourg, Lyon, and Nantes would be bigger. In addition any area which was already industrialize OTL would probably see more growth than OTL.

 

[Arlos]

France was the most populated nation in Europe before the Revolution, but a combination of factors limited it's population growth in the 1800's, leading to it falling behind Russia, Germany, and the UK. If France was able to achieve a large enough rate of population growth, what parts of France would be more populated? There would certainly be bigger cities, but which areas stood the most to gain from normal demographic growth?

My guess would be that areas such as Alsace, the Rhone, and perhaps Brittany would have been more industrialized, so perhaps cities such as Strasbourg, Lyon, and Nantes would be bigger. In addition any area which was already industrialize OTL would probably see more growth than OTL.

France just need to have politician that get interested in doing something about it and have the mean to do it (AKA no 3rd republic).
We actually have a fairly deserted land, going from the north east of France to the south West, we call it the Diagonale du vide, you could probably settle a lot of people here, not sure about industry, but a lot of farming family at least.
A more populous France would also mean more people going to Algeria and the south of France in General, southern port and Corsica would be more developed, as would industry in Algeria.
The North of France was already really developed OTL, not sure how much more you can do here, aside from making everything one size bigger.

 

[Marc]

Here's the rarely mentioned counter question: what are the downsides of a greater population?
Some fairly obvious ones would be: More rapid depletion of natural resources (watch the great forests of France fade away). More pressure on water resources, and much more pollution. Higher national income, but lower per capita income, etc.
It's interesting that we rarely bother to consider that high populations aren't necessarily a good thing. Bigger isn't by definition better, at best, societally, it's a wash.

 

[Gloss]

Here's the rarely mentioned counter question: what are the downsides of a greater population?
Some fairly obvious ones would be: More rapid depletion of natural resources (watch the great forests of France fade away). More pressure on water resources, and much more pollution. Higher national income, but lower per capita income, etc.
It's interesting that we rarely bother to consider that high populations aren't necessarily a good thing. Bigger isn't by definition better, at best, societally, it's a wash.

I guess that's why the Netherlands are poor, oh wait...

 

[Deleted member 114175]

Depends on how population density is distributed and how planned the development of the country is. For example, Netherlands urban areas are so dense, that the country still has a decent amount of "empty" land.

 

[Oamlyya]

Some sources are divided about this, but while French agricultural output did grow rapidly during the 19th century (far more than enough to cover the growing population), it grew somewhat more slowly than it could have because enclosure was not wholesale embraced (enclosure is often cited as one of the major causes of the British Agricultural Revolution). One of the chief reasons was the French Revolutoin

"Whereas the prophets of agronomy expected the impending political revolution to usher in the whole battery of agricultural innovations which they had been advocating for decades, ordinary country dwellers were broadly hostile to the emanations of physiocracy and agronomy save where they touched on the issues of taxation and seigneurialism. They were hostile, that is, to the freeing of the grain trade, to new crops, to the restriction of grazing rights in field, meadow and forest, and to enclosures. Without exception the cahiers of the builliuge of Bigorre called for the resumption of the droit de parcours with villages in the Beam, while in the Lorraine over two hundred parish cuhiers were moved to condemn the edict of enclosure. This was the reality contained within Georges Lefebvre’s apt description of the peasants’ revolution as at once revolutionary and conservative: “they brought down the feudal regime, but they consolidated the agrarian structure of France." - P. M. Jones , Agricultural modernization and the French Revolution

So in a scenario where this is avoided you would presumably see large scale agrarian capitalist farms rather than small-scale family farms.

According to a few sources, the Napoléonic wars and Continental System did quite a lot of harm to French port cities like Marseille and very likely retarded their growth, so we could see significantly larger/more economically important French port cities.

"The Continental System led toeconomic recessions in many port towns such as Marseille"
https://www.academia.edu/5022729/As...he_Continental_System_for_France_and_Napoleon

"Harbors were deserted, grass was growing in the streets, and in large towns like Amsterdam, Bordeaux, and Marseille, population did actually decrease. However the collapse of industrial production in the ports and in their hinterland has not been as much noticed. It resulted from the loss of overseas markets and to a lesser degree from the difficulty in obtaining raw materials. In Marseille, the value of industrial output fell from 50 million francs in 1789 to 12 in 1813"

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2115762?read-now=1&seq=5#page_scan_tab_contents

 

[Gloss]

Depends on how population density is distributed and how planned the development of the country is. For example, Netherlands urban areas are so dense, that the country still has a decent amount of "empty" land.

The problem with the map is that it basically excludes every 0.25km2 with less than 5 people, meaning it excludes land with less than 20 people/km2 which is by no reasonable definition empty or even "empty", especially giving how small each square is.

 

[Marc]

As it happens, I just got back from a trip to Europe that included spending 5 days in Amsterdam. Obviously a very lovely city in many respects, and surprisingly, less crowded than a number of well known cities; it has about 4,900 people per square kilometer, as compared to the most dense city in Western Europe with 21,000 per km squared, Paris. The mild point being that density can be quite high with still a good standard of living, or not.
But regardless, more people does mean more resource exploitation - whether it's local, or exploited elsewhere, there is going to be invariably, depletion and, unless they are very careful, environmental degradation.

 

[Ian Henderson]

The answer may be that a faster growing France would not look too different, but other parts of the world would change. Remember by the 1850’s France was a net receiver of immigrants. With a higher domestic growth rate, you could see a combination of more French emigration to the New World and to Algeria. Those migrants who moved to France and North Africa might themselves move to the New World instead, leading to a different set of demographics in countries like the USA and Argentina. France itself might not see much change at all in its settlement pattern, but the world could look quite different.

 

[Gabingston]

The answer may be that a faster growing France would not look too different, but other parts of the world would change. Remember by the 1850’s France was a net receiver of immigrants. With a higher domestic growth rate, you could see a combination of more French emigration to the New World and to Algeria. Those migrants who moved to France and North Africa might themselves move to the New World instead, leading to a different set of demographics in countries like the USA and Argentina. France itself might not see much change at all in its settlement pattern, but the world could look quite different.

Argentina saw a relatively large amount of French immigrants IOTL, so with a higher French population, I could see a lot of Frenchmen immigrating to Argentina.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Argentines

 

[alexmilman]

Some sources are divided about this, but while French agricultural output did grow rapidly during the 19th century (far more than enough to cover the growing population), it grew somewhat more slowly than it could have because enclosure was not wholesale embraced (enclosure is often cited as one of the major causes of the British Agricultural Revolution). One of the chief reasons was the French Revolutoin

"Whereas the prophets of agronomy expected the impending political revolution to usher in the whole battery of agricultural innovations which they had been advocating for decades, ordinary country dwellers were broadly hostile to the emanations of physiocracy and agronomy save where they touched on the issues of taxation and seigneurialism. They were hostile, that is, to the freeing of the grain trade, to new crops, to the restriction of grazing rights in field, meadow and forest, and to enclosures. Without exception the cahiers of the builliuge of Bigorre called for the resumption of the droit de parcours with villages in the Beam, while in the Lorraine over two hundred parish cuhiers were moved to condemn the edict of enclosure. This was the reality contained within Georges Lefebvre’s apt description of the peasants’ revolution as at once revolutionary and conservative: “they brought down the feudal regime, but they consolidated the agrarian structure of France." - P. M. Jones , Agricultural modernization and the French Revolution

So in a scenario where this is avoided you would presumably see large scale agrarian capitalist farms rather than small-scale family farms.

Interesting point with which I tend to agree. French Revolution "opened" more of the agricultural lands to the small holders but these small holders did not have money, education or obvious interest in adopting the new methods. The same process could be observed in Russia after emancipation of the serfs: the peasants got freedom and the limited amounts of land but they had no idea about the advanced agricultural methods (and were generally suspicious of the "outsiders" preaching these methods) and no money to introduce them, even if they wanted. As a result, by 1917 most of the modern equipment had been concentrated in the big estates (owned either by a nobility or by a newly created class of the agricultural "capitalists") who could afford hiring the specialists, buying the equipment, etc. There was an intermediate productive class: the middle-sized family farms which, while not being full-scale "capitalistic", had been using some hired help and a reasonably modern equipment (those had been dealt with by the Bolsheviks).

But how would you implement your model within framework of the French Revolution? The land reform was inevitable and the peasants would get their small plots of the land. How are you going to jump from that point to a more productive schema of the big capitalist estates? Simply big estates of the pre-Revolutionary times were, in general, not very effective because most of their owners did not have a real interest in the agriculture.