The growth of population

‘This study is not for the faint-hearted,’ wrote Thomas McKeown in 1976, admitting that there were no data to provide conclusive support for his interpretation of the modern rise of population – and events were to prove him right. Recent commentators on his ‘classic’ work have described it as facile, inconsistent, inaccurate and ‘a tour de force of reasoning by exclusion’. ¹ Investigating population history in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is indeed a hazardous business, given the rarity of census material and the slow emergence of national systems for the registration of births, marriages and deaths. Yet this period straddled Europe’s ‘initial population explosion’, a critical turning point in demographic history when the spasmodic growth of earlier centuries gradually gave way to a sustained increase in numbers. To varying degrees across the continent, it witnessed improved life expectancy, couples marrying earlier than in the past, and even an early resort to contraception within marriage. Needless to say, the very gradual nature of change in this field makes the isolation of any span of fifty years a somewhat arbitrary procedure. We must therefore keep in mind the long-term perspective, notably the famous ‘demographic transition’ from high to low birth and death rates. This chapter begins on relatively safe ground, outlining the growth of population in Europe, some contemporary reactions to it, and recent developments in historical demography. The remainder will seek explanations for the rise in numbers, partly in terms of what may be called proximate causes (changes in fertility and mortality), and partly from influences in society at large.