ABSTRACT
Having sketched the demographic history of eighteenth-century Europe, the historian can hardly avoid asking himself whether it is proper to call these developments a ‘Vital Revolution’. Demographic developments in eighteenth-century Scandinavia were in many respects typical of what was happening elsewhere in Europe at that time. Though the rates of growth varied widely from country to country, the population was on the increase everywhere from about 1720 onwards. In May 1720 a ship coming from a plague-infested port in Syria brought the deadly disease to Marseilles. There followed a furious outbreak, killing about 40,000 of the city’s 90,000 inhabitants. The news of this catastrophe caused grave anxiety throughout Europe. The sequence of crises which, often reinforcing one another, had afflicted most nations of Europe during the 1690’s and the early years of the eighteenth century was followed by a period which appears considerably more auspicious by comparison.
