ABSTRACT
The population explosion in Europe and China that began in the early eighteenth century was a breakthrough of a different kind. People wanted to have children, but they did not intend to create such a dramatic increase in the population. This explosion brought benefits to some, poverty and ill health to many more. The population explosion was part of a major change in human ecology. In order to explain the Chinese population explosion it is tempting to point to dietary change. It is true that by the eighteenth century the Chinese were growing corn, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, and peanuts all new crops originating in the Americas. Economic historians now agree that in Western Europe the population explosion was a necessary but not sufficient cause of the Industrial Revolution. Not every country with a rapidly growing population proceeds to industrialize. The Chinese did not industrialize until 1950, century after population growth forced most of them to live in terrible poverty.
