ABSTRACT
The notion of a Malthusian equilibrium continues to dominate our vision of the historical past prior to the nineteenth century. The carrying capacity of the land determined the number of the people. It is true that the size of villages in France, expressed in numbers of hearths, often exhibits a remarkable stability over the available statistical record. The situation that has been described is not exclusively French. The adjustments during the nineteenth century became part of what has been called the Industrial Revolution. A remarkable inflection in the series of mortality occurs at the time of the Revolution. The momentous new fact for the first time in history at the level of a country, is that the birth rate of France has started its secular decline. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, a radically new behaviour had erupted in married life itself: family limitation by voluntary control of fertility was responsible for the drop of the birth rate.
