ABSTRACT
Europe west of the Soviet Union comprises only about two million square miles, or less than 4 per cent of the world's total area. Europe exclusive of the Soviet Union has a total population of about 440 million, or less than 15 per cent of the world's total. Before the development of modern industry, Europe was already distinguished from the other great civilizations by the control that its family system imposed on the rate of population growth. Public sanitation and modem medicine, whose effects were transforming the populations of Europe and its major overseas extensions, were only beginning to spread to most of the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The effect of emigration on Europe's population is difficult to calculate. It is likely that the departure of some 60 million persons, by relieving the economic pressure that largely stimulated the exodus, actually quickened the continent's population growth.
