ABSTRACT
The beginnings of a persistent interest in the history of population antedate the founding of population studies. Demography, as a field of inquiry, originated in 1662 with the publication of John Graunt’s Observations, though it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that the discipline received its technical name. Since the 1940’s, there have been considerable changes in the extent and nature of research into the demographic history of the West. In large part, this is a reflection of a growing interest in population questions generally, stimulated in the 1930’s by the apparent threat of population decline in the West and since World War II by the high and rising rates of population growth in underdeveloped societies. Some of the sources and approaches suggested require primarily historians’ skills for their manipulation, while others demand relatively advanced techniques of formal demography.
