Population

’At least two periods of secular increase can be tolerably well identified in the demographic history of medieval and early modern Europe, the first extending from about the middle of the eleventh to the end of the thirteenth, the second from the middle of the fifteenth to the end of the sixteenth century…. In this sense the demographic development of the eighteenth century was not unique. What was unprecedented about it was the fact that the secular upward movement started from a higher level, and that it was able to maintain, and for some time even increase, its momentum. Population growth in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, unlike that of previous epochs, was not terminated and reversed by catastrophe.’ ¹ The trend of population growth in the rest of the world followed that of Europe. ² From the middle of the nineteenth century onwards the populations of Asia, Africa and the Americas increased very rapidly, reaching an unparalleled rate of acceleration in the second quarter of the twentieth century, just at the time when, ‘owing to the personal decisions of millions of human beings, not to Acts of God such as the Black Death of the fourteenth century’, ³ the sharp rise in European population was slowing down.