Account for the pattern of population growth in Europe, 1500-1800

In addition a greater security of food supply after 1500 in a period of harvests meant there were more marriages and at an earlier age due to the increased ability to pay dowry’s and social pressures towards marriage and securing an heir. The age of marriage is seen as of crucial importance to the fertility rate as older women produce fewer children. If women are bearing more children there is a greater chance that one or more of the children will survive through to adulthood and produce children themselves. So, it is through the multiplier effect that the population increases.

However there is little evidence for this assumption because parish registers were not kept systematically in this period.  If we look at figure 1.1 it is evident in Europe at the time of pre-1750 that most women got married at the age of twenty five, in fact it is estimated four fifths of women were married by the age 25 in this period.

(Figure 1.1) Mean Age of Women at First Marriage, pre 1750

        At the end of the 16th century and into the 17th century the period of population expansion came to an end. Instead much of Europe was entering into a period of demographic stagnation, on account of negative population influences which brought about mortality. The principal features of mortality behaviour are dramatic fluctuations brought about by a high endemic and epidemic incidence of infectious diseases. Plague was the most virulent of all epidemics, for instance in the years 1603, 1625 and 1665 in London a total of 200,000 people died in these three years. Similarly, in Amsterdam in 1664 it is estimated the plague killed one sixth of the population. The great ‘Atlantic plague’ of 1596-1603 that hit the coasts of Western Europe, it is estimated killed one million people.

(Figure 1.2) Population age groups expressed as percentages

However, staggering as it is the regular toll of other diseases such as influenza and typhoid may have been responsible for more deaths in the period. The regularity of epidemics, disease and famine probably goes some way to explaining why life expectancy (see figure 1.2) in early modern Europe was so low and why there was high infant mortality. In England the average expectation of life expectancy at birth was thirty-five years or less and it was estimated half of all children born died before the age of ten years in the 17th century. Epidemics were spread by contact, and the most common form of contact was during wartime and the passage of troops. Siege warfare brutality and atrocities from warfare were also negative demographic factors such as in the Thirty Years War (1618-48) which caused human misery from famine, disease and drove civillians from their homes. Not only would they cause mortality to increase but also ‘Births, too, inevitably declined in a crisis, adding to the loss of population and increasing the task of recuperation in the post-crisis period.’ Indeed, the related conditions of war brought more deaths than the number of soldiers that died in actual battle. For instance it has been estimated that in the English Civil War deaths in battles totalled 85,000 but the war related mortality was 100,000.

Poverty and poor nutrition were two main features of epidemic victims. Therefore, more than often it was the poor who suffered the most from outbreaks of epidemics. At the time of an outbreak the upper classes felt that the poor spread virulent diseases such as the plague and to an extent they were true. The working class districts of towns were places of destitution and squalor where disease was rife and could be spread easily. For instance in late 17th century England infant mortality in rural areas was twenty to twenty-five deaths per thousand of the population, in urban working class districts this figure was thirty-five to forty per thousand of the population.

During the 17th century famine was also widespread in Europe. The availability of food was affected primarily by the weather but also by other factors such as agricultural methods and the presence of war. In early modern England one harvest in four was bad. In France in 1693 at Meulan, Northeast of Paris, the price of grain tripled and burials were nearly two and a half those of a normal year. If we associate famine together with the attacks of epidemics as Flinn estimates ‘the mortality in France in 1693-4 may have exceeded two million.’ Nations in early modern Europe lived at subsistence level, and even in normal harvest years relied on food imports. This accounts for why during bad harvest years the proletariat was exposed to famine. Townspeople could beg for relief in times of famine but the rural lower classes had to find relief on their own. Moreover, the rural lower classes would resort to living off plants in gardens and fields and even carcasses of dead animals during the extremes of famine. In the towns the situation was not always as grim but the urban lower classes if suffering malnutrition were more unprotected to infectious diseases.  

The 18th century witnessed exponential populatuion growth and further development of towns, especially in Britain, which was at the forefront of the industrial revolution. There was a rising level of fertility as women were marrying at an earlier age than in previous centuries. Couples were no longer tied to the land or the cottage of their parents and instead could migrate and live and work in the towns. Infant mortality fell as more babies lived through to adulthood as there was an improvement in medical care and also a greater awareness of personal and public health. For instance innoculations against smallpox prevented major population declines. In this century plague came to an end, the last reported case in the West was in Messina in 1743. As a whole there were more stringent checks on infectious diseases, for instance there was often a ban on commerce by sea, a ban saved Spain from the Marseille plague of 1720.

Across the continent armies were becoming more professional. Fewer soldiers were dying in conflict and they were healthier, which prevented the spread of disease to the civilian poulation. As well famine is less prevalent, with new crops and agricultural methods introduced and as a result farmers were more prepared for a bad harvest. Furthermore, climatic conditions improved from the 17th century, which resulted in better harvests. It is apparent conditions improved during the 18th century and this is reflected in the exponential growth of population in Britain. However, more people were living and dying in towns and the urban proletariat was still living in slum conditions, which caused life expectancy to remain low.

Population growth in early modern Europe was anything but stable. Populations were exposed to negative demographic influences which devestated levels across the continent. The most significant factor of population growth was a combination of infectious diseases and famine that would induce human misery, as a diarist wrote in a time of military occupation ‘it was considered a blessing in these times to die of plague.’ On the otherhand there were only subtle changes to the fertility rate throughout the period, which depended substantially on the age of marriage. As many marriages were terminated by the death of one or the other partner before the wife reached the end of her reproductive period. If a population was fortunate enough to be without famine and disease it might experience a slight growth; it was the significance of these two factors that determined whether or not there was growth, stagnation or decline.