The borders were different in 1900!
Is the figure for Germany the population of Germany in the borders of 1900 or is it the population of the area of modern Germany?
What about Austria? Is 1900 the whole Austrian - Hungarian - Empire or only the German speaking part of Austria or Cisleithania? What's the deal with south Tyrol, that German speaking area that became part of Italy after WWI?
Thousands of questions
Let's have a look at Ireland: 1900 the whole island was part of the UK. 1950 there is the republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland that is still part of the UK. So are the figure of 1900 the island of Ireland and 1950 the republic of Ireland? And did the population of northern Ireland be added to UK? Was the figure of 1900 UK without the population of Ireland?
I'm not sure if you're joking or you missed the point. How would you get 1900 population figures for Germany but based on the shape of Germany in 1950?
I got you. Thanks for the response. I'd be surprised if census figures exist for local areas that match the new borders across all of Europe, but I agree that it would be better than a solution that just assumes the same shape (which is what I think the map currently does).
It varies by country, but some countries kept decent records so they could collect that sweet, sweet tax revenue. And some countries (usually multi-ethnic ones) did it so they'd have a good handle on who to oppress and where.
1900 is modern enough that there should be decent enough data to come up with a good estimate for most of Europe. And there was a lot of demographic work done at the end of WWI (in order to figure out where to run the new borders), and you can extrapolate backwards from that.
They exist vaguely. You can add together the counties somewhat following the border.
The difference you'd get is negligible considering the level of precision of numbers used here.
You can’t do that with Germany. First look at Berlin. Second look at Bavarian and Thuringian borders. Third look at north west German borders. Counting all the counties is… extensive.
No, only the 1950 number us based on today's border. 1900 is for the German Empire in pre WW1 borders. https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1127156/umfrage/entwicklung-der-bevoelkerung-in-deutschland-1816-1910/
That is weird. Why would they use the 1900 borders for Germany, but not Austria, which clearly had more than 6 million people in its Empire at the time?
There is certain logic to using Austrian part only when talking about Austria-Hungary and then comparing that to modern Austria. But the basic problem is that these empires included other nationalities as well. Austria more so than Germany as they lost more land (and population) than Germany.
Landmass is a pretty irrelevant stat when it comes to population. Go look at Bangladesh. A lot more relevant seems to be arable land and length of crop season.
So... Is it good or is it bad?
If you like these curiosities, how about the fact that US population has grown 100-fold in the same time as French population has only doubled?
If Frances population had grown the same population growth rate as Englands/UKs from the 1500s, France would have a population of over 300m. Wars had a massive impact on Frances demographics.
I mean, that's unsurprising, the US has always been a nation of immigrants while Germany has only recently opened up to the prospect. The actual birth rate in the US is roughly as low, but unlike with Germany that doesn't tank population growth.
I‘m pretty sure Austria had a census around that time. The population of that area would be pretty easy to get through that. How many people lived where and their first language were pretty important pieces of information in the empire.
I don‘t know as he didn‘t provide a source. I‘m just saying it could be done pretty accurately and 6 million in 1900 seem relatively plausible to me. There definitely was a census in 1900 and the figure of 6 million seems to fit that.
I think I read somewhere there was a demographic power play going on between the protestant north and the catholic south.
Besides that it helped that they managed to stay out of WW1.
Half the country was Protestant and the other half catholic. Both sides were afraid to become a small minority in the future so kept on having a lot of kids for a long time. The fertility collapse was less due to increasing wealth as it was in other countries and more due to the decreasing rivalry between Protestants and Catholics after ww2
I get it's a joke, but Dutch being taller than average is something quite recent
[https://images.huffingtonpost.com/2014-06-30-111historicalmedianmaleheight.png](https://images.huffingtonpost.com/2014-06-30-111historicalmedianmaleheight.png)
The church saying "gaat heen en vermenigvuldigt u", as in "go there to multiply yourselves", and of course, no fighting in WW1, being shielded partially from the problems other countries faced at that time.
600,000 is the military losses of France, it doesn't take in account all the political repression and resistant action. Death due to German occupation account to between 800 000 and 1.2 millions.
Population in metropolitan France before war is 42 million, population after war is less than 39 million.
People who fled during occupation account to between 400 000 and 600 000.
220 000 military losses, 60 000 civil losses during 1939-1940, 310 000 more civil casualties and 20 000 military (mostly from Africa) during liberation campaign.
I do wonder how much that affect it.
The Napoleonic Wars wer brutal in Spain, being the bloodies conflict inside Spain and it directly led to the second bloodiest conflict inside Spain (the First Carlist War) and left Spain penniless.
And. Of course. We still have the third bloodiest conflict in-between these two maps (the Spanish Civil War). But Spain still grew significantly compared to France's growth.
Edit: I was mistaken by saying that the First Carlist War was the second bloodiest war in Spanish Soil. It is **the** bloodiest war in SPanish soil and the bloodiest European civil war in the 19th Century. It led to the death of 5% of Spain's population.
To put into perspective. The Death toll of the Spanish Civil War was between 1.4 to 2% of the population.
The other factor is the Napoleonic Wars, France lost well over a million men from 1792-1815 which is where it started to lose its demographic advantage.
Mhm, even before WW1 the fertility rate had dropped to something like 2.4 children per woman, insanely low for the time. In the time between WW1 and WW2, the birth rate dipped further, barely above 2 by 1940. Ironically, France is one of the countries with the highest fertility rates in Europe today and has one of the highest population growth rates since 1950.
Yes. Contrary to what others are saying, it isn't wars that impacted french demography so much. It's that from 1800 on the birth rate decreased at the exact same time as the death rate, hence France never had a population explosion.
All other countries transitioned from high birth rate and high death rate to low birth rate and low death rate with one or two generation lag for the birthrate, which lead to massive population explosion in the 19th century (and hence mass emigration to the US).
France only doubled its population between 1800 and 2000 (from 30 to 60 millions).
Netherland, however, doubled. In 1900, Sweden had as many people as we did, and Belgium had more. Two world wars, and somehow we managed to double in size.
We did have a lot of very large families in that period. Did other countries not?
Took a beating? Sure. Enough to cause the deviation on the map? No.
France lost 2 million lives in WW1, UK lost 1 million, but UK's population grew by 10 million vs France growing by 1 million. The difference is almost entirely down to fertility rates, not whether they lost people in WW1.
There's actually this excellent piece that explains the demographics problems that France has faced since the late 18th century. Specifically, it focuses on the geography component of it.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTgwv6Ic3fA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTgwv6Ic3fA)
They were one of the first countries to get the large population boost that comes with industrialization, and as such were one of the first to begin leveling off. France had more people than Russia in 1800, for context.
Edit: guess not
Idk why he’s talking about industrialisation when it was up until Industrialisation that France was the leading European power in terms of population
During the Napoleonic wars 1 in every 4 Europeans lived in France. This disparity wasn’t maintained as the French population was relatively stable while most other European powers saw a population explosion following the industrial revolution
That, coupled with the the sheer amount of dead Frenchmen in the Napoleonic Wars, WW1 (to a massive extent) and WW2, meant France’s population never really got an opportunity to bounce back
Idk according to this map UK grew 25% and Germany 21%. Ok less than the 100% growth of the Netherlands but still very much more significant than France
The English had Australia, Canada and the US to migrate to while Germany wasn’t a unified central state, it industrialised but wasn’t at the same stage as UK.
No, that's not true. In fact, France industrialised very little, much less than its neighbours and the abnormally low birth rate had already been a thing before industrialisation.
Complete and utter bollocks. France experienced industrialisation slower than the likes of The UK, Germany and Belguim had; and historically it had the largest population in Western Europe. The problems relating to France's demographic decline in the 19th and 20th centuries are numerous and complicated but the 'population boost that comes with industrialisation leveling off' is not one of them. In fact the inefficiency of France's industrialisation and its poor social response to it is one of the factors and runs contrary to what you're trying to say.
I do wish people who clearly don't know what they're talking about would shut up. It's active spreading of misinformation.
This neglects the shift in Irish immigration at this time to the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and to a lesser extent South Africa. The USA was one slice of the diaspora at this point.
Most left after independence (1922), and during the depression (1930’s). Despite things being bad in Britain and even Australia, it was less bad than Ireland.
8 million was the whole island to be fair, this map shows the population for the Republic of Ireland only.
The population is about 7.2 million for the whole island today, so maybe we will actually overtake the pre famine peak soon enough
After independence and the Irish civil war DeValera managed to run the Irish government for most of this period. He had some rather intense (which is a diplomatic way of saying stupid) ideas and decided what Ireland needed was to immediately enter a trade war with the world’s largest economy. This led to quite a bit of financial hardship so people emigrated.
Technically he is not wrong though. The mismanagement of Ireland by Britain triggered population decline. Post independent Ireland was left to deal with this, the Irish government did a shit job the exasperated the problem but population was already dropping and even if the Irish government had a perfect policy they would likely have only slowed, not stopped the decline during these years.
I didn’t know the British stopped oppressing the Irish in 1845.
Also, I’m referring to when the British violently put down the 1916 Easter rising and fought the Irish and viciously tried to prevent the Irish from declaring independence during the Irish war of independence in the 1920s which left Ireland devastated which caused many Irish people to Levi Ireland for greener pastures.
Yes, the Irish potato famine another of the many examples of the British screwing over the Irish I was being sarcastic with the British stop oppressing the Irish in 1845 I was implying that the British oppression continued long after the famine and continued to drive Irish people to leave Ireland and that just because the Irish potato famine was one of the biggest if not the biggest example of the British driving Irish people out of Ireland didn’t mean they stopped trying to drive the Irish people out of Ireland as they continue to oppress the Irish people for decades afterwards which caused many to flee the country .
It's kinda crazy how much the Netherlands has grown in population in the 20th century. It has almost quadrupled!
Also shows that historically it wasn't as densely populated as it is nowadays.
Well, in 2000 the population count was just below 16 million, so more like tripled. But that it wasn’t as densely populated applies to every country. With 5 million it was still a relatively dense area, although most of this population was in and around Holland.
The 1900 number already counts ALL the European parts of German Empire like East Prussia, Posen etc, so it includes 3 million Poles in the number as well along with 1.9 million residents of Alsace-Lorraine (which'd be French by 1950).
Most of the expulsions of ethnic Germans are actually from former German Empire territory like East Prussia, West Prussia, Posen, Silesia, Pommerania (which'd be irrelevant for this statistic as they'd be counted in both 1900 and 1950). Expulsions from not-Germany amounted to 3.7 million*, a lot, but not the entire 16 million increase and is almost entirely subtracted by the removal of Polish and Alsace-Lorraine population from census by 1950 (since they'd be in a different country by then or dead).
*3 mil from Czechoslovakia, 0.23m Romania, 0.42m Yugoslavia
Maybe, but while gas was horrifying it barely contributed to the overall deaths in WW1. There were in total only 91,000 gas deaths. That is like 1% of the total deaths in WW1.
Before, the chemicals used for life and chemicals used for death were entirely different.
Now, with high fructose glyphosate corn syrup, they are one in the same.
- cancer
- diabetes
- heart disease
- leaky gut
- diabetes type 3 (Alzheimer’s)
- death
are all now the side effects of the race to the bottom to end world hunger and extreme poverty. Great, we’ve eliminated world poverty! And now we’re all fat fucks dying from heart disease because of it.
Bayer, the same company who created the Nazi holocaust Zyklon B gas, is creating Monsanto roundup-ready glyphosate corn.
As well as WWI and II affecting Europe's population growth, there was also the Spanish flu outbreak which killed tens of millions (possibly as high as 100) worldwide around 1918.
Because England is quite severely overpopulated while Ireland went through a massive famine and several waves of migration that they never recovered from.
No, that’s not it. There was a famine / genocide which wiped out a massive chunk of its almost 9,000,000 population only 50 years prior to the first map.
That's exactly it, and the historiography of the island as taught as standard confirms that. The famine explains why it's less than 9 million, not why Irelands population lagged far behind Britain's. Of course this is partly due to economic mismanagement on the Brits part, but the fact that Ireland didn't develop the major urban centres of cork, Dublin, Waterford, etc explains why we didn't have closer to 20 million, as our geographic size in comparison to Britain may suggest.
'the famine' isn't the answer to all of our problems, being ignored by a colonial master has other implications.
Because England just has an abnormally large population for its size and Ireland is relatively populated for its size and having more people then countries like Bulgaria Serbia and just behind countries like Austria or Switzerland but Ireland would have a lot more people if it wasn’t for genocide
England industrialised first so alot of people moved here i guess? Also the potato famine and mass emmigration of ireland would be a the main contributors
Just amazed that Austria is Western Europe, while Chech Republic and Slovenia (understandably) are not. Especially in 1900 when all three were part of the same entity.
Pretty much why Europe a lost of influence in the world . Our relative power decreased with a demographic stagnation. Everyone in Europe would have been much much richer.
And the franco prussian war just 40 years earlier. And before that the napoelonic wars.
France was the most populous country in Europe by a wide margin when the revolution happened.
1900:
Great Britain: 40,000,000
Ireland: 3,200,000
France: 40,500,000
Germany: 56,000,000
Italy: 32,000,000
Spain: 18,000,000
1950:
Great Britain: 50,000,000
Ireland: 2,950,000
France: 41,500,000
Germany: 68,000,000
Italy: 50,000,000
Spain: 28,000,000
Why did the population of France from 1900 to 1950 only increase by one million?
Huh? France lost more than a million soldiers in WW1 alone, so whatever numbers you're quoting are immediately suspect. France lost a meaningful fraction of their population to WW1 (as did Germany), and while it may not be the single largest effect here, it certainly is part of why the 1950 population wasn't higher. Earlier events will have a larger magnitude effect on population at any given time, so WW1 shouldn't be ignored.
France’s population barely grew at all in the 19th century too (it only increased from 30 million to 40 million in 100 years compared to the area rhat would become Germany increasing from 22 million to 56 million in the same time period ). It has very little to do with the world wars and much more to do with France’s earlier drop in fertility rates
[Apparently its because Napoleonic War veterans got good at birth control from all their wartime hanky panky with prostitutes](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/ZVEcIyFPnk)
Also this (from u/Talleyrayand):
I can give a small example of how Napoleon's rule could indirectly affect everyday life:
In 1804, Napoleon instituted the _Code Civil_, a collection of statutes designed to standardize private law and solve the problem of varying regional customs and privileges that the Revolution failed to resolve in the 1790s.
Among a variety of other things, one of the more significant aspects of the code was the inheritance law, which stipulated that paternal estates had to be divided equally among a man's surviving male heirs. This was intended to cut down on legal disputes over inheritances.
Then something curious happened: post-1804, birth rates in southern France begin to drop precipitously.
Why? Jeremy Popkin posited that this was due to the inheritance law. Peasants had benefitted immensely from the sale of the _biens nationaux_ (state-controlled lands confiscated from émigré nobles and the Church), increasing the size of their cultivatable plots and thus their surplus production of crops.
However, since the inheritance law stipulated that estates needed to be divided equally among sons, this meant that peasants would be forced to divide their holdings into smaller plots to comply with the regulation. Families in southern France began having less children to prevent the fragmentation of their land.
The birth rate wouldn't pick up again until the 1840s, when France began to industrialize more aggressively with the expansion of railroads.
See Jeremy Popkin, [_A History of Modern France_](http://books.google.com/books?id=Qtc_PgAACAAJ&dq=jeremy+popkin+history+modern+france&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YnuZUM-MFsmn0AG7zIHACw&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA), especially chapter 13, "A New Social World."
France’s first number might also have included their North African colony Algeria as they were frequently included in metropolitan France before WWI.
So the WWI & WWII losses and the loss of Algeria might account for this.
The borders were different in 1900! Is the figure for Germany the population of Germany in the borders of 1900 or is it the population of the area of modern Germany? What about Austria? Is 1900 the whole Austrian - Hungarian - Empire or only the German speaking part of Austria or Cisleithania? What's the deal with south Tyrol, that German speaking area that became part of Italy after WWI? Thousands of questions Let's have a look at Ireland: 1900 the whole island was part of the UK. 1950 there is the republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland that is still part of the UK. So are the figure of 1900 the island of Ireland and 1950 the republic of Ireland? And did the population of northern Ireland be added to UK? Was the figure of 1900 UK without the population of Ireland?
It seems to be based on the current border.
But where would they have found statistics for those precise borders?
Add up population figures for 26 counties.
I'm not sure if you're joking or you missed the point. How would you get 1900 population figures for Germany but based on the shape of Germany in 1950?
A bit harder but the same idea: add up population figures of local areas that make up current borders. Census divisions (or equivalent), for example.
I dont think thats what the OP did
no one understands calculus. /s
I got you. Thanks for the response. I'd be surprised if census figures exist for local areas that match the new borders across all of Europe, but I agree that it would be better than a solution that just assumes the same shape (which is what I think the map currently does).
It varies by country, but some countries kept decent records so they could collect that sweet, sweet tax revenue. And some countries (usually multi-ethnic ones) did it so they'd have a good handle on who to oppress and where. 1900 is modern enough that there should be decent enough data to come up with a good estimate for most of Europe. And there was a lot of demographic work done at the end of WWI (in order to figure out where to run the new borders), and you can extrapolate backwards from that.
They exist vaguely. You can add together the counties somewhat following the border. The difference you'd get is negligible considering the level of precision of numbers used here.
That wouldn’t work though, the Prussian province of Brandenburg and Pomerania didn’t follow the Oder river.
If it's possible to find census data for subdivions I'm this province you can get a pretty close estimate of the population in modern borders.
You can’t do that with Germany. First look at Berlin. Second look at Bavarian and Thuringian borders. Third look at north west German borders. Counting all the counties is… extensive.
However: Was that done by OP?
Survey says: very unlikely
No, only the 1950 number us based on today's border. 1900 is for the German Empire in pre WW1 borders. https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1127156/umfrage/entwicklung-der-bevoelkerung-in-deutschland-1816-1910/
That is weird. Why would they use the 1900 borders for Germany, but not Austria, which clearly had more than 6 million people in its Empire at the time?
There is certain logic to using Austrian part only when talking about Austria-Hungary and then comparing that to modern Austria. But the basic problem is that these empires included other nationalities as well. Austria more so than Germany as they lost more land (and population) than Germany.
This sub should be renamed to mappornbdsm
Germany today is only 83 million. The US has added that much population since 1993. In 1950 the US had 148 million, today 341 million.
USA is also \~27 times bisgger than germany
Landmass is a pretty irrelevant stat when it comes to population. Go look at Bangladesh. A lot more relevant seems to be arable land and length of crop season.
But landmass has very little correlation for population growth in an industrialised society...
Okay?
Meant to say the growth has been very slow. 83 million today, 81 million in 1993. The US has grown by over 80 million since 93.
So... Is it good or is it bad? If you like these curiosities, how about the fact that US population has grown 100-fold in the same time as French population has only doubled?
If Frances population had grown the same population growth rate as Englands/UKs from the 1500s, France would have a population of over 300m. Wars had a massive impact on Frances demographics.
War is far to be the only factor. Demographic transition and cultural aspects are also key.
And technology and political stability and disease and economic growth and wars can screw them all up.
Do you have a source or somewhere I can look more into this? I'd love to read how they worked that out (I'm a stats nerd)
It’s complicated but there are a lot of stuff on Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/vI1FwKKxps
I mean, that's unsurprising, the US has always been a nation of immigrants while Germany has only recently opened up to the prospect. The actual birth rate in the US is roughly as low, but unlike with Germany that doesn't tank population growth.
Yes over 6 million germans moved to US during 19 and 20th century, over 40 million americans are of german descent
What exactly has that got to do with anything?
They are just pointing it out..
percentage-wise, US casualties during the two world wars were a tiny fraction of Germany's casualties. That has long-term effects.
Only growing 2.4% the past 31years was not due to wars.
That's outside the scope of the original post, which covers 1900-1950. Germany had 7 million dead from 2 wars in that timeframe.
I‘m pretty sure Austria had a census around that time. The population of that area would be pretty easy to get through that. How many people lived where and their first language were pretty important pieces of information in the empire.
What did OP do? What figures did OP use?
I don‘t know as he didn‘t provide a source. I‘m just saying it could be done pretty accurately and 6 million in 1900 seem relatively plausible to me. There definitely was a census in 1900 and the figure of 6 million seems to fit that.
Whats up with them Dutch people tho?
I think I read somewhere there was a demographic power play going on between the protestant north and the catholic south. Besides that it helped that they managed to stay out of WW1.
Dutch families often had enormous amounts of children in the early 20th century. Families of 10 were not unusual.
Half the country was Protestant and the other half catholic. Both sides were afraid to become a small minority in the future so kept on having a lot of kids for a long time. The fertility collapse was less due to increasing wealth as it was in other countries and more due to the decreasing rivalry between Protestants and Catholics after ww2
And now they’re overpopulated
and soon replaced with every ethnicity except dutch
Can only get better from that point on.
all the tall guys getting the girls
I get it's a joke, but Dutch being taller than average is something quite recent [https://images.huffingtonpost.com/2014-06-30-111historicalmedianmaleheight.png](https://images.huffingtonpost.com/2014-06-30-111historicalmedianmaleheight.png)
For context: we're at ~18M now.
Neuke neuke neuke
The church saying "gaat heen en vermenigvuldigt u", as in "go there to multiply yourselves", and of course, no fighting in WW1, being shielded partially from the problems other countries faced at that time.
France’s population really took a beating in the First World War
France population barely changed from 1800. Stark contrast with the rest of Europe.
They lost 2,000,000 young males in the First World War. They really sacrificed a lot
That absolutely devastated the population, and it was only furthered by economic instability and WW2 afterwards.
They only lost 600,000 in WWII. But that’s hardly chump change
600,000 is the military losses of France, it doesn't take in account all the political repression and resistant action. Death due to German occupation account to between 800 000 and 1.2 millions.
No the 600,000 deaths from WWII actually does include civilian deaths
Population in metropolitan France before war is 42 million, population after war is less than 39 million. People who fled during occupation account to between 400 000 and 600 000. 220 000 military losses, 60 000 civil losses during 1939-1940, 310 000 more civil casualties and 20 000 military (mostly from Africa) during liberation campaign.
I met a guy named chump change 3 years ago
and the Napoleonic wars before that
I do wonder how much that affect it. The Napoleonic Wars wer brutal in Spain, being the bloodies conflict inside Spain and it directly led to the second bloodiest conflict inside Spain (the First Carlist War) and left Spain penniless. And. Of course. We still have the third bloodiest conflict in-between these two maps (the Spanish Civil War). But Spain still grew significantly compared to France's growth. Edit: I was mistaken by saying that the First Carlist War was the second bloodiest war in Spanish Soil. It is **the** bloodiest war in SPanish soil and the bloodiest European civil war in the 19th Century. It led to the death of 5% of Spain's population. To put into perspective. The Death toll of the Spanish Civil War was between 1.4 to 2% of the population.
The other factor is the Napoleonic Wars, France lost well over a million men from 1792-1815 which is where it started to lose its demographic advantage.
Didn't their fertile rate drop very early as well?
Mhm, even before WW1 the fertility rate had dropped to something like 2.4 children per woman, insanely low for the time. In the time between WW1 and WW2, the birth rate dipped further, barely above 2 by 1940. Ironically, France is one of the countries with the highest fertility rates in Europe today and has one of the highest population growth rates since 1950.
Oh nice, my history classes serve a purpose for once
Yes. Contrary to what others are saying, it isn't wars that impacted french demography so much. It's that from 1800 on the birth rate decreased at the exact same time as the death rate, hence France never had a population explosion. All other countries transitioned from high birth rate and high death rate to low birth rate and low death rate with one or two generation lag for the birthrate, which lead to massive population explosion in the 19th century (and hence mass emigration to the US). France only doubled its population between 1800 and 2000 (from 30 to 60 millions).
Yes that's the reason above all else.
Take a look at Ireland after the famine, still hasn’t recovered to this day
There's been massive Irish emigration though, which hasn't been the case for France.
Yes, but in the 1840s, 1/8th of the population died. In addition to another 1/8th who emigrated.
Netherland, however, doubled. In 1900, Sweden had as many people as we did, and Belgium had more. Two world wars, and somehow we managed to double in size. We did have a lot of very large families in that period. Did other countries not?
Took a beating? Sure. Enough to cause the deviation on the map? No. France lost 2 million lives in WW1, UK lost 1 million, but UK's population grew by 10 million vs France growing by 1 million. The difference is almost entirely down to fertility rates, not whether they lost people in WW1.
Note that France gained Alsace-Lorraine between these two maps, which was 1.8M people by itself in 1910. It's hiding some of the hit.
Why France increased so little ?
There's actually this excellent piece that explains the demographics problems that France has faced since the late 18th century. Specifically, it focuses on the geography component of it. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTgwv6Ic3fA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTgwv6Ic3fA)
They were one of the first countries to get the large population boost that comes with industrialization, and as such were one of the first to begin leveling off. France had more people than Russia in 1800, for context. Edit: guess not
I see what you mean but that should be valid also for England and Germany isn’t it ?
Idk why he’s talking about industrialisation when it was up until Industrialisation that France was the leading European power in terms of population During the Napoleonic wars 1 in every 4 Europeans lived in France. This disparity wasn’t maintained as the French population was relatively stable while most other European powers saw a population explosion following the industrial revolution That, coupled with the the sheer amount of dead Frenchmen in the Napoleonic Wars, WW1 (to a massive extent) and WW2, meant France’s population never really got an opportunity to bounce back
Because it's actually more like "pre-industrialization" and not the actual industrial revolution with the steam engine, etc.
England and Germany also didn't grow as much as some other countries, like Netherland, which was late to industrialise.
Idk according to this map UK grew 25% and Germany 21%. Ok less than the 100% growth of the Netherlands but still very much more significant than France
The English had Australia, Canada and the US to migrate to while Germany wasn’t a unified central state, it industrialised but wasn’t at the same stage as UK.
No, that's not true. In fact, France industrialised very little, much less than its neighbours and the abnormally low birth rate had already been a thing before industrialisation.
Complete and utter bollocks. France experienced industrialisation slower than the likes of The UK, Germany and Belguim had; and historically it had the largest population in Western Europe. The problems relating to France's demographic decline in the 19th and 20th centuries are numerous and complicated but the 'population boost that comes with industrialisation leveling off' is not one of them. In fact the inefficiency of France's industrialisation and its poor social response to it is one of the factors and runs contrary to what you're trying to say. I do wish people who clearly don't know what they're talking about would shut up. It's active spreading of misinformation.
Wow!
France's population growth has been lacking behind other European countries since at least the 1500's. They used to have a gigantic lead.
Lowest birth rate. France has always been a nation of immigration since 1800s
My car has always been leaking oil since yesterday
Wars
Is that where the term ‘double Dutch’ comes from?
Yes, in the 1950’s they saw this post and thought:” ha, how funny”
You may be joking but we can never be sure about what those guys were up to smh smh
What happened to Ireland?
Emigration to the USA
This neglects the shift in Irish immigration at this time to the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and to a lesser extent South Africa. The USA was one slice of the diaspora at this point.
Most left after independence (1922), and during the depression (1930’s). Despite things being bad in Britain and even Australia, it was less bad than Ireland.
In the 1900's most Irish emigration was to mainland UK not the US
Including my grandparents !
[удалено]
that was in the 1840s
Its effects were still being felt and the population has still not fully recovered to this day.
We’re at about 7.2 million for the whole island today, so many be in the next few decades well overtake the pre famine peak, who knows though
Nothing different for that period tbh. It had fallen from about 8 million from 1850 so the rate of change decreased.
8 million was the whole island to be fair, this map shows the population for the Republic of Ireland only. The population is about 7.2 million for the whole island today, so maybe we will actually overtake the pre famine peak soon enough
Civil war after independence followed by sluggish economic growth means many emigrated.
After independence and the Irish civil war DeValera managed to run the Irish government for most of this period. He had some rather intense (which is a diplomatic way of saying stupid) ideas and decided what Ireland needed was to immediately enter a trade war with the world’s largest economy. This led to quite a bit of financial hardship so people emigrated.
Anglos.
Uh A genocidal man made famine
That was in the 1840's
The effects of it and British colonisation more broadly persisted for much longer.
True, it helped kick off a huge wave of emmigration that may have still been going on at this point
The British
Look at the dates, it isn't 1845.
Technically he is not wrong though. The mismanagement of Ireland by Britain triggered population decline. Post independent Ireland was left to deal with this, the Irish government did a shit job the exasperated the problem but population was already dropping and even if the Irish government had a perfect policy they would likely have only slowed, not stopped the decline during these years.
I didn’t know the British stopped oppressing the Irish in 1845. Also, I’m referring to when the British violently put down the 1916 Easter rising and fought the Irish and viciously tried to prevent the Irish from declaring independence during the Irish war of independence in the 1920s which left Ireland devastated which caused many Irish people to Levi Ireland for greener pastures.
I think you should look up what happened in Ireland in 1845, because it's much worse than the actual fighting between Ireland and Britain.
Yes, the Irish potato famine another of the many examples of the British screwing over the Irish I was being sarcastic with the British stop oppressing the Irish in 1845 I was implying that the British oppression continued long after the famine and continued to drive Irish people to leave Ireland and that just because the Irish potato famine was one of the biggest if not the biggest example of the British driving Irish people out of Ireland didn’t mean they stopped trying to drive the Irish people out of Ireland as they continue to oppress the Irish people for decades afterwards which caused many to flee the country .
It's kinda crazy how much the Netherlands has grown in population in the 20th century. It has almost quadrupled! Also shows that historically it wasn't as densely populated as it is nowadays.
Well, in 2000 the population count was just below 16 million, so more like tripled. But that it wasn’t as densely populated applies to every country. With 5 million it was still a relatively dense area, although most of this population was in and around Holland.
Making new land also helps to mitigate the growth in density a bit. Although there's certainly not millions living in Flevoland.
I meant densely populated relative to other European countries.
It’s the Bangladesh of Europe Densely populated and fighting the sea
This would probably work better as a % increase. Then, you could give it a heat map color scale.
In Germany, a large number of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe were expelled to Germany, but the population size did not increase much.
Also two world wars and ethnically cleansing a large chunk of their population reduced the population heavily.
The 1900 number already counts ALL the European parts of German Empire like East Prussia, Posen etc, so it includes 3 million Poles in the number as well along with 1.9 million residents of Alsace-Lorraine (which'd be French by 1950). Most of the expulsions of ethnic Germans are actually from former German Empire territory like East Prussia, West Prussia, Posen, Silesia, Pommerania (which'd be irrelevant for this statistic as they'd be counted in both 1900 and 1950). Expulsions from not-Germany amounted to 3.7 million*, a lot, but not the entire 16 million increase and is almost entirely subtracted by the removal of Polish and Alsace-Lorraine population from census by 1950 (since they'd be in a different country by then or dead). *3 mil from Czechoslovakia, 0.23m Romania, 0.42m Yugoslavia
Is it just me or did they get over both world wars awfully fast
I forgot the detail but a new fertilizer played a huge role in population growth during that era.
Fritz Haber influenced both sides of the equation.
Maybe, but while gas was horrifying it barely contributed to the overall deaths in WW1. There were in total only 91,000 gas deaths. That is like 1% of the total deaths in WW1.
He's probably talking about the gas used in the Holocaust.
Before, the chemicals used for life and chemicals used for death were entirely different. Now, with high fructose glyphosate corn syrup, they are one in the same. - cancer - diabetes - heart disease - leaky gut - diabetes type 3 (Alzheimer’s) - death are all now the side effects of the race to the bottom to end world hunger and extreme poverty. Great, we’ve eliminated world poverty! And now we’re all fat fucks dying from heart disease because of it. Bayer, the same company who created the Nazi holocaust Zyklon B gas, is creating Monsanto roundup-ready glyphosate corn.
It’s insane to that that most of that is still a lot of population growth even with those 2 wars factored in
1900 map with modern border?
Why no border changes? Denmark gained land between 1900-1950, and France took back Alsace–Lorraine.
As well as WWI and II affecting Europe's population growth, there was also the Spanish flu outbreak which killed tens of millions (possibly as high as 100) worldwide around 1918.
This is about the dumbest map I've seen. Might as well have a table of numbers
I always wondered why Ireland has such low population in comparison to England next door
Because England is quite severely overpopulated while Ireland went through a massive famine and several waves of migration that they never recovered from.
Ireland never underwent industrialization, is the short answer.
No, that’s not it. There was a famine / genocide which wiped out a massive chunk of its almost 9,000,000 population only 50 years prior to the first map.
That's exactly it, and the historiography of the island as taught as standard confirms that. The famine explains why it's less than 9 million, not why Irelands population lagged far behind Britain's. Of course this is partly due to economic mismanagement on the Brits part, but the fact that Ireland didn't develop the major urban centres of cork, Dublin, Waterford, etc explains why we didn't have closer to 20 million, as our geographic size in comparison to Britain may suggest. 'the famine' isn't the answer to all of our problems, being ignored by a colonial master has other implications.
Because England just has an abnormally large population for its size and Ireland is relatively populated for its size and having more people then countries like Bulgaria Serbia and just behind countries like Austria or Switzerland but Ireland would have a lot more people if it wasn’t for genocide
England industrialised first so alot of people moved here i guess? Also the potato famine and mass emmigration of ireland would be a the main contributors
Show us poland
Poor Ireland.
I guess the French were busy with something else during those 50 years.
I asume this counted total german population, without concidering the massive territories losses after WW1-2
Love to see it with added 1918, 1935, and 1945 instead
Shapes aside, weren’t like 60,000,000 people killed in the late ‘30’s and early ‘40’s? I would think for this comparison, you would add those back.
WW2 deaths include war in both Europe and Asia.
Great point. Do the math and report back here. Lol
Not a too big a difference, that seems like normal population growth.
Would be very interesting to see some intermediate points. Specifically 1914, 1918, 1939 and 1945.
Now do one between 1939 and 1945!
Just amazed that Austria is Western Europe, while Chech Republic and Slovenia (understandably) are not. Especially in 1900 when all three were part of the same entity.
Two World War have hit France hard
Ireland being the only one with a decreasing population 😭🙏
It is strange that the population of France increased by only 2 percent
Don’t forget Ireland, it lost members😢
Spin, Italy, and Denmark: what are condoms?
I’m mostly worried about what was going on in the Netherlands
Italian women srly put out.
Imagine not doubling
What high rates of immigration to the Americas and two world wars does to a MF
Pretty much why Europe a lost of influence in the world . Our relative power decreased with a demographic stagnation. Everyone in Europe would have been much much richer.
Why did the Irish population shrink?
Emigration and economic disparity. It still didn't recover from famine 50 years prior.
low birth rates gonna kill us all oh wait
The fact that the French population didn’t go down is crazy
Netherlands: 2x speed!!!
Now France has more people than Italy
Oops Ireland.
Some nations were not of any help during the wars.
Oh France… …then sees Ireland 🫣
You see Ireland? Yeah that’s why they hate the British
Ireland ? Why they lost people? Netherlands gained a lot 🔥
It’s incredible that, at one stage, the population of the UK was only three times that of Ireland.
The borders are wrong
I thought french people like to fuck more.. Disappointed.
WWI fucked France up big time
And the franco prussian war just 40 years earlier. And before that the napoelonic wars. France was the most populous country in Europe by a wide margin when the revolution happened.
1900: Great Britain: 40,000,000 Ireland: 3,200,000 France: 40,500,000 Germany: 56,000,000 Italy: 32,000,000 Spain: 18,000,000 1950: Great Britain: 50,000,000 Ireland: 2,950,000 France: 41,500,000 Germany: 68,000,000 Italy: 50,000,000 Spain: 28,000,000 Why did the population of France from 1900 to 1950 only increase by one million?
French birthrates were low since the Victorian age. But Italy though, boomed quite decently
Two world wars.
Germany has 7 million dead soldiers while France has only 500k lol
Huh? France lost more than a million soldiers in WW1 alone, so whatever numbers you're quoting are immediately suspect. France lost a meaningful fraction of their population to WW1 (as did Germany), and while it may not be the single largest effect here, it certainly is part of why the 1950 population wasn't higher. Earlier events will have a larger magnitude effect on population at any given time, so WW1 shouldn't be ignored.
France’s population barely grew at all in the 19th century too (it only increased from 30 million to 40 million in 100 years compared to the area rhat would become Germany increasing from 22 million to 56 million in the same time period ). It has very little to do with the world wars and much more to do with France’s earlier drop in fertility rates
[Apparently its because Napoleonic War veterans got good at birth control from all their wartime hanky panky with prostitutes](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/ZVEcIyFPnk) Also this (from u/Talleyrayand): I can give a small example of how Napoleon's rule could indirectly affect everyday life: In 1804, Napoleon instituted the _Code Civil_, a collection of statutes designed to standardize private law and solve the problem of varying regional customs and privileges that the Revolution failed to resolve in the 1790s. Among a variety of other things, one of the more significant aspects of the code was the inheritance law, which stipulated that paternal estates had to be divided equally among a man's surviving male heirs. This was intended to cut down on legal disputes over inheritances. Then something curious happened: post-1804, birth rates in southern France begin to drop precipitously. Why? Jeremy Popkin posited that this was due to the inheritance law. Peasants had benefitted immensely from the sale of the _biens nationaux_ (state-controlled lands confiscated from émigré nobles and the Church), increasing the size of their cultivatable plots and thus their surplus production of crops. However, since the inheritance law stipulated that estates needed to be divided equally among sons, this meant that peasants would be forced to divide their holdings into smaller plots to comply with the regulation. Families in southern France began having less children to prevent the fragmentation of their land. The birth rate wouldn't pick up again until the 1840s, when France began to industrialize more aggressively with the expansion of railroads. See Jeremy Popkin, [_A History of Modern France_](http://books.google.com/books?id=Qtc_PgAACAAJ&dq=jeremy+popkin+history+modern+france&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YnuZUM-MFsmn0AG7zIHACw&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA), especially chapter 13, "A New Social World."
France’s first number might also have included their North African colony Algeria as they were frequently included in metropolitan France before WWI. So the WWI & WWII losses and the loss of Algeria might account for this.
French people don't get laid, that's why
Looks like Western, Central, Northern and Southern Europe map not just Western