Population Growth and Agrarian Change: An Historical Perspective

Front Cover
CUP Archive, Dec 18, 1980 - Social Science - 340 pages
Since the 1950s much attention has been paid to the effect of rapid population growth on the rural societies of the Third World. Yet it is often forgotten that Europe faced similar problems in the past. This book, first published in 1980, suggests some ways of looking at the interrelationships between population growth and agrarian change, and uses these approaches to consider the demographic and agrarian problems of various parts of Europe in the past - in the fourteenth century, the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and in the early nineteenth century. These places are then compared with rural societies in the developing world at the present time.
 

Contents

Introduction
1
PART ONE METHODOLOGY
9
definition and measurement
11
The symptoms of overpopulation in agrarian communities
20
The possibilities of increased output in preindustrial societies
29
Demographic adjustments to population growth
40
PART TWO MALTHUS JUSTIFIED
49
European population in the long run
51
Rural and urban populations of France 18111911
203
Loss by migration from rural areas France 185686
204
Rate of natural increase in France 181690
205
Scandinavia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
207
Population growth in Norway and Sweden
208
Trends in crude birth and death rates Norway and Sweden
210
Sweden 17511900
214
Rural social structure in Norway c 1845
215

4
55
Population change in Western Europe 17001970
61
a case of overpopulation?
64
England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
83
Price indices 14501649
87
The urban population of England and Wales 15201851
94
Mean family size of British peers 15501799
100
For Jill Susan Catherine and Stephen
101
France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
102
the great tragedy
115
Agricultural population densities c 1841
121
The urban population of Ireland 18411926
128
116
134
Interim conclusions
141
PART THREE MALTHUS REFUTED
145
Holland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
147
The population of the Netherlands and some of its provinces
149
The urban and rural populations of Holland 1514 and 1622
156
England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
163
The rural and urban populations of England and Wales
169
Major land uses in England and Wales 16961866
177
Migrational gain and loss in England and Wales 18411911
186
Rate of loss by migration 18511939
187
Crude birth and death rates in England and Wales 180140
188
France in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
190
The population of France 17001911
191
Farm size in France 1892
195
The arable area of France 17011913
198
Population and arable land in Sweden in the nineteenth century
216
Crop yields in Sweden 180120 to 18911900
218
Seedyield ratios in Norway 1835 and 1881
219
Land use in Norway 1870s and Sweden 1860s
220
Annual overseas emigration per 100000 population
223
Rural and urban populations in Norway and Sweden 180060
226
Rural and agricultural populations in Sweden 18001930
228
Coda to Part three
231
PART FOUR MALTHUS RETURNS?
235
the demographic response
237
Average rates of increase in selected countries 190070
238
Expectation of life at birth in Latin America
243
Agricultural densities in Western Europe in the nineteenth century and the developing world c 1975
245
Total population per 100 hectares of arable land
250
Rates of increase of rural and urban populations in Western Europe 17501900
254
Rates of increase of rural and urban populations 192070
255
Urban and rural demographic differentials c 1960
256
the production response
261
Arable land 195075
264
Longterm increases in the arable area in parts of Asia
265
Arable area per head of agricultural and total populations 1950 and 1975
266
Potential actual 1962 and proposed 1985 arable areas
269
Conclusions
281
The rural population of Europe in the nineteenth century
291
Notes
296
Go little book and wish to all
309
Index
333
Copyright

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