Home

Login

Contact us

Site Map

Cette page existe uniquement en anglais

Home > Activities > Committees >Historical Demography (1997-2001) > Seminar Report

The History of World Population in the Second Millennium

Florence, Italy, 28-30 June 2001

Organised by the IUSSP Committee on Historical Demography and the Società Italiana di Demografia Storica in collaboration with the Dipartimento di Statistica, università degli Studi di Firenze, by the kind patronage of Professor Romano Prodi, President of the European Commision, università degli Studi di Firenze, Commune di Firenze, Provincia di Firenze, Regione Toscana, European university Institute, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Giunta Centrale per gli Studi Storici, Fondazione Carlo Marchi, Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, Opera di S. Maria del Fiore, and Instituto degli Innocenti.

Report

With the Third Millennium opened, we are in an unparalleled position to have an overview of the entire preceding thousand-year period. The IUSSP Seminar on the History of World Population in the Second Millennium, co-organised by the Società Italiana di Demografia Storica in collaboration with the Dipartimento di Statistica, università degli Studi di Firenze, was held, firstly To bring together all the research achievements by historical demographers in various geographical areas of the world, in the hope that the whole body of knowledge thus acquired about changing population totals and densities for the past thousand years in each region will enable us to rewrite the history of world population in the second millennium; and secondly To relate the history of world population in the second millennium to global histories of other aspects of the mankind, i.e. economic, social, institutional, cultural as well as environmental histories.

Accordingly the meeting was divided into two sections. For the first 'regional' section, there were ten papers for ten regions of the world. unfortunately no papers were available for Western Europe and the Middle East. Each of the commissioned papers gave new estimates of population totals, densities, urbanisation ratios and other demographic indicators over the entire thousand years in the corresponding region. For the second 'thematic' section, ten papers were presented on ten broad themes that ranged from disease history to the attenuation of kinship.

Section 1. Population changes by region

The ten papers presented to this section (see List below) were not actually read at the conference but had been circulated to the participants beforehand. The two discussants were Massimo Livi Bacci (Florence) and Angus Maddison (Groningen), both of whom gave not just comments on individual papers but to raise broader issues as well.

First, the Americas are divided into three. Michael Haines's paper on North America began in 1650, rather than in 1000, for population totals in the uS and Canada and their ethnic breakdowns, but gave well-balanced accounts of components of population growth from 1790 on. Héctor Pérez Brignoli's on Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean assembled scattered data for various areas in the region, drawing attention to the divergent demographic experiences between Indian, Afro-American and European populations. As for South American populations, Maria Louisa Marcilio tried to show some of the figures known for varied areas of the region.

Turning to Africa, Dominique Tabutin, éric Vilquin and Jean-Noël Biraben's paper gave population totals in North Africa (the Maghreb, Libya and Egypt) for 1000-1850. According to their table, the estimated figure for 1000 was a little larger than that given by Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones, and hence the decline in population during the first half of the millennium was more marked than in the corresponding series in McEvedy and Jones's Atlas of World Population History (London, 1974). For Sub-Saharan Africa, on the other hand, Dennis Cordell puts forward a smaller population for 1000 but a higher figure for 1800 compared with those given in the McEvedy and Jones book.

For Europe, unfortunately, no paper was submitted on the west. However, Andrejs Plakans's paper on Eastern Europe updated the existing stock of knowledge about population and its components in sub-regions, and set the findings in the area's historical context. Similarly, Carlo Corsini and Lorenzo Del Panta assembled statistics of population totals, changing densities, urbanisation and some other demographic variables for the Mediterranean (Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece).

For Asia and Oceania, we had three papers. Sumit Guha put south and southeast Asia together, and linked 'gestimates' for earlier dates around 1000 with figures for better-documented, later periods, i.e. 1650 and later dates. His estimates for the Indian sub-continent in 1650 as well as in 1000 were lower than the previous counts, yielding a higher rate of population increase for the period 1650-1800 than had previously believed. James Lee and Osamu Saito's paper provided a new set of population statistics for East Asia (China, Korea and Japan), showing substantial upward revisions of population totals for benchmark years in each country's population history. They also made an attempt to place the area's changing population dynamism in the long history of land development and farming. Finally, John Caldwell, Bruce Missingham and Jeff Marck surveyed scattered evidence and available research results, arriving at a set of stylised tables for the region that had almost entirely insulated until fairly recently.

In his commentary, Maddison pointed out that estimates put forward in the papers presented to this section tended to suggest higher figures compared with previous ones. Discussion was made on their empirical grounds, consistency with other evidence and implications. Maddison presented some of his own estimates of region-specific world population, that had just been published by OECD as The World Economy: A millennial Perspective (Paris 2001), and from the floor, Colin McEvedy, co-author of oft-quoted Atlas of World Population History, also gave a brief account of the revised McEvedy and Jones table for Europe. Livi Bacci commented on the techniques used to extrapolate estimates to earlier dates, made remarks concerning gaps and consistencies created by the new estimates, and urged the paper-givers to look more to settlement history and the history of food and farming in order to make a balanced judgement when choosing from several series of estimates.

Section 2. Economic, social and institutional changes

In this section, all the papers were presented by the authors and discussed individually. The discussion was led by comments from the discussants, Tommy Bengtsson on the first three papers, Tamara Hareven on the second four, Hervé Le Bras on the Maccio paper and Cormac ó Gráda on the de Vries paper.

The first of the first set of papers was Josep Bernabeu-Mestre's, which was an account of global history as seen from both the appearance and disappearance of particular diseases. David Reher turned our attention to the more recent demographic change, the demographic transition. He revisited the topic with the classificatory scheme of forerunners, followers and trailers, and latecomers. Hervé Le Bras's paper examined the ecological impact of human population on earth, and questioned the usefulness of the notion, carrying capacity, in order to understand the relationship between human population and ecology.

In the second set of papers, Alan Macfarlane gave a critical overview of the old debate concerning the disappearance of ancien regime among classical, modern and revisionist theorists (such as Ken Pomeranz) within the frame of Europe vs the Orient. Robert Woods turned our attention to more measurable changes associated with urbanisation and its economic and demographic correlates. He too based his argument on the East-West comparison. Jack Goody also took on the East vs West controversy. He followed up the work of recent Asian scholars that challenged the westerner's interpretation of the relationship between kinship and the rise of modern society. Finally, Alaka Basu tried to disclose a new area of gender research by looking at women's access to leisure as one indicator of their status in the family.

The final set of papers addressed political and economic issues of broad historical change. Guillermo Macció examined how the appearance of modern nation states was conditioned by the structure of pre-existing empires, while Jan de Vries looked at the growth of a global economy. As the authors of the second group of papers, he too took up the challenge made by Ken Pomeranz and the issue raised in his recent work, divergence, the historical roots of which he traced back to the 'first age of globalization' in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The discussants gave detailed comments on individual papers, but also raised important issues that will place demographic change in perspective. All in all, it was strongly felt that the possibility of publishing a majority, if not all, of those papers should be pursued. In the case of the 'regional' session, all participants agreed that, given the freshness of the estimates put forward by some of the papers, the missing regions should be filled in to be able to compile an IUSSP Atlas of World Population in the Second Millennium for publication .

List of papers presented at the seminar

Section 1. Population changes by region

Michael Haines
'An introduction to the demography of North America since 1600'

Héctor Pérez Brignoli
'The population of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean in the second millennium'

Maria Louisa Marcilio
'South American population in the second millennium'

Dominique Tabutin, éric Vilquin and Jean-Noël Biraben
'L'Afrique du Nord'

Dennis D. Cordell
'Population and demographic dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa in the second millennium'

Andrejs Plakans
'The population of the Eastern European region in the second millennium'

Carlo A. Corsini and Lorenzo Del Panta
'Mediterranean'

Sumit Guha
'The population of South and Southeast Asia through the last millennium'

James Z. Lee and Osamu Saito
'The population history of East Asia, 1000-2000'

John Caldwell, Bruce Missingham and Jeff Marck
'The population of Oceania in the second millennium'

Section 2. Economic, social and institutional changes

Josep Bernabeu Mestre
'The epidemiological unification of disease history'

David S. Reher
'The demographic transition revisited'

Hervé Le Bras
'Ecological impact of human population on earth'

Alan Macfarlane
'The disappearance of feudalism and the rise of free labour and mobility'

Robert Woods
'urbanisation'

Jack Goody
'The attenuation of kinship and the rise of individualism'

Alaka Basu
'When women became good for families, did families become bad for Women? Historical changes in women's leisure as one indicator of their status'

Guillermo Macció
'Global political transformation: the disappearance of empires and the rise of nation states'

Jan de Vries
'The growth of a global economy'

Osamu Saito