To Understand History, Keep Former Population Distributions In Mind

Europe used to be much bigger and Africa smaller relative to the world population

Guillaume Blanc has a piece in Works in Progress (I assume based on his paper) about how France’s fertility declined earlier than in other European countries, and how its power waned as its relative population declined starting in the 18th century. In 1700, France had 20% of Europe’s population (4% of the whole world population). Kissinger writes in Diplomacy with respect to the Versailles Peace Conference:

Victory brought home to France the stark realization that revanche had cost it too dearly, and that it had been living off capital for nearly a century. France alone knew just how weak it had become in comparison with Germany, though nobody else, especially not America, was prepared to believe it ...

Though France's allies insisted that its fears were exaggerated, French leaders knew better. In 1880, the French had represented 15.7 percent of Europe's population. By 1900, that figure had declined to 9.7 percent. In 1920, France had a population of 41 million and Germany a population of 65 million, causing the French statesman Briand to answer critics of his conciliatory policy toward Germany with the argument that he was conducting the foreign policy of France's birthrate.

Blanc quotes Braudel’s unfinished Identity of France: “did France cease to be a great power not, as is usually thought, on 15 June 1815 on the field of Waterloo, but well before that, during the reign of Louis XV when the natural birth-rate was interrupted?”

In general, an easy mistake to make when thinking about history is to assume that relative population stays the same over time. Today, the UK and France both have just under 70 million people. But in 1800, Great Britain had only 10 million people, barely twice the number of people in Ireland, while France’s slightly extended borders contained 27 million, much more even than Russia’s 21 million (though the Russian Empire added up to 40 million with its Ukrainian, Polish, Baltic, and other possessions). This was crucial for the French Empire’s wars under Napoleon against the rest of Europe. During the Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453), England and its Irish and Welsh possessions together had fewer than 3 million people while France had about 15 million, making the English performance impressive despite eventual defeat.

But the importance of historical population ratios is most apparent in colonial history. Today, Europe has 750 million people while Africa has 1.5 billion. Russia is the largest European country at 145 million, followed by Germany (85 million), and then after the UK and France the next two are Italy (60 million) and Spain (50 million). Meanwhile Nigeria allegedly has 220 million people, Ethiopia 110 million, Egypt 105 million—and South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, and Sudan all have more than 50 million people.

But in 1900, Europe had triple Africa’s population; the Russian Empire alone had more people than all of Africa. This demographic advantage enabled European expansion and control:

• In 1916, the population ratio between the UK and her Indian Empire was 1 to 7, whereas it’s 1 to 28 today.

• The Belgian Congo had 10 million people, not even twice as many as Belgium, while today its population is 9 times larger.

• When Ethiopia defeated Italian invaders at the Battle of Adwa in 1896, they were actually fighting against a numerically superior country; Italy had over 30 million people while Ethiopia had about 9 million. Today Ethiopia has about double Italy’s population and continues to grow (TFR of 4) while Italy faces further decline and has the second-oldest population in the world after Japan, with a median age of 48.