How did France's population go from being more than 4 times bigger than England's in the late Middle Ages, to being of comparative sizes today?
Especially knowing that England had more people immigrating from it to other parts of the New World than France did.
>>1321856
It's not entirely clear. Local populations fluctuate for a variety of reasons. The easiest answer is that economic prosperity leads to population growth, and wars fought on home territory lead to population decline.
>>1321856
Being assravaged by 2 world wars in recent history didnt help
>>1321856
Britain faced massive increase of population in the 19th century
They passed from 8 millions in 1800 to 39 millions in 1890
And of course, since thrre was no immigration, it was subjected to heavy inbreeding (which explains why Brits areso ugly)
>>1321950
Britain was the first to industrialise, requiring a workforce in the cities.
France didn't really industrialise until 100 years after Britain, and in that case the population of London had ballooned
Dechristianization during the French Revolution.
England's (like Germany's and most countries') population exploded in the 19th century, France's didn't.
France never had the demographic transition that other countries had. For most countries, mortality rates dropped first thanks to progress in medicine, and birth rates only dropped later. During the interval between those two events, population increases drastically. But in France birth rates dropped much sooner, at the same time as mortality rates, so the population remained stable.
>>1321991
What a load of crap, France is considered the second country to have industrialised immediately after England.
>>1322017
pretty sure the second place goes to the netherlands / belgium.
>>1322017
>What is Belgium
>>1322038
Pretty much a non-country
>>1322030
Not him but
>Netherlands
Yeah... nah. The Netherlands NOT being industrialized is part of why Belgium became independent.
That said, France did surpass Belgium eventually, but by the time Belgium became independent it was more industrialized.
>>1322030
>>1322038
>>1321856
After militant atheists took over France and started destroying Christian values their birth rates went down
the french revolution made France the first country to become moderately secular, and Napoleon had a lot of breeding age frenchmen die in his wars.
France's population has been fairly stable since 1800. Too decadent.
>>1321856
Probably because France lost 25% of their young adult male population between 1914 and 1917 while Britain lost less than 10% thanks to colonies. France took even more casualties than Britain the second time around too thus creating a breeding bottleneck. Not to mention all the deaths from the Napoleonic Wars that France sustained. It hasn't been good to be a Frenchman in over 200 years.
