France 53, the Germanies 45, the Habsburg lands 39, Poland 18, and European
Russia 6.5.
Urbanization paralleled population growth in western Europe: in the sixteenth
century the number of towns with populations over 40,000 nearly doubled from
26 to 40, and a few had populations of 150,000 (Constantinople, Naples, Paris,
London, Milan, Antwerp, Palermo). By the seventeenth century, 40 percent of the
population of the Dutch Republic was urban, 25–30 percent of Italy, while in
France and England 20 percent. By 1700 Europe had 43 cities with at least 40,000
inhabitants, and the number of cities with populations over 100,000 had climbed
to 12 (Vienna in 1790 numbered 270,000). Nevertheless, across Europe and
particularly in eastern Europe,“small towns”(2,000–3,000 or less) prevailed,
particularly where the agrarian population was enserfed and exchange of goods
was limited. So, for example, in Hungary by the seventeenth century, the largest
city, Pressburg/Bratislava, had a population of only 29,000. Statistics from 1790 in
Bohemia show that of 244 towns, only Prague and Pilsen numbered over 10,000 in
population. We will see this pattern of small towns in Russia as well.
In the vaster Russian, Ottoman, and Chinese empires, statistics about popula-
tion density are hard tofind and regional diversity characterized this issue. Boris
Mironov’sfigures for the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries demonstrate
how varied population density in the Russian empire was. In 1646, when half of
Siberia was under Russian suzerainty but before significant acquisitions in Ukraine
and Belarus’, Mironovfinds an overall population density of 0.5 persons per square
kilometer in an overall population of 7 million. Density then grew very gradually
(0.8 in 1678; 1.1 in 1719; 1.6 in 176; 2.3 in 1796) with imperial acquisitions, but
some regions were more densely settled than others. Overall, the population density
of combined new territories acquired after 1646 (Siberia, steppe, and the Ukrainian
and Belarus’an lands) stayed about the same (around 5–5.4) through 1796, but the
disaggregatedfigures for European Russia indicate how much more urbanized,
agriculturally productive, and manufacturing focused these areas were. Here,
density grew from 1.7 in 1678 to 3.5 in 1719, 5.2 in 1762 and 7.5 in 1796
(after the partitions of Poland). Mironov found that population density soared in
the forest-steppe region in this era of dynamic population growth (from 4.1 per
square km in 1678, to 7.7 in 1719, to 25.8 in 1856) and in the black earth lands
(from 0.3 in 1678, to 0.4 in 1719, 7.1 in 1856). Nevertheless, a glance at European
and Ottoman population densityfigures forc.1600 shows how sparsely settled the
Russian empire was, even at its best.
The Ottoman empire alternated between good density in cities and the Anatolian
plateau and sparsely settled Middle Eastern deserts, Black Sea steppe, and Caucasus
mountains. Inalcik estimates its European holdings to have had 41 persons per
square mile in the sixteenth century; by the end of the century population pressure
in the core was evident, expressed inflight to the cities, famine, and rising grain
prices. By contrast, the Ottomans’Asian holdings had a density of only 20. As for
urbanization, frontier borderlands were sparsely settled with garrison outposts;
most of the empire was dotted with small market towns, while many ancient and
vibrant metropoles alsoflourished: in Egypt (Cairo, Alexandria), in the European
Land, People, and Global Context 31