Industrialization and the Social and Economic Structure of Europe 415nutrition, epidemic disease, primitive medical care, war-
fare, and repressive government, had limited that
growth. Great Britain offers a vivid illustration. After
William the Conqueror won control of England in
1066, he ordered a survey of his new realm; the resul-
tant Domesday Survey (1086) determined that England
had a population of 3.5 million. A good estimate of
England in 1750 is a population of 6.5 million, which
meant an increase of three million people in seven hun-
dred years, an average growth rate of less than 1 per-
cent per decade.
In contrast to that history of slow population
growth, what happened during the late eighteenth cen-
tury and the nineteenth century must be called a popu-
lation explosion. A continent inhabited by perhaps 110
million people in 1700 became a continent of 423 mil-
lion people in 1900. This near quadrupling of Europe
meant a growth rate of nearly 10 percent per decade,
compared with the historic pattern of less than 1 per-
cent. Britain, where the European population explosion
began, provides the best illustration of this growth. Be-
ginning in 1750, the British isles experienced three con-
secutive decades of 6 percent population growth,
followed by stunning decennial increases of 9 percent,
11 percent, 14 percent, and 18 percent. The astonish-
ing population boom meant that a country that had
grown by three million people over seven hundred
years then grew by eleven million people in one hun-
dred years.
The British population explosion continued into
the nineteenth century and became a widespread (al-
though not universal) European phenomenon (see table
22.1). During the eighteenth century, population
growth in most of the major states of Europe was ap-
proximately 35 percent to 40 percent—36 percent in
the Austrian Empire, 37 percent across the Germanic
states of central Europe, 39 percent in the Italian states,
and 40 percent in Spain. France, the most populous and
most powerful state of western Europe, experienced a
slightly faster rate of growth (55 percent) but did not
approach the remarkable 82 percent growth in Britain.
In the nineteenth century, the rate of growth in Austria,
Italy, and Spain increased to 70–85 percent, but the
British rate of growth had soared to more than 150 per-
cent, causing the population density to surpass one
hundred inhabitants per square mile in large portions of
Europe (see map 22.1). Only Germany and Russia—
where population growth was more than 200 percent—The data in this table reflect historical boundaries at the date shown and therefore are not perfectly comparable. For example, the population of Alsace-
Lorraine is included in France in 1800 and in Germany in 1900.
Growth, Growth,
1700 Population 1800 Population 1700–1800 1900 Population 1800–1900
State (in millions) (in millions) (in percent) (in millions) (in percent)
France 17.3 26.9 55.5 39.0 45.0
European Russia 17.0 29.0 70.6 106.2 266.2
Germany 13.5 18.5 37.0 56.4 204.9
Italy 13.0 18.1 39. 233.4 84.5
Austria-Hungary 11.0 15.0 36.4 25.9 72.7
United Kingdom 8.9 16. 28 2.0 41.5 156. 2
Spain 7.5 10.5 40.0 18.1 72.4
Portugal 2.0 2.8 40.0 5.4 92.9
Sweden 2.0 2.3 15.0 5.1 121.7
Netherlands 1.9 2.1 10.5 5.1 142.9
Denmark 1.3 1.9 46. 2 2.6 36.8
Switzerland 1. 21.7 41.7 3.3 94.1
Belgium aa 6.7
Ottoman Empire
in Europe 6.4 11.5 79.7 4.8
Source: Calculated from data in Jack Barbuscio and Richard M. Dunn, European Political Facts, 1648–1789(London: Macmillan, 1984), pp. 335–53; Chris Cook
and John Paxton, European Political Facts, 1848-1918(London: Macmillan, 1978), pp. 213–32; A. Goodwin, ed., The New Cambridge Modern History(Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 8:714–15; B. R. Mitchell, European Historical Statistics, 1750-1970(London: Macmillan, 1975), pp. 19–24.
a. Part of the Austrian Empire. No separate data available.TABLE 22.1The European Population Explosion, 1700–1900