
Contents
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I. The Demographic Ancien Régime I. The Demographic Ancien Régime
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Histoire immobile? Histoire immobile?
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The long demographic cycles The long demographic cycles
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II. Demography and Society II. Demography and Society
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Cities and villages Cities and villages
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Price and wages Price and wages
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Age structures and migration Age structures and migration
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Social mobility Social mobility
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The patchwork quilt: local and regional variations The patchwork quilt: local and regional variations
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III. Demography and the French Revolution III. Demography and the French Revolution
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The political strategy of the Sun King The political strategy of the Sun King
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The convergence of demographic, social, and political factors in the eighteenth century The convergence of demographic, social, and political factors in the eighteenth century
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IV. The End of the Demographic Old Regime IV. The End of the Demographic Old Regime
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Notes Notes
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Bibliography Bibliography
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12 Demography
Get accessJack A. Goldstone, Ph.D. (Harvard) is the Virginia E. and John T. Hazel Jr. Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University. He was awarded the American Sociological Association's Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award for Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World (1991) and the Historical Society's Arnaldo Momigliano Award for his essay ‘Efflorescences in World History’ in the Journal of World History (2002). His latest work is Why Europe? The Rise of the West in World History, 1500–1800 (2008).
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Published:18 September 2012
Cite
Abstract
This article focuses on demographic trends during the Ancien Régime. During the Ancien Régime, the upper limits of population size appear to have remained unchanged for many centuries. Thus the peak population within the modern borders of France at the beginning of the fourteenth century, before the Black Death, was probably between eighteen and twenty million people. Some historians of France have suggested that, while population had its ups and downs, the same basic economic and demographic limits persisted across the Ancien Régime —an histoire immobile. It is certainly true that the same basic conditions of peasant landholding, family formation, mortality-determined population growth, and a society whose output was limited by the basic inputs of land and human and animal labour persisted across, indeed defined, the demography of the Ancien Régime. Yet to the people who lived through this period, conditions were far from constant; indeed they usually seemed to be rapidly changing.
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