Europe population-size history

August 1, 2009 4:26 PM

Where can I find estimates of Europe's population size, as far back in time as possible?

These are the best estimates I've found for the historical fluctuations in Europe's population size. They're based on the article "Essai sur l'evolution du nombre des hommes". But I am disturbed by the apparent lack of supporting citations in that paper. My French is hopeless, and I picked my way through it with Google translate. OK, the Europe estimates mostly come from Histoire générale de la population mondiale, but the numbers for Britain etc. come from "some books and some publications"?? Come on! Have I misunderstood?

I'd be grateful for pointers to more rigorous estimates.

posted by Coventry to science & nature (8 comments total)

I would spend some time poking around EuroStat, the EU's official statistics website. It's a little difficult to navigate sometimes, but you can get data for individual countries or group them. Some countries' data goes further back than others.

Of course, in the grand scheme of things, this is all very recent history compared to what you might be looking for.
posted by BusyBusyBusy at 5:30 PM on August 1

Yeah, I've got pretty good estimates back to 1750, I think. The book I pointed to gives estimates back to 400 B.C., but doesn't seem to back them up.
posted by Coventry at 6:08 PM on August 1

Historical atlas of Europe has some numbers, but unfortunately I don't know what their sources are; the front page claims that much of the data is from "International Historical Statistics 1750-1993."
The author of the book you found, Massimo Livi Bacci, has also written a book entitled The Population of Europe (here's a review); it sounds like the book may be useful, although it's hard to tell how well-cited it is. And google results for historical population of Europe seems to turn up mostly academic sources which might be worth a look.

(I'm a mathematician, so this is a bit strange to me; we don't have this problem of people just making numbers up.)
posted by madcaptenor at 6:10 PM on August 1

The article you linked to basically seems to consist of a list of the people who gave the author the numbers. This is incredibly frustrating, because you don't know these people, and lots of them are probably dead. I sympathize.
posted by madcaptenor at 6:15 PM on August 1

If you are willing to go by mitochondrial DNA then the first people in Europe turned up about 40,000 years ago. This animated map showing the gradual population of the planet by humans may help.
posted by rongorongo at 6:16 PM on August 1 [2 favorites]

the first people in Europe turned up about 40,000 years ago.

Well, that's if you limit "people" to Homo sapiens. Humans have been in Europe for about a million years, possibly one and a half million.
posted by Flunkie at 7:53 PM on August 1

Several economic historians do work on this stuff off the top of my head: Angus Maddison (the guy basically) and Greg Clark.

Here's Angus Maddison's webpage and here's an appendix from one of his books that has population estimates from various sources including Clark's...

I seem to recall there being a chart in Clark's A Farewell to Alms that had many more data points (decadal from 1200 through the 1900s), but it's a continent away and I dont know the source.

More links: a page from the OECD on this stuff.
posted by stratastar at 12:27 AM on August 2 [1 favorite]

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. Most of the library's closed, today, but I was able to get Massimo Livi Bacci's The Population of Europe, and it seems more honest. He says before giving his numbers, "It is only from the end of the Middle Ages that estimates of European population growth begin to based on something more than guesswork."
posted by Coventry at 11:39 AM on August 2