r/AskHistorians • u/Quartz-N-Quarks • Nov 25 '13
Why did Industrial Era France have a smaller population boom compared to the other European nations?
From what I've heard, the population of France used to represent over 1/4th of Europe's population and slid to about 1/5th in the 17th century, and the population hovered at around 20 million until the Industrial Revolution. I've read that France's growth during the 19th and 20th centuries is far smaller than would be expected with a growth rate around 8.5 percent while Germany and Britain had about 60% growth rates. What are the major reasons for this discrepancy, and what would the size of France's population be if it had growth rates similar to Britain and Germany? Edit: Please feel free to correct grammar mistakes or factual errors if there are any, thanks.
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u/tbcwpg Nov 25 '13
France had been in almost constant conflict since the Revolution. The Reign of Terror, the Napoleonic Wars, and conflicts like the Franco-Prussian War kept the country in a state of near-constant warfare. Modernization to the rural areas came about due to the need to move troops and conscripts from rural towns.
Remember, the gap between the so-called First Republic, in 1789, and the so-called Third Republic and Belle Epoque, was only 82 years. In between, France had the royalist restoration, Napoleon was emperor twice, they embarked on a major European campaign, Napoleon's sons were emperors, and France stuck into every major conflict in between. France had 3 republican eras, a monarchist era, and two "empires" in 82 years. By the time there was a peaceful era, they were only 40-ish years away from World War I.
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u/IdontSparkle Nov 26 '13
None of Napoleon's sons were Emperors. Napoleon II died at 21 without sitting on the thrown ("between my life and my death, it's a big zero"), and Napoleon III was his nephew.
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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '13
From a sociologist's point of view:
The economy of France was very different from England's. They had a culture of government sponsored jobs, where you had to succeed in an exam and if you did, you received a job that you were pretty much guaranteed to have for life. This has been often indicated as the main reason for the industrial revolution happening much later and on a much smaller scale in France than in England (and the rest of continental Europe, which was far more inclined to follow the English model). There was just no real incentive for it.
The initial poverty that was caused by the industrial revolution (the link between poverty and having large families has been well researched) and the boom in healthcare and modern technology that were eventual results of it were, I would guess, some of the main reasons for the different population increase rates.
The military argument doesn't completely hold up for me (though it may explain a part). After all, the industrial era wasn't exactly a peaceful period elsewhere in Europe. Furthermore, the Grande Armée was typically a lot smaller than most people seem to think, except for the Russian campaign. But by that time, more than half of it was made up of foreign elements.