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Historical Demography: Some Possibilities and Some Limitations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

R. S. Schofield
R. S. Schofield
Affiliation:
Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure
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Extract

HISTORIANS have long been interested in the subject of population, but it is only recently that they have begun to apply the formal techniques of demography to the study of population in the past. This has happened because historians have begun to ask questions about population and its relationship with the historical, social and economic environment which can only be answered if the demographic components of fertility, nuptiality and mortality can be identified and measured. Originally historians were concerned with relatively straightforward questions about population, such as the number of people alive at a given time. But knowledge of the size of a population is in itself seldom informative; it becomes meaningful when it is compared with other information, for example with the size of the population at another date, so that the direction and rate of population change can be inferred. Sometimes the bare facts of population change are all that the historian needs to know; for example some independent evidence on changes in the size of the population of England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries would be a welcome addition to the current debate on the sixteenth-century price rise. But historians have seldom remained satisfied with the knowledge that population is growing or declining; very properly they have wanted to know why this was so.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 21 , December 1971 , pp. 119 - 132
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1971

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References

1 Laslett, Peter, The World We Have Lost,2nd edn. (London, 1971), ch. 6, and the references cited there.Google Scholar

2 The best formal exposition of demographic measures is Pressat, R., L'Analyse Démographique(Paris, 1969).Google ScholarWrigley, E. A., Population and History(London, 1969) provides an excellent introduction.Google Scholar

3 The classic exposition of this technique is Fleury, M. et Henry, L., Nouveau Manuel de Dépouillement et d'exploitation de I'Etat Civil Ancien(Paris, 1966).Google Scholar Its application to English parish registers is described in Wrigley, E. A., ‘Family reconstitution’, in Introduction to English Historical Demography, ed. Wrigley, E. A. (London, 1966).Google Scholar

4 See, for example, E. A. Wrigley,‘Family limitation in pre-industrial England’, Economic History Review,2nd ser., xix (1966), pp. 82–109, and E. A. Wrigley, ‘Mortality in pre-industrial England: the example of Colyton, Devon, over three centuries’, Daedalus(1968), pp. 546–80.

5 The economic implications of these two different demographic regimes are explored more fully in Wrigley, Population in History, ch. 4.

6 The techniques for analysing household structure are described in Peter Laslett, ‘The study of social structure from listings of inhabitants’, in Introduction to English Historical Demography, ed. Wrigley. Preliminary results are reported in Peter Laslett, ‘Size and structure of the household in England over three centuries’, Population Studies, xxiii (1969).

7 See, for example, Parsons, T. and Bales, R. F., Family, Socialization and Interaction Process(London, 1956).Google Scholar For the influence of family structure and family ideals on political perception in seventeenth-century England, see Schochet, G. J., ‘Mass attitudes in Stuart England’, Historical Journal, xii (1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 See, for example, Morgan, E., The Puritan Family(New York, 1944);Google ScholarAriès, P., L'Enfant et la Vie Familiale sous I'Ancien Régime(Paris, 1960),Google Scholar trans, by R. Baldick as Centuries of Childhood(1962); Pinchbeck, I. and Hewitt, M., Childhood in English Society, i (London, 1969).Google Scholar

9 For an example of this kind of approach, although based on a seventeenth-century clergyman's diary, see Macfarlane, A., The Family Life of Ralph Josselin(Cambridge, 1970).Google Scholar

10 A convenient summary of a wide variety of population estimates is given in Hollingsworth, T. H., Historical Demography(London, 1969),Google Scholar chs. 3, 4. Some of the uncertainties inherent in medieval estimates are discussed in Postan, M. M., ‘Medieval agrarian society in its prime: England’, in Cambridge Economic History of Europe, i, ed. Postan, M. M. (Cambridge, 1966), pp. 561–63.Google Scholar

11 A recent attempt to use the taxation returns of 1522–25 fails to avoid this problem, and darkens counsel by assuming that the population was immobile; J. Cornwall, ‘English population in the early sixteenth century’, Economic History Review,2nd ser., xxiii (1970), pp. 32–44.

12 For heriots see Postan, M. M. and Titow, J. Z., ‘Heriots and prices on Winchester manors’, Economic History Review,2nd ser., x (1957), pp. 392–417,Google Scholar and the comments in Ohlin, G., ‘No safety in numbers: some pitfalls of historical statistics’, in Industrialization in two systems, ed. Rosovsky, H. (New York, 1966), pp. 68–90.Google Scholar For wills see Thrupp, S. L., ‘The problem of replacement rates in late medieval England’, Economic History Review,2nd ser., xviii (1965), pp. 101–19, and the comments in Hollingsworth, Historical Demography, pp. 222–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Hollingsworth, Historical Demography, appendix 3.

14 1801 Census: Abstract of the answers and returns: parish registers (London, 1801);Google ScholarObservations on the results of the Population Act, 41 Geo. III(London, 1802), pp. 7–9; 1841 Census: Population enumeration abstract, in Parliamentary Papers(1843) xxii (Reports from commissioners, No. 11), PP. 34–37.Google Scholar

15 These are still sometimes quoted in authoritative works, for example K. F. Helleiner, ‘The population of Europe from the Black Death to the eve of the vital revolution’, in Cambridge Economic History of Europe, iv, ed. Rich, E. E. and Wilson, C. H.(Cambridge, 1967), pp. 31,52–53.Google Scholar

16 The best discussion of these procedures is in D. V. Glass, ‘Population and population movements in England and Wales, 1700 to 1850’, in Population in History, ed. Glass, D. V. and Eversley, D. E. C. (London, 1965), pp. 221–46.Google Scholar

17 See especially J. T. Krause, ‘The changing adequacy of English registration, 1690–1837’, in Population and History, ed. Glass and Eversley, pp. 379– 393.

18 Glass, loc. cit.

19 J. D. Chambers, The Vale of Trent 1670–1800: a regional study of economic change(Economic History Review, Supplement no. 3, 1957).

20 The same difficulty obtains in interpolating between two known population totals; D. E. C. Eversley, ‘Exploitation of English parish registers by aggregative analysis’, in Introduction to English Historical Demography, ed. Wrigley, pp. 74–86, appendices A, B.

21 See, for example, D. Turner, ‘The effective family’, Local Population Studies, ii (1969), pp. 47–52.

22 The interval between birth and baptism was very variable in length. P. E. H. Hair, ‘Bridal pregnancy in rural England in earlier centuries’ Population Studies, xx (1966), pp. 233–43, and ‘Bridal pregnancy in earlier rural England further examined’, Population Studies, xxiv (1970), pp. 59–70.

23 See, for example, Introduction to English Historical Demography, ed. Wrigley, pp. 147–49.

24 The degree of temporary migration can be estimated from French parish registers; Henry, L., Manuel de Démographie Historique (Paris, 1967), pp. 14–16.Google Scholar

25 For example in Colyton, Devon, in the early nineteenth century, including temporary nonconformists in age-specific fertility calculations raises rates by the trivial amount of about 2 perthousand.

26 E. A. Wrigley, ‘Some problems of family reconstitution using English parish register material’, in Proceedings of the 3rd International Economic History Conference, Munich, 1965(forthcoming).

27 Especially in Hollingsworth, Historical Demography

28 Hollingsworth, op. cit., especially appendix 1.

29 T. H. Hollingsworth, ‘The importance of the quality of data in historical demography’, Daedalus(1968), pp. 423–24; Hopkins, K., ‘On the probable age structure of the Roman population’, Population Studies, xx (1966).Google Scholar

30 Manorial court rolls are already being used to answer similar questions about the social structure of medieval England, though without any independent demographic control. See, for example, J. A. Raftis, ‘Social structures in five villages, East Midland’, Economic History Review,2nd ser. xviii (1965), pp. 83–100.Google Scholar