46

The Structures o f Everyday Life

times that of China. Two rather than three, because India does not really seem to be equal to the Chinese mass. An estimate (30 million) of the population of the Deccan in 1522, based on dubious documents, would give a figure of 100 million inhabitants for the whole of India.32 This is higher than the contemporary official Chinese figure - but nobody is obliged to accept it. Moreover, in the course of the century, India suffered from famines which ravaged the northern provinces.33 But recent studies by Indian historians have described the prosperity and the substantial demographic expansion of India in the seventeenth century.34 However, an unpublished French estimate in 1797,35 put the population of India at only 155 million, while China was already officially claiming 275 million in 1780. Kingsley Davis statistical deductions do not back up this lower level for India.36 But we cannot accept his figures blindly. In any case, if we assume that Asia was demographically equal to two or three times China, its figures for 1680 would be 240 or 360 million; 600 or 900 in 1790. We must repeat that we prefer the lower figures, especially for the period around the middle of the seventeenth century. The total for the population of the world in about 1680 would be obtained by adding up the following: Africa 35 or 50 million; Asia 240 or 360; Europe 100; America 10 and Oceania 2. This gives us the same order of magnitude as our first calculation, with the same margin of doubt.

The relationship between the centuries Spatial calculations, continent by continent, need not exclude the more difficult calculations on the time axis, century by century. Paul Mombert37 provided the first model for this, relating to Europe in the period 1650-1850. He based his work on two principles: first, that the most recent figures are the least uncertain; second, that when working backwards from the most recent to the most ancient levels, plausible rates of increase between them must be assumed. This means accepting a figure of 266 million for Europe in 1850 and deducing (on the basis of a rise that is obviously not as steep as W.F. Wilcox assumes) the figure of 211 for 1800, 173 for 1750, and 136 and 100 for 1650 and 1600 respectively. The putative figure for the eighteenth century is higher than the usual estimates; part of the gains usually conceded to the nineteenth century have been given to the eighteenth. (I obviously cite these figures with due reservation.) This method posits reasonable annual rates of growth, which are roughly corroborated by some partial investigations: from 1600 to 1650, 6'2 per 1,000; from 1650 to 1750, 2-4; from 1750 to 1800, 4; from 1800 to 1850, 4-6. We come back to K, Julius Belochs figures for 1600 (nearly 100 million inhabitants for all Europe). But we have no valid index to follow the process further back from 1600 to 1300, an eventful period which saw a substantial recession between 1350 and 1450, followed by a sharp rise between 1450 and 1650.