The Population Of Britain In The Nineteenth Century

This book provides a clear interpretation of the causes of demographic change in Britain in the nineteenth century. It combines an examination of migration, marriage patterns, fertility and mortality with a guide to the sources of population data available to historians and demographers. Illustrated with tables and figures, it is the only available summary of this field for students, and includes a detailed bibliography for those wishing to pursue the subject further.

This concise volume for students reviews the literature on the population history of Britain and Ireland.

One of the most striking features of the demography of twentieth century Britain and its constituent countries has been the persistence of rates of population growth far lower than those of the nineteenth century. By the 1980s even the absolute size of the population had begun to decline. Why has this happened? And why have falling rates of population growth been accompanied by equally dramatic changes in the geography of human residence? In an attempt to answer these questions, the book traces the evolution of trends in levels of fertility, mortality and migration and considers the nature of the forces responsible for these trends.

The Demography of Victorian England and Wales uses the full range of nineteenth-century civil registration material to describe in detail for the first time the changing population history of England and Wales between 1837 and 1914. Its principal focus is the great demographic revolution which occurred during those years, especially the secular decline of fertility and the origins of the modern rise in life expectancy. But Robert Woods also considers the variable quality of the Victorian registration system; the changing role of what Robert Malthus termed the preventive check; variations in occupational mortality and the development of the twentieth-century class mortality gradient; and the effects of urbanisation associated with the significance of distinctive disease environments. The volume also illustrates the fundamental importance of geographical variations between urban and rural areas. This invaluable reference tool is lavishly illustrated with numerous tables, figures and maps, many of which are reproduced in full colour.

Whilst in certain quarters it may be fashionable to suppose that there is no such thing as society historians, they have had no difficulty in finding their subject. The difficulty, rather, is that an outpouring of research and writing is hard for anyone but the specialist to keep up with the literature or grasp the overall picture. In these three volumes, as is the tradition in Cambridge Histories, a team of specialists has assembled the jigsaw of topical monographic research and presented an interpretation of the development of modern British society since 1750, from three perspectives: those of regional communities, the working and living environment, and social institutions. Each volume is self-contained, and each contribution, thematically defined, contains its own chronology of the period under review. Taken as a whole they offer an authoritative and comprehensive view of the manner and method of the shaping of society in the two centuries of unprecedented demographic and economic change.

This large-scale comparative endeavor, complete in two volumes, reflects increasing concern with the population factor in economic and social change worldwide. Demographers, on their side, have been focusing on history. In response to this, Population in History represents the work of two practitioners that have begun to work together, using their combined approaches in an attempt to assess and account for population growth experienced by the West since the seventeenth century. There is a long record of interest in the history of population. But the interest now displayed is likely to be both more persistent and far more fruitful in its consequences. New studies have been initiated in many countries. And because the studies are more informed and systematic than many of those of earlier periods, they are already provoking the further spread of research. A much more positive part is now also being played by national and international associations of historians and demographers. It is not unlikely that, within the next fifteen or twenty years, the main outlines of population change in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries will be firmly established for much of Europe. Previous research has tended to appear in specialist journals and academic publications. This volume is intended to provide a more easily accessible publication. It has been thought appropriate to include some earlier work, both because of its intrinsic interest and because it provided the background and part of the stimulus to the later research. Of the twenty-seven contributions to this outstanding volume, seven are unabridged reprints of earlier work; the remaining contributions are either entirely new or represent substantial revisions of work published elsewhere. D. V. Glass was professor of sociology at the University of London. At the time of his death he was a fellow of the Royal Society and a fellow of the British Academy as well as a foreign associate of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences. Most of his later work and research was focused on demography. D. E. C. Eversley was reader in social history at the University of Birmingham. Some of the books he co-authored include Introduction to English Demography from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century and Social Theories of Fertility and The Malthusian Debate.

In 1801 the population of Great Britain was 10.6 million; by 1901 it was 37.1 million. The national product in 1801 has been valued at £138,000,000; by 1901 it was £1,948,000,000. The rise per head was from £12.9 to £52.5 and, as these figures represent constant prices, the rise in material standards is evident, even allowing for the unequal distribution of socially created wealth. This book is a short, crisp survey of the major economic and social developments in nineteenth-century Britain. It combines a brief narrative history with a lucid and exciting synthesis of all the important problems and academic controversies. The chapters discuss economic growth, population - its growth, impact and movement - urbanisation and the housing problem, industry, agriculture, transport, overseas trade and foreign investment, life and labour, education, finance, the role of government, and the social structure. The text is extensively subdivided for easy reference, and is illustrated with numberous tables and diagrams. There is a full critical bibliography at the end of each chapter and a chronological table of events at the end of the book.