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The Vital Revolution Reconsidered*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Karl F. Helleiner
Karl F. Helleiner*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

The historian's understanding of past situations benefits greatly from the fact that he, unlike any contemporary observer, knows a good deal about the subsequent development. It is only in retrospect, if at all, that germinal forces, unnoticed or underestimated at the time, can be seen in their true significance. However, hiridsight also has its dangers. Reading history backwards we are easily misled into postulating specific “antecedents” and “early phases” of phenomena which seem to require a long period of gestation; and we are almost inclined to distrust our records if they fail to confirm our expectations.

It is well to be on guard against this temptation when trying to appraise the general character of the closing years of the seventeenth, and the early decades of the eighteenth century. Certainly, as far as the demographic situation of this period is concerned, there was little if anything to herald the impending changes. Man was still very much at the mercy of the elements. As late as the 1690's a succession of poor and indifferent harvests created severe subsistence crises in almost all countries of Europe. So far from growing, the population declined here and there, as dearth and starvation stalked through the lands from Castile to Finland, and from the Scottish Highlands to the foothills of the Alps. In 1698, after a serious crop failure, certain regional death rates in Sweden are known to have risen to 9 and 16 per cent respectively.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , February 1957 , pp. 1 - 9
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1957

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Footnotes

*

This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in Montreal, June 6, 1956. Its main substance will be incorporated, in slightly extended form, in the author's contribution to the forthcoming fourth volume of the Cambridge Economic History.

References

1 Jutikkala, Eino, “The Great Finnish Famine in 1696–97,” Scandinavian Economic History Review, III, no. 1, 1955, p. 56.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., 51 ff.

3 There exists ample information of a local or regional nature on the impact of the French famine of 1693–4. The following recent studies may be mentioned: Meuvret, Jean, “Les Crises de subsistance et la démographie de la France d'Ancien Régime,” Population, I, 1946, 643–50Google Scholar; Goubert, Pierre, “En Beauvaisis: problèmes démographiques du XVIIe siècle,” Annales: économies, sociétés, civilisations, VII, 1952, 453–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and his “Une Richesse historique en cours d'exploitation: les registres paroissiaux,” ibid., IX, 1954, 83–93.

4 Cosemans, A., De bevolking van Brabant in de XVIIe en XVIIIe eeuw (Brussels, 1939), 57, 222.Google Scholar

5 von Inama-Sternegg, Karl Theodor and Häpke, Rudolf, “Die Bevölkerung des Mittelalters und der neueren Zeit bis Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts in Europa” in Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften (4th ed., Jena, 1924), II, 672.Google Scholar

6 Creighton, Charles, A History of Epidemics in Britain (Cambridge, 1891, 1894), II, 47 ff.Google Scholar

7 de Boislisle, Arthur M., Le Grand Hiver et la disette de 1709 (Paris, 1903).Google Scholar

8 Rogers, James E. Thorold, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England (Oxford, 1866–1902), VIII, Part 1, 7 ff.Google Scholar

9 Creighton, , A History of Epidemics in Britain, II, 54 ff.Google Scholar

10 Jutikkala, Eino, “Die Bevölkerung Finnlands in den Jahren 1721–49” in Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, B LV, no. 4 (Helsinki, 1945), 21.Google Scholar

11 Sticker, Georg, Abhandlungen aus der Seuchengeschichte und Seuchenlehre, I, part 1, Die Geschichte der Pest (Giessen, 1908), 214 ff.Google Scholar

12 They are quoted by Thomas Robert Malthus in the (Second) Essay on Population, Book II, chap. XII.

13 Keyser, Erich, Bevölkerungsgeschichte Deutschlands (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1941), 386.Google Scholar

14 Sticker, , Die Geschichte der Pest, 222 ff.Google Scholar

15 George, M. Dorothy, England in Transition (Penguin Books, 1953), 54.Google Scholar

16 See: Heckscher, Eli F., “Swedish Population Trends before the Industrial Revolution,” Economic History Review, Second Series, II, no. 3, 1950, 266–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gille, H., “The Demographic History of the Northern European Countries in the Eighteenth Century,” Population Studies, III, no. 1, 1949, 3–65 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Utterström, Gustav, “Some Population Problems in Pre-Industrial Sweden,” Scandinavian Economic History Review, II, no. 2, 1954, 103–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also the studies by Eino Jutikkala cited above in notes 1 and 10.

17 This figure, which is based on slightly defective contemporary compilations from the church registers, would have to be raised to 23.9 per mille if the corrections suggested by a regional investigation were to be applied to the whole Kingdom. See Boëthius, Bertil, “New Light on Eighteenth Century Sweden,” Scandinavian Economic History Review, II, 1953, 151, n. 2.Google Scholar

18 Gille, , “Demographic History,” 50.Google Scholar

19 See Griffith, G. Talbot, Population Problems of the Age of Malthus (Cambridge, 1926).Google Scholar

20 Boyd, Madeleine, ed., The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova (Modern Library ed., New York, 1929), 7.Google Scholar

21 McKeown, Thomas and Brown, R. G., “Medical Evidence Related to English Population Changes in the Eighteenth Century,” Population Studies, IX, 1955, 119–41, esp. 123 ff.Google Scholar This author was gratified to see views which he had developed independently receive confirmation in this study.

22 “En Beauvaisis,” 466.

23 See: Hirst, L. Fabian, The Conquest of Plague: A Study of the Evolution of Epidemiology (Oxford, 1953), 123 ff.Google Scholar; and Sticker, , Die Geschichte der Pest, 207 f.Google Scholar