THE TURN OF THE DEMOGRAPHIC TIDE

Manpower was the essential asset and motor in the lightly mechanized economy of the ancient world. Its scarcity and diminished skill became a dominant problem of the barbarian age. We cannot be surprised if the revival and soaring of the later Middle Ages coincided with a resumption of population growth accompanied by a resurgence of skill.

When did the demographic tide turn? The beginnings are hidden in the least documented centuries of the barbarian age. It takes time before the growth of a small quantity snowballs to noticeable size. Although we cannot be reasonably sure before the tenth century that in a large part of Catholic Europe the vicious circle of low population, low production, and low consumption was broken, we cannot rule out the possibility that change began somewhat earlier. We do hear, in the Carolingian age, of new villages being founded, woods being cleared, and settlers being attracted by monasteries, castles, and other sheltered places. Such fragmentary evidence, however, can be interpreted in more than one way: monastic and seigniorial agglomerations may grow at the expense of unprotected centers; clearings may accommodate people who have abandoned exhausted fields elsewhere; new villages may disappear soon after they have been established. It may be somewhat safer to refer to the record of two major factors affecting the demographic trends, climate and plagues. The last of the catastrophic pestilences that swept through the Eurasian continent took place in 742–43.