Population Crises and Population Cycles

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Medicine, Conflict and Survival

ISSN: 1362-3699 (Print) 1743-9396 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fmcs20

Population crises and population cycles

Claire Russell & W M S Russell

To cite this article: Claire Russell & W M S Russell (2000) Population crises and populationcycles, Medicine, Conflict and Survival, 16:4, 383-410, DOI: 10.1080/13623690008409538

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Population Crises and Population Cycles

CLA IRE RU SSELL and W M S RU SSELL

Dep artment of Sociology, Un iversity of Reading , Reading RG6 2AA

To prevent a population irretrievably depleting its resources, mammals have

evolved a behavioural and physiological response to population crisis. When a

mammalian population becomes dangerously dense, there is a reversal of behaviour.

Co-operat ion and parental behaviour are replaced by competi t ion, dominance and

aggressive violence, leading to high mortality, especially of females and young, and

a reduced population. The stress of overpopulation and the resulting violence

impairs both the immune and the reproductive systems. Hence epidemics complete

the crash of the population, and reproduction is slowed for three or four

generations, giving the resources ample time to recover. In some mammal species,

crisis and crisis response recur regularly, leading to cycles of population growth and

relapse, oscillating about a fixed mean.

Population crisis response and population cycles have been equally prominent

in the history of human societies. But in man successive advances in food

production have made possible growing populations, though with every such

advance population soon outgrew resources again. Hence human cycles have been

superimposed on a rising curve, producing a saw-tooth graph. Because advances in

food production amounted to sudden disturbances in the relations between human

populations and their environments, the crisis response in man has failed to avert

famine and resource damage. In the large human societies evolved since the coming

of settled agriculture and cities, the basic effects of violence, epidemics, famine and

resource damage have been mediated by such specifically human disasters as

inflation, unemployment, and political tyranny.

An account of past crises, periods of relative relief from population pressure,

and resulting cycles, is given for a number of regions: China, North Africa and

Western Asia, the northern Mediterranean, and north-western Europe. The paper

ends with an account of the present world-wide population crisis, and the solution

made possible by Malthus's discovery that, unlike animals, we can choose to check

population growth by reducing the birth-rate, instead of raising the death-rate, as in

other mammals, by the population crisis response.

KEYWORDS En vir on m en tal dam age Ep idem ics Fam ine

Inflation M althu s Pop ulation crisis

Po pula tion cycle Relief Renaissance

Social inequality Un em ploym ent Violence

* This paper is condensed from the book of the same title, published by the Galton Institute,

Londo n, 19 99, price £5 .00 , ISBN 09 50 40 66 51 . The book contains much mo re factual detail ,

and an extensive classified bibliography of sources, including those referred to in the paper.

MEDICINE, CONFLICT AND SURVIVAL, VOL. 16, 383-410 (2000)

PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LO N D ON

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384 C. RUSSELL AND W .M .S . RUSSELL

Crises and Cycles in Animals and Man

Among lower animals, high fertility and competition prevail. Three great

trends of evolutionary progress have been:

1. reduction in fertility

2. developm ent and extension of parental behaviour, and

3. sociability towards and adoption of individuals not closely genetically

related.

These trends have culminated in cultural evolution in the co-operative

societies of higher primates and Cetacea (whales and dolphins), and

ultimately in the achievements of m an. Despite their relatively low fertility,

mammalian populations are still liable to outgrow their environmental

resources (animal prey or plant food populations), and are in danger of

irretrievably depleting them. To avert this, there has evolved a behavioural

and physiological response to population crisis. When a mammalian

population becomes dangerously dense, but before it can deplete its

resources, the stimulus of overcrowding leads to a complete reversal or

regression of behaviour. Co-operation and parental behaviour are replaced

by competition, dominance and aggressive violence. The effect of crowding

on aggression in wild rabbits, for instance, is shown in Table 1.

TABLE 1

AGGRESSION IN WILD RABBITS

Size of Enclosure (square yards) Num ber of Agg ressive Acts per Hour

in Groups of 6 Wild Rabbits each

450 2.6

225 4.2

123 8.8

Source:

Ref. 1

Females and young, demographically most important, are most likely to

be killed, and thus the population is reduced. In the elaborate societies of

higher primates, the effects may be quite complex, involving the

replacement of friendly leaders by aggressive bullies, lethal mob attacks on

persecuted individuals, and war between bands. But the end result is the

same - mortality of females and young, and a reduced population. The

stress of crowding and of the resulting violence impairs both the immune

and the reproductive systems. Hence epidemics complete the crash of the

population, and reproduction is slowed for three or four generations,


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PO PU L A TIO N CRISES AND PO PU L A TIO N CYCLES 385

giving the resources ample time to recover. In some mammal species, crisis

and crisis response recur in a regular fashion, leading to cycles of

population growth and collapse, oscillating about a fixed mean, as shown

for the snowshoe hare in Figure 1.

FIGURE 1

POPULATION CYCLES OF THE SNOWSHOE HARE, BASED ON PELTS

RECEIVED BY THE HUD SON BAY COMPANY

c

t

J 2

M

Q.

160 000 j

140 000

120 000-

100 000-

8 0 0 0 0

6 0 0 0 0 •

40 000 •

2 0 0 0 0

•

1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930

Date

ource

Ref. 2

Population crisis response and population cycles have been equally

prominent in the history of human societies, but with certain differences

related to the unique character of our species. In humankind, thanks to our

advancing technology, successive advances in food production have made

possible growing populations, though with every such advance population

soon outgrew the current level of resources. Hence human population

cycles have generally been superimposed on a rising curve, producing a

saw-tooth graph. Since the cycles in different societies have not been in

phase until recently, the graph for a very large region may look smooth, but

in small regions such as Spain, or large homogenous regions such as China,

the saw-tooth effect is clear, as shown in Figure 2.

Because advances in food production amounted to sudden disturbances

in the relations between human populations and their environments, the

crisis responses in humankind have not been able to achieve their

evolutionary function in time, and hence each full-scale crash, when it

came, has generally involved famine, and often resource damage, as well as

massive violence and very high death-rates from disease, in just the manner

described in the classical works of Robert Malthus (1766-1834).

Finally, since the coming of settled agriculture and cities, human

societies have obviously been far larger and more complex than those of

any mammal, and the characteristics of crisis periods, and of the

intervening relief periods when population crash brought the population


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386 C. RUSSELL AND W .M .S. RUSSELL

FIGURE 2

POPULATION CYCLES

OF

CHINA

AND

SPAIN

m

n

m

o

0

a

800

700

600

500

400-

300

200

100'

0

^— -

400BC

CHINA

AD1000

1500

Year

/

r

l

n

m

o

o

1

o.

o

D.

2000

3b -

3 0 -

25

20

15

10-

5 -

SPAIN

~^—

y

400BC AD1000

1500

Year

I

/

2000

Source: Ref. 3

down

to a

better balance with curren t resources, have been correspondingly

complex, and can be described u nde r various heading s.

The economic effects

of

pop ulation crises have included

a

rise

in

prices,

a fall in real wages, and massive un em ploy m ent, often met by massive

building projects, which further drained

the

society's resources. Relief

periods have been marked by lower prices, higher real wages, and better

levels of employment ; the relation of po pula t ion to prices and real wages

over five centuries

of

history

in

England

and

W ales

is

shown

in

Figure

3.

The social effects

of

po pu latio n crisis have included s harp er differences

between classes and greater difficulty in moving between them, w hereas

relief periods have seen greater equality

and

social mobility. Politically,

crisis periods have been marked by tyranny and oppression, relief periods

by intelligent leadership and greater freedo m , especially in Europe, where

the ground level of pop ulation density was (until recently) mu ch low er th an

in other civilisations.

All these complex effects have of course promoted the original

behavioural crisis response

of

competi t ion, domination

and

violence,

especially against women and children. Famine and ma lnutrition have

combined with stress

to

prod uce eno rmo us death-rates from epidemics,

completing

the

crash

of the

popula t ion,

so

tha t longevity declined markedly

during crisis

and

recovered during relief p eriods . Table

2

shows

the

changing life expectancy of males before, during and after the fourteenth-

century population crisis in England. In climatically vulnerable regions,

there

has

also been lasting resou rce dam age d urin g crises,

and in the

present

world-wide crisis this too is becoming world-wide.

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POPULATION CRISES AND POPULATION CYCLES

387

FIGURE 3

PRICES, REAL WAGES AND POPULATION, ENGLAND AND WALES, 1350-1850

14

P opula t ion of

England and Wales

(millions)

Price Index

1200

1000

4

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 h

1350

145 0 1 5 5 0 165 0 175 0 185 0

T

1 4 0

••Population of England and

Wales (millions)

Real Wage Index

\

H 1 1 1 1 1 1 -

1350 1450 1550 1650 1750 1850

Source:

Ref. 4

TABLE 2

EXPECTATION OF LIFE IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

Dates (AD) Expectation of life at birth for males in years

Before 1276

1276 to 1300

1301 to 1325

1326 to 1345

1346 to 1375

1376 to 1400

1401 to 1425

1426 to 1450

35.3

31.3

29.8

30.2

17.3

20.5

23.8

32.8

Source: Ref. 5.

The Crises and Cycles of China

The civilization of China has always depended on irrigation and flood

control. In the first millennium BC it was composed of many little states,

each busy completing the water control system within i ts own borders, and

disputing with other states using the same rivers. The wars between the

states ended in unification of the Yellow river and the lower Yangtze areas

by the state of Ch'in on the upper Yellow river, forming what has been

called a water-shed empire. Like similar empires elsewhere (the Assyrians,

the Inca), the Ch'in Empire was an horrific military tyranny. When the

wars ,

with their huge death-rates, were over, the first emperor used his


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388 C . R U S S E L L A N D W . M . S . R U S S E L L

TABLE 3

THE POPULATION CYCLES OF CHINA

Dates

Period

Food Production

W ater Control Population

Works* (millions)

BC

481-206

Crisis 1:

Warring states, Ch'in,

civil war

NW Loess area

developed

1.6

BC-AD

206-221

AD

221-618

618-755

75 4

618-907

755-960

8 3 9

907-960

960-1280

1 1 0 0

1280-1368

1 2 9 0

1368-1644

1 3 9 3

1 6 0 0

1644-1683

1 6 6 1

1644-1912

1 7 0 0

1 7 7 9

1 7 9 4

1 8 5 0

1850-1880

1 8 7 2

1 9 0 0

1912-1949

1 9 3 1

1950-1953

2 Han dynasties

Crisis 2:

3 kingdom s, Tsin, S

& N dynasties, Sui

Height of T'ang

Crisis 3: Civil war,

later

T'ang,

5

dynasties

Sung

Crisis 4: Yuan

(Mongol)

Ming

Crisis 5: Fall of Ming,

Manchu conquest

Ch'ing (Manchu)

Crisis 6: Taiping,

Nien, Moslem revolts

Crisis 7: Warlords,

civil war, Japanese

invasion

People's Republic

NE Lower Yellow

River developed

SE Lower Yangtze

developed: Grand

Canal

Early-growing rice

Potatoes, sweet

potatoes, ground-

nuts,

maize

6.6

7.6

43.9

12.3

174.4

175.6

411.2

603.4

50

30

100

60

65

150

100

150

27 5

313

430

330

430

450

580

*Number of engineering works of water control per 50-year period

Source: Ref. 6.


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POP UL ATIO N CRISES AND POP ULA TION CYCLES 389

enormous army to build the Great Wall, a Stone Curtain designed to keep

his subjects from straying out of his reach into the Central Asian steppe,

where climate and terrain favoured the development of a nomad herding

culture. In 202 BC the first over-population crisis was over, and the Ch'in

were replaced by the first great Chinese dynasty, the Han, ruling through a

relatively humane and flexible bureaucracy, selected by public

examinations. This system survived through all the Chinese Imperial

dynasties.

As Chinese h istorians have observed, each major dynasty rose and fell in

a cycle of reduced population pressure, population growth, over-

population, and population crisis. The great productiveness of Chinese

irrigation agriculture permitted a high population density, even in periods

of relative relief from over-population, so the accumulated effects of the

crisis periods outweighed the constructive effects of the relief periods, and

by the time of the later Ming, Chinese civilisation was in decline. The

population cycles of China since the Ch'in are shown in Table 3.

In every population crisis, China fell apart into its component regions,

and even smaller fractions, ruled by numerous lesser dynasties not shown

in Table 3. Besides famines, epidemics and appalling civil wars, China

suffered during the population crises from incursions of nomad chieftains

from across the Central Asian borders, who often founded later Chinese

dynasties, notably the Yuan (Mongol) and Ch'ing (Manchu). In the

dreadful crisis of the twentieth century, China suffered instead from her

own brutal war-lords, European exploitation and Japanese conquest. In

1949, the People's Republic brought peace to China, but the new

government delayed introducing birth control, and another crisis ensued,

the 'Cultural Revolution', which nearly destroyed Chinese civilisation and

caused massive environmental damage. It remains to be seen whether

China's new birth control policy will reduce the population in time to avert

another crisis, and bring to an end the 'cycles of Cathay'.

North

Africa and Western Asia

The dry belt of North Africa and western Asia extends from Morocco to

Central Asia. Throughout its extent rainfall is irregular and often scanty.

There are large areas, notably in flood plains, where the soil can be

enormously fertile, and support a very dense population, provided it is

suitably irrigated and drained. But these settled enclaves are everywhere

bordered by seasonal grasslands merging into arid desert. Instead of a

homogeneous land-mass with grasslands on one border, as in China, the

belt is a mosaic of juxtaposed areas of settlement and more or less nomadic

herding peoples. Hence it was only once, and briefly, politically unified, by

the Arabs in the early eighth century AD.

There is abundant evidence of recurrent population crises in the belt,

with inflation, famine, violence and epidemics. In Babylonia, in the mid-

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390

C. RUSSELL AND W.M.S. RUSSELL

second millennium BC, the price of barley tripled and the economy

relapsed into barter. Towards the end of the Egyptian Old Kingdom, the

skeletal figures of starving peasants appear on a temple bas-relief. During

the ensuing population crisis, an Egyptian writer reported: 'All is ruin.

Blood is everywhere . . . ' In AD 1060, up to 10,000 people a day were dying

of plague in Cairo.

The resulting massive fluctuations of population are attested by tax

records and by changing density of settlement. Under the Sassanian kings

of Persia (AD 226-637), the tax receipts of Khuzestan reached a figure

twelve times as high as under the Achaemenid dynasty (539-331 BC). By

the tenth century AD, the receipts had fallen to 40% of the Sassanian

figure, and by the fourteenth century to 6%. In the Diyala Basin, the

number of settlements fell by more than 80% between the eighteenth and

thirteenth centuries BC. The population cycles in these two regions are

shown in Table 4 and the cycles for Ancient Egypt in Table 5. In Egypt, the

Old, Middle and New Kingdoms, and the Saite Dynasty, were periods of

relative relief from population pressure, with prosperity and cultural

flowering. In 332 Alexander the Great conquered Egypt after which there

was a relief period under the Macedonian Ptolemy Dynasty, but no more

native kings.

TABLE 4

RELATIVE DENSITY OF SETTLEMENT IN TWO WESTERN ASIAN REGIONS

Region

Location

Rough Dates

BC 3000-2300

2300-1800

1800-1700

1700-700

700-100

100-AD 300

AD 300-650

650-750

750-1000

1000-Present

Diyala Basin

Central Iraq, east of

Baghdad

Settlement Density

Moderate

Low

Moderate

Low

Low

Moderate

High

Moderate

High

L o w

Khuzestan (ancient

Elam)

South Western Iran

Moderate

Moderate

Moderate

Moderate

Low

Moderate

High

Moderate

Moderate

Low

Source:

Refs. 7, 8.

Because of their climatic and geographical vulnerability, recurrent

population crises in the settled regions of the belt caused increasing

devastation of the environment. This has been superbly well documented

for the Levant (modern Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan).

9

The region

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POPU LATION CRISES AND POPU LATION CYCLES 391

TABLE 5

THE POPULATION CRISES OFANCIENT EGYPT

Dates BC

2700-2200

2200-2050

2050-1700

1700-1550

1550-1050

1050-664

664-525

525-332

Periods

Old Kingdom

Population Crisis

Middle Kingdom

Population Crisis

New Kingdom

Population Crisis

Saite Dynasty

Population Crisis

Foreign Invaders

Hyksos

Libyans, Ethiopians, Assyrians

Persians

Note:

during the third and second millennia BC, absolute dates are in dispute (ours are rounded), but

there is no dispute about the sequence of events.

attained a peak of prosperity in Roman times but was totally ruined by a

succession of medieval population crises. Much of the region was still

covered with forests in the Roman period; less than 1% of the Levant is

woodland today. Since Roman times enough soil to make nearly 4000

square kilometres of good farmland has been eroded from the western

slopes of the Judean hills. In the plain of Northern Syria around Qal'at

Sim'an, by the mid-twentieth century AD, the ruins of 42 ancient towns lay

scattered among the 14 villages still occupied, in a desert littered with

ruined oil and wine-presses.

By the twentieth century, with much reduced populations, attempts

were being made to restore ruined land and reconstruct the sophisticated

water control technology of ancient and medieval times. But population

growth was soon outstripping the resulting increase in resources. Only

immediate massive programmes of voluntary birth control can possibly

avert further disasters in the great dry belt where civilization first began,

and where it reached glorious heights in earlier times.

The Northern Mediterranean: Greece

In China and the dry belt, the food surplus was ample for developing high

civilization, but high population density and the demands of water control

(hydraulic) engineering produced what has been called hydraulic societies -

arbitrary autocracy, bureaucratic elite, and mass labour, with no one really

free.

10

The peoples of the ancient northern Mediterranean lacked sufficient

food surplus to build high civilization. They did so only by exploiting the

surplus of the neighbouring dry belt, through piracy, trade and conquest.

Table 6 shows how utterly the ancient civilizations of the northern

Mediterranean depended on food imports from outside the region, chiefly

from North Africa and Western Asia. The imports to Rome and

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Constantinople were collected as taxes from provinces of the Empire. At

first the northern Mediterranean peoples were not forced into the

hydraulic pattern, and they could develop the rule of law with real freedom

for many people, even democracy, and leisure for fundamental scientific

inquiry. But their dependence on imported food meant two factors for

population crisis: their own population increase, and a failure of food

imports. Overpopulation was enhanced when slavery diffused into their

societies. Table 7 shows how slavery diffused into the northern

Mediterranean from Asia Minor (modern Turkey); the centuries cited are

those in which slavery became well established in the regions mentioned,

with substantial numbers of slaves. The Mediterranean societies could not

possibly afford slaves from their own meagre surplus, yet the slaves reached

grotesquely high proportions. Athens, in 431 BC, probably had some

80,000 slaves, nearly one quarter of the total population of some 340,000.

So high civilization in this region was a conditional and precarious affair.

From the eighth century BC, the Greek islands and the plains isolated

by mountains gave rise to some 200 city-states, each a city with surrounding

farmland territory, such as Athens with its territory of Attica. But

population soon outstripped resources, leading to land disputes, rural

unrest, food shortages and epidemics. The problem was eased in the

seventh and sixth centuries by the planting of colonies all over the Black Sea

and Mediterranean, until the emigration was blocked by the rival

colonizing movement of the Phoenicians (which had started earlier) and the

empire of their greatest colony, Carthage, in (modern) Tunisia. Meanwhile

some city-states, notably Aegina, Chios, Corinth and Athens, began to

export manufactures to and import food from Egypt.

TABLE 6

GRAIN IMPORTS INTO THE NORTHERN MEDITERRANEAN

Importing City

Athens

41 Greek Cities

Rome

Rome

Rome

Constantinople

Period or Year

Mid-4th century BC

328/7 BC

1st century BC to

1st century AD

Early 3rd century AD

Late 4th century AD

Mid-6th century AD

Amount of Grain

(tonnes per year)

40,000

48,000

300,000

180,000

67,000

240,000

Region of Origin

(modern names)

Ukraine, Egypt,

Syria, Sicily, Cyprus

Libya

Tunisia, Algeria,

Egypt

Tunisia, Algeria,

Egypt

Tunisia, Algeria

Egypt

Sources: various.


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POP ULA TION CRISES AND PO PUL AT ION CYCLES 393

TABLE 7

THE WESTWARD DIFFUSIION OF SLAVERY FROM WESTERN ASIA

Centuries BC Region s with Slavery Established

7th Cities and islands on coast of Asia M inor, especially Chios

6th Central Greec e, especially Corinth, Aegina, Meg ara, Athens

4th Remainder of Greece

2nd Rome and Roman Italy

Source: Ref. 11.

In the early fifth century BC a monopoly of silver enabled Athens to

control grain imports from the Ukraine and Egypt, so becoming the

entrepot of Greece. The temporary large surplus of resources over

population produced the greatest concentration of creative activity in

world history. But increase in the free population and mass import of slaves

led to a desperate food supply problem. Figure 4 shows the probable

changes in the total population of the city state of Athens in its territory of

Attica, that is citizens, resident aliens (including freed slaves) and slaves.

There was only one census of adult male citizens, in the late fourth century

BC,

but military and naval records and other kinds of evidence are available

for these (rounded) estimates. As shown in the figure, the territory of Attica

could regularly feed no more than 70,000 people.

Competition for grain import sources with Corinth (in a similar

position) resulted in 431 BC in the first and worst of the major wars

between the overpopulated Greek states that occupied 53 out of the

following 85 years, with recurrent inflation, unemployment, food shortages

and epidemics. In the late fourth century, thanks to the development of

alluvial gold, the Macedonians dominated Greece, weakened by

overpopulation, and suppressed democracy.

Population crisis in the fifth century BC ended with a disastrous defeat

for Athens, and a big drop in population caused by war casualties and the

serious epidemics of 430 and 427-6 BC. After a short relief period (while

crisis continued in other parts of Greece), population growth resumed, and

further crisis ended in M acedonian dom ination. After 323 BC, Athens lost

control of the Aegean grain trade and could no longer afford massive grain

imports. After 167 BC, when the Romans overcame the Macedonians,

Athens briefly recovered control of the grain trade, but over population

soon caused a final crisis that ended in the sack of the city by the Romans

in 86 BC. Thereafter the population remained very small until modern

times;

by this time the carrying capacity of Attica had been reduced by

deforestation.

Alexander the Great used a combined Macedonian-Greek army to

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394


FIGURE 4

THE POPULATION OF ATHENS, 500 BC-250 AD

Nurrber of people that could regularly be fed from the territory of the city-state (Attica)

CM i - t - i - T - CM CM

conquer Egypt and Western Asia as far as India. On his death, his dry belt

empire broke up into a number of typically hydraulic states, the Hellenistic

monarchies, with bureaucracies staffed by Greeks. The Aegean mainland

and islands lost their monopoly of manufactures, as industry developed

elsewhere, and their populations shrank back to the reduced carrying

capacity of their own lands, with deforestation and exhausted mines.

In the third century BC, the Hellenistic monarchies in the dry belt

enjoyed some relief from population pressure, with scientific advances,

brilliant art, and more humane and less destructive warfare. But Carthage

suffered from severe stress culture, a complex of behavioural aberrations

socially transmitted through the generations, the heritage of chronic

overpopulation in its Phoenician homeland; it was culturally backward,

with a frequency of human sacrifice unparalleled in the Old World. In the

second to first centuries BC, rising populations produced devastating crisis

in the Hellenistic kingdoms. Hence Carthage was conquered in the third

century, and the Hellenistic kingdoms in the second and first centuries, by

the new power of Rome.

The Northern Mediterranean: Rome and After

The central position of Rome in Italy and Italy in the Mediterranean

enabled the independent farmers of the Roman Republic to form a league

of Italian states and conquer the population-crisis-ridden societies of North


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POPU LAT ION CRISES AND POPU LATION CYCLES 395

Africa, much of Western Asia, the Aegean, and finally the divided tribes of

half-civilized Gaul and Britain. By 167 BC, Rome had extracted some 80

tonnes of gold from the dry belt, and sums of this order came in annually

when the Empire was established. This enormous wealth in loot and taxes

enabled Rome to develop a brilliant civilization with a wonderful literature

and an impressive legal system. But, perhaps uniquely in history, this

coincided with a grave population crisis in Italy, which set in at once as a

result of very rapid population growth.

There were regular censuses of male Roman citizens of military age

from the fifth century BC, and some censuses of all male citizens from 28

BC to AD 72 (besides occasional censuses in the provinces of the Empire).

From these and other evidence it is probable that the total population of

Italy (including the Po Valley) rose from about four million in 225 BC to

about 12 million in AD 47, partly by growth of the free population and

partly by the import of slaves, who became Roman citizens if freed on

Roman territory. Table 8 illustrates the resulting population crisis lasting

for some three centuries, during which the republic was replaced by a

monarchy. In this unique combination of renaissance and crisis, it was

typical that Cicero, who created the vocabulary of Western civilization, was

twice forced into exile, had his house burned down, and was finally

murdered .

By the late first ce ntury AD , the dry belt provinc es of the R om an Em pire

had recovered from their prolonged crisis, and at first the resulting revenue

increase also benefited Rome

itself.

Then, from AD 100 to 160, sett lement

increased in many parts of the Empire. This suggests that the population of

the Empire rose from about one hundred millions in AD 50 (UNESCO

estimate) to about 120 million (Gibbon's inspired guess) in AD 150. Table

9 illustrates the population crisis that followed. There are no food shortages

mentioned after AD 189 in the scanty historical records for the period, but

they must have been very common, except during and shortly after the

reign of the North African Emperor Septimus Severus (AD 193-211).

Violence in Rome and elsewhere was so common that 26 out of the 37

Emperors of the period were murdered or killed in civil battles, not to

speak of their relatives, their high officials, and the dozens of pretenders.

Besides the barbarian incursions, there was sporadic warfare with the

Parthian, later the Persian, Empire. This period saw a notable decline in

culture and art. In the fourth century AD there was some recovery, but only

at he cost of the Empire becoming largely a hydraulic society, with

distinctions between slaves and free workers disappearing. A final truly

catastrophic crisis in the sixth century AD culminated in the plague

pandemic of AD

5 4 2 - 3 ,

which killed 40% of the Empire's population, and

ended Latin and classical Greek as living languages.

By the late third century AD, the dry belt surplus wealth that had

supported Roman civilization had drifted back to North Africa and Western

Asia, where the surplus was actually produced and where trade with the Far


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396 C. RUSSELL AND W.M.S. RUSSELL

TABLE

8

POPULATION CRISES

IN

ITALY,

200

BC-AD

100

Crisis Incidents Dates

Food Shortages

Violence

in

Rome

Slave Revolts

Civil Wars

Social

War

(Rom e against

its

allies

-

Latin socii

Tyranny

Epidemics

BC:180,

165, 142,

135-131,

129,

125-124,

75

6 7 , 5 8 -5 6 , 4 2 - 3 6 , 2 3 -2 2 , 1 8

AD:

5-9, 19, 32, 40-41,

51 ,

62, 64,

68-70

BC:

133, 121, 100, 87, 75, 67, 58-57, 53-52,

41-36

AD:

51, 69

BC: 198, 196, 185, 143, 141,

135-132,

104-100,73-71

BC:

88-82, 78-77, 63-62, 50-45 , 43-3 6,

32-30

AD:

68-70

BC:

91-88

BC:

82-78, 43

AD: 23-41,

50-54, 62-68, 88-96

BC:

187, 182-180, 165, 142 ,43 ,22 , 18

AD:

5-9, 65, 79

TABLE 9

POPULATION CRISES IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE, AD 160-330

Crisis Incidents Dates

(AD)

Food Shortages

Barbarian Incursions

Civil Wars

Major Persecutions

of

Ch ristians

General Tyranny

Epidemics

161 189

167-175 178-1880 05-2 09 234- 237

245-259 262 -271 75-279 286-292 32 2

192-197 17-218 38 49 53 60-268

271-2 74 280 84-285 293-296 306-324

165-167 177 02- 211 235-238 249-251

257-260 303-313 320-324

180-192 11-217 18-222 35-238

165-180

189 251-2 66 271

East was concentrated: 'much more than half of the silver and much more

than two thirds of the gold which had circulated in Roman territory ... had

left the Northern Mediterranean world'.

12

By then, Italy had lost its

privileges, and the effective capital shifted to Nicomedia in (modern) Turkey

and then to Constantinople. In AD 476 the Western Empire disintegrated

into barbarian kingdoms, and the population shrank back to the low level

permitted by the local surplus. In the East, the Byzantine Empire, now a

totally hydraulic state, went through several vicissitudes and population

cycles before

its

conquest

by the

Turks

in

AD

1453.

Except in Greece, the northern Mediterranean environment was little

damaged in ancient times. But in the late fifteenth century AD, incipient

population crisis brought to power in Spain a gangster group of

transhumant sheep-owners, the Mesta. This Mafia-like organization ruled

Spain for over two centuries, with its M urder Incorporated branch, the


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POPU LAT ION CRISES AND POPU LATION CYCLES 397

Spanish Inquisition (their personnel overlapped). With the Inquisition to

eliminate its opponents, the Mesta destroyed most of Spain's forests and

farmlan ds. Well m ight Don Q uix ote mistake the sheep flocks for armies In

Southern Italy, since the thirteenth century AD, transhumant sheep-rearing

had been encouraged by rulers for its tax yield, but the damage vastly

increased when the region was totally controlled by Spain after 1504, with

even more sheep than in Spain itself (Table 10). By the eighteenth century

AD, the northern Mediterranean countries were backwaters. Later they

suffered further from pollution export and mass tourist development. By

AD 1973, a conference of Mediterranean states showed the whole region

to be in a desperate state of pollution and environmental devastation. The

success of plans to improve the situation will depend on the achievement of

very substantial reduction, by voluntary birth control, of the population of

this region, to whose past glories and grandeurs so much is owed by human

civilization.

TABLE 10

ARMIES OF SHEEP

Dates (AD)

1463

1477

1496

1526

1578

1586

1684

Number of Transhumant

In Spain

2,694,032

3,453,168

Sheep

In Southern Italy

600,000

1,700,000

3,500,000

4,500,000

5,500,000

Source: Refs. 13, 14.

North-Western Europe: the Region and its Crises

The region of north-western Europe is of unique interest, for it was here,

in the Middle Ages, that an entirely new kind of society evolved, which was

eventually to achieve the technological breakthrough that made the modern

world. Territorial boundaries, and the dynastic unions or divisions of the

modern countries, have varied considerably at different times, but the

region has always maintained a certain cultural identity. It is not perfectly

defined by any one ecological boundary, but most of it falls

within

an area

where the beech tree grows, and

outside

an area where continual frosts

prevail for at least one month in the year. The medieval north-west

Europeans 'showed an enthusiasm never seen before or elsewhere for

power technology and the mechanisation of industrial processes' .

15

'By

1250 or 1300, foundations had already been laid for the later technological

ascendancy of north-western Europe."

6


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TABLE 11

SOME POPULATION DENSITIES

Region

Hydraulic societies

Egypt

Chekiang Province (pre-industrial)

S. China

Ancient Northern Mediterranean

Attica

North Western Europe

England

France

Switzerland

Netherlands

North Italy

France

United Kingdom

France

Germany

United Kingdom

Date

1st Century BC

Early 20th C AD

431 BC

1086 A D

1300

1479

1600

1600

1600

1750

1850

1900

1750

1850

1900

1992

1992

1992

Population/km

2

28 0

21 4

104

11

35

15

50

45

34

43

68

76

31

86

155

104

225

236

This wonderful development was not, of course, due to the north-west

Europeans being inherently wiser or more skilful than other peoples. Many

of the crucial inventions that made the breakthrough possible came from

outside Europe, notably from China. The north-west Europeans succeeded

because until the nineteenth century they had far lower popu lation densities

than other civilizations. Table 11 gives a fair picture of the relatively low

population density of north-western Europe, compared with other

civilizations, until the late nineteenth century. Note also the relatively low

population density of Britain, the country that launched the industrial

revolution, until the middle nineteenth century. By the late twentieth

century, population densities in the region are quite comparable with those

of the hydraulic societies.

The Chinese exploited new power sources (notably fossil fuels), but

everything was subordinated to the hydraulic mass labour system: water-

mills were banned and actually destroyed under the T'ang. Mass slavery in

the northern Mediterranean created a nightmare of unemployment for free

workers: the Emperor Vespasian paid an engineer to suppress a labour-

saving invention. The north-west Europeans, short of docile labour or

slaves, had no such inhibitions. Hand-made paper was invented by the

Chinese in the second century AD, and diffused to the dry belt in the


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POPU LATION CRISES AND POPU LATION CYCLES 399

eighth; in the thirteenth century it reached north-western Europe, and

production was promptly mechanized (see below).

The north-west Europeans practised versatile forms of mixed farming

(crops and stock), and two successive sets of improvements enabled them

to colonise their clay valleys and increase their yields, as shown in Table 12.

The New Husbandry included root fodder crops and leys ( temporary

pastures) with clovers and lucerne in rotations, heavy manuring and

marling. HEI Agriculture means agriculture with high energy inputs: from

1850 this applied to agriculture both at home and in the overseas regions

from which food was imported. The inputs were of agricultural machinery

and agricultural chemicals. In the modern United States, 'intensive systems

... may yield as little as one tenth' in food energy 'of the input'.

17

Between 1851 and 1931 about 18 million people emigrated from the

British Isles, and about 17 million from the rest of north-western Europe.

The peak population of the region under the Roman Empire, in AD 150,

was probably about 30 million, but this population level in the western

Empire was dependent on imports from the dry belt provinces. Thanks to

the growing food supply, the population did rise, though until the

nineteenth century densities remained low. Despite this, north-western

Europe experienced population crises (Table 12), because, as usual, with

every advance in food production population soon outgrew the new level

of resources.

The crises in this region had all their usual effects. There was severe

price inflation and fall in real wages (as in Figure 3). This, together with

unemployment, created a mass of paupers, comprising up to one quarter of

the total populations in the region, many of them naturally vagabonds and

some brigands. There were massive persecutions of minorities. The

medieval crisis included the major p art of the H un dre d Years W ar, the early

modern crisis the Thirty Years War. The threat of famine was virtually

con tinuo us during the crises. In the Early M od ern Crisis, the city of Bremen

(not untypical) had 25 severe epidemics between 1565 and 1657, and in

south-western France there were 282 revolts between 1635 and 1660. The

effect of all this on the expectation of life at birth was shattering, as shown

in Table 2. The crises greatly reduced the survival of young children, and

hence the total population. This is vividly shown in Figure 5 for the town

of St Lambert des Levees in Anjou, northern France, at the climax of the

early modern population crisis in this region, during the civil war of the

Fronde, which involved fierce fighting.

North Western Europe: The Breakthrough

In the hydraulic societies, with their huge population densities, the effects

of the crises were cumulative, causing a growing load of stress culture and

the decline of civilization. In north -we stern Eu rop e, with its low pop ulation

D o w n l o a d


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400


TABLE 12

THE POPULATION CYCLES OF NORTH WESTERN EUROPE

Dates (AD) Popula tion Renaissances Food P roduction

Crises

Population

in Millions

400-700

600

7th Century

8th Century

750-850

800

9th Century

850-950

1000

11th Century

1050-1200

1200

1200-1400

1300

1400

1400-1530

15th Century

1500

1530-1670

1600

1670-1914

17th Century

1700

18th Century

1750

1790-1850

1800

1851-1931

1 8 5 0

1900

1 9 1 4

1970

1990

Late Ancient

Dark Age

Medieval

Early Modern

Incipient

Modern

Carolingian

Medieval

Early Modern

Long

Mass

Emigration

Fixed mouldboard plough

3-course rotation

Horse-collar, Horse-shoes

Combinations of above

New Husbandry,

Low Countries

New Husbandry, England

New Husbandry, NW Europe

HEI A griculture, Imports

18

22

19

30

45

32

42

50

45

46

65

150

280

300

D o w n l o a d


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PO PU L A TIO N CRISES AND PO PU LA TIO N CYCLES 401

FIGURE 5

SURVIVAL OF CHILD REN IN A POPU LATIO N CRISIS

50 0

450 --

400 --

3 5 0 --

3 0 0 --

2 5 0 --

2 0 0 --

1 5 0 --

1 0 0 --

5 0 -

Number of children

surviving from the age of

one to four years

1647 1648 1649 1650 1651

Dates AD

1652

1653

densities (until the nineteenth century), it was the effects of the relief and

renaissance periods that accumulated, causing continuous progress even

during the crises and eventually the technological breakthrough.

In the Roman Empire, the only important labour-saving devices were

the animal-powered Gallic reaping machine, used and probably invented in

north-western Europe, and the vertical water-mill , also used mainly there,

and in any case on a tiny scale - a few dozens altogether. In early medieval

north-western Europe, water-mills were legion. In 1086, in England, 5624

were recorded, and at the same time France may have had 20,000. 'This

hydraulic energy was equivalent to that which could be deployed by one-

quarter of the adult population of the kingdom."

9

Some time before 1137,

the English invented the rotating vertical wind-mill: there were at least 56

in England by 1200, and in the next century they diffused all over north-

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western Europe. Tidal mills appeared in the twelfth century, steam bellows

in the thirteenth. The mills were used for grinding corn, forging iron,

tanning, fulling, making paper, sawing, brewing, polishing armour, and

crushing anything from olives to ore. During the medieval crisis, fear of

unemployment caused some opposition to fulling mills, but nothing could

stop their advance.

Medieval technologists enjoyed great prestige. In the Gothic cathedrals,

thousands of craftsmen proudly signed their work. 'In the 12th and 3 th

centuries ... there was born ... a new conscious empirical science.'

20

During

the population crises, there was some censorship of science, but it was

nothing like as bad as that in the population crisis of late fifth century BC

Athens, when virtually all scientific activity was banned.

In the fourteenth century, block printing reached north-western

Europe, ultimately from China. The Chinese had also invented movable

type,

but this was of little importance until combined with the alphabetic

scripts of Europe. But between 1439 and 1450 Johann Gutenberg re-

invented movable type for printing books, and mechanised printing by

devising the press. This supreme invention gave science the momentum to

advance spectacularly right through the early modern population crisis.

Between 1670 and 1750, north-western Europe enjoyed the priceless

gift of a near-stable population. Malthus discovered the reason: the region

had achieved (especially during this period) unprecedentedly low birth

rates, thanks to a change in the pattern of marriage (Table 13). According

to Malthus:

In the different states of modern Europe, it appears that the positive

checks to population [high death-rates] have prevailed less, and the

preventive checks [low birth-rates] more, than in ancient times, and

in the more uncultivated parts of the world ... In almost all the more

improved countries of modern Europe, the principal check ... is the

prudential restraint on marriage ... the greater number of persons

who remain unmarried, or marry late.

Modern research fully confirms Malthus, as the tables show especially for

north-western Europe ('the more improved countries'). The pattern seems

to have become established in the seventeenth century. In ordinary families

(as opposed to the upper class ones in part B of Table 13), the age of

women at marriage was particularly high during the later seventeenth and

earlier eighteenth centuries, the precious period of almost stable population

in north-western Europe that prepared the way for the industrial

revolution.

The resulting labour shortage in the British textile industry in the

eighteenth century led to explicit demands for labour-saving inventions and

even the offer of prizes for them in the 1760s. The demand was met by a

number of new devices, and the expanding textile industry launched the

industrial revolution (Figure 6). This figure shows the sudden huge


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POPULATION CRISES AND POPULATION CYCLES

403

TABLE

13

THE MARRIAGE PATTERN

OF

NORTH W ESTERN EUROPE

Comparison in Space: Selected Countries

Country Date

(AD)

North Western Europe

Austria

Britain

Sweden

Others

Ceylon

Korea

Morocco (Moslems)

1900-01

1946

1930

1952

66

73

80

29

2

8

Percentage of Women still Single:

Ages 20-2 4 Ages 45- 49

13

15

19

3

0

2

Comparison in Time: British Royal and Ducal Fam ilies

Period

of

Birth

(AD)

Percentage

of

Women still Single

Age 20 Age 50

1330-1479

42 7

1480-1679

45 6

1680-1729 75 17

1730-1779

76 14

1780-1829 89 12

1830-1879 8 22

ource Refs. 1 22.

FIGURE6

THE POPULATION

OF

NO RTH ERN EUROPE

38

36

34

32

30

28

Net

26

Imports

of

t

R aw

2

Cotton

in

18

Mill ions

of 16

Pounds

14

12

10

8

6

4

2

/

-

Pig Iron Production

Cotton Imports

/

-

/ y

X

360

320

280

2 4 0

Pig Iron

2 Production

in

16 Thousands

of Tons

120

80

40

n o t a o A n

1705 1715 1725 17 35 174 5 17 55 1765 177 5 178 5 179 5 180 5

u a i e s

A . U .

17 171 172 173 17

4o

175O

1760 mo 178 179 18

Source:

Ref. 16


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expansion of the British textile industry (as measured by imports of raw

materials). Some 12 years later the iron industry expanded in turn. As the

cotton industry grew, 'it created a greatly-increased demand for steam

engines, machines, transport, dyes, fuel and building materials. The almost

explosive development of the textile trade therefore led to a rapid

expansion in the industries which produce these things, most notably the

iron industry'. Thus, 'cotton effectively led the whole of the British

economy into the industrial revolution'.

16

Unfortunately, birth rates rose

again, leading to a further population explosion, in which all the precious

benefits of low population density were thrown away.

The Modern World: the Population Explosion in North Western Europe

Besides the cases considered in this article, we have demonstrated

population crises in other regions: monsoon Asia (the Indian sub-continent,

Ceylon, Burma, South-East Asia and Indonesia), Central Mexico, the Maya

area, the Andes, West Africa, prehistoric Europe, prehistoric eastern and

south-western United States, the Marquesas, and Easter Island.

23

These

examples have been enough to establish that population crises and cycles

have been a regular feature of human societies in the past. It is now time to

consider the modern world crisis, beginning with the population explosion

in north-western Europe.

From 1790 to 1850 north-western Europe experienced an incipient

pop ulation crisis, with inflation, unem ploym ent, revolution, destructive

war, cholera epidemics, and famines, especially during the 'hungry

(eighteen-) forties'. But the population did not crash. Instead, death rates

fell and birth rates rose; even the

rate

of population growth rose until the

development of oral contraceptives in the 1960s. The result was an

appalling population explosion, as is obvious from a glance at Figure 7. As

show n in Tab le 1 1 , po pu latio n de nsities in the region rose from tens to

hundreds per square kilometre, reaching the levels found in hydraulic

societies. How was this possible? Not, of course, directly because of

industrialization - you cannot eat machine tools - but because of two

massive increases in the food supply, the first unrepeatable and the second

unsustainable.

The first increase was provided by vast new croplands and pastures in

North America, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, and the Ukraine, the

cropland becoming available because of the new steel plough, which could

break up the tough sod of the world's great temperate grasslands. This

bonanza will never happen again, for, as Mark Twain put i t , ' they're not

making land any more'. But it made possible massive food imports into

north-western Europe in exchange for manufactured products. Britain was

importing nearly one quarter of its wheat by the 1850s, more than half by

the 1870s; in the 1970s it was still importing nearly half its food and even

in the 1990s one quarter of its temperate foodstuffs.


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POP ULA TION CRISES AND POPU LAT ION CYCLES 405

Second, there was a massive increase in food yield per land area, made

doubly necessary because population pressure not only increases the

demand for food but the demand for land by housing and motorways -

over 17,000 hectares of farmland per year are lost in England alone. By the

eighteenth century, as shown in Table 12, north-western Europe had

evolved splendidly sustainable systems of mixed farming. To achieve the

yield increase, these have been replaced by high-energy-input (HEI) crop

agriculture and factory farming of stock. HEI crop agriculture uses huge

amounts of agricultural chemicals - NPK fertilisers (nitrogen, phosphorus,

potassium) and pesticides (herbicides, insecticides, fungicides). For lack of

organic manure, the soil deteriorates, and needs more and more mineral

fertilisers, eventually with diminishing returns. The deteriorated soil is

vulnerable to wind or water erosion. Nitrates and phosphorus compounds

pollute lakes and groundwater. Fertilisers cost vast quantities of energy to

prod uce , and nitrogen fertil isers are ma de from petrole um , and thus doubly

costly in energy. Pesticides increasingly fail to control harmful organisms

(which acquire resistance), often kill useful organisms, and threaten human

health. Systems of HEI crop agriculture 'are not sustainable, given their

physical, chemical and biological impacts on the soil, their excessive

consumption of non-renewable resources, and their far-reaching side-

effects on the global ecosystem'.

24

Meanwhile factory farming involves keeping animals crowded indoors,

and the ultimate lunacy of feeding animal proteins to herbivores. Besides

atrocious suffering for the animals, this results in threats to human health,

for instance from Salmonella and Campylobacter species and bovine

spongiform enc eph alop athy (BSE). T he animal waste, instead of being

spread over the land as soil-renewing manure, is so concentrated that i t

pollutes the water with solids and liquids, and the air with gases.

The Modern World: Universal

Crisis

and the Malthusian Solution

In the past, population crises and relief periods have been staggered

between regions. Table 14 compares the sequences of crisis and relief

periods in three major regions. For the first four centuries, much of north-

western Europe was within the Roman Empire and shares its vicissitudes.

In the fourth century there was a slight respite from population pressure in

this region, but hardly enough to call it a relief period. Centuries are of

course arbitrary divisions, so that the timing shown in this table is only

rough. However, it brings out clearly the staggering of cycles between the

three regions until the twentieth century. Now every country in the world

is simultaneously in crisis. The population explosion is not confined to

north-western Europe, but has occurred everywhere, producing an

unprecedented rise in the world population to six bill ion.

This has been ma de possible by the tw o increases in food supp ly we have

already considered. By the 1960s virtually every country was importing


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406


FIGURE 7

THE POPULATION OF NORTHERN EUROPE

I

50

40

30

20

10

0

Date AD

0 200 400 600

1000

1200 1400 1600 1800

2000

grain from Canada and the United States, but by 1973 the enormous stocks

of surplus grain had all been used up, and the Americans began to plough

up their reserve cropland. The populations continued to rise, however,

because HEI crop agriculture was diffused to the poorer countries of the

world, often with massive irrigation projects. But in a world of recurrent

famines, in which at least a billion people must be chronically seriously

under-nourished, world food production per head increased by less than

5 %

between 1989 and 1996. And this small increase was at the cost of all

the long-term damage done by HEI agriculture and over-irrigation to the

soil and to water. A survey in 1990 by the World Health Organization

suggested that 25 million agricultural workers are acutely poisoned by

pesticides every year.

The world population crisis is having all the usual economic and social

effects. Everywhere there is evidence of inflation, unemployment, gross

inequality and desperate poverty. Amnesty International reports violation

of human rights in virtually every sizeable nation - 152 countries in 1993.

The two World Wars and incessant local, national and civil wars have been

extremely destructive to civilians (including women and children). Against

this background, violent crime has steadily increased. The number of

multiple murders in the United States has risen markedly since the 1950s,


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POPU LATIO N CRISES AND POPU LATIO N CYCLES 407

although these 'private' murders cannot compare in scale with those of

multiple murderers in control of criminal governments. In the first three

years alone after the Fascist counter-revolution in Iran the Ayatollah

Khomeini murdered 20,000 women and gir ls .

Dominance and violence towards females and the young are

characteristic of both animal and human population crises. While Fascist

Iran represents the criminal extreme, there is enough dominance and

violence towards women around the world to justify the title of Marilyn

French's book

The War against Women.

'In the United States, ' she rep orts ,

'a man beats a woman every twelve seconds, and every day four of these

beatings are lethal. '

25

As for the children, the industry catering for pederasts is on a horrific

scale. It has been estimated that there are a million child slave prostitutes

(both sexes), and that another million are used in pornographic films, in

which they may be abused, tortured, and probably even killed. The annual

income from 'child trafficking and exploitation' is estimated at five billion

dollars.

26

D eterio ration of language is yet anoth er effect of po pu latio n crisis. 'But

if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. '

2 7

It is

therefore a dangerous confusion, symptomatic of the crisis, that the press

in more than one language habitually refers to pederasty (lust for children)

as paedophilia (love of children).

The stresses of population crisis upset the immune system and cause

high mortality from epidemics in animals and man. Health authorities are

predicting tens of millions of deaths from AIDS and tuberculosis in a few

years ' time, as is already happening with AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.

The world crisis response has not averted harm to the world

environment. Besides rapid depletion of minerals and fossil fuels, and

pollution of land, fresh waters and oceans, there is direct damage to the

land environment - deforestation, overgrazing, over-cropping, over-

irrigation, and the resulting erosion, silting, laterization, water-logging,

salinization and desertification. In India there is serious wind or water

erosion on 1.5 million square kilometres of and, and about the same area

in China. Several estimates agree that about 130,000 square kilometres of

forest are lost every year, an area roughly equivalent to that of England or

New York State.

The remedy for all these horrors was succinctly stated in 1830 by

Malthus. He realized that the two crucial measurements of population are

those of 'crude' birth-rate and death-rate, usually reckoned as numbers

being born or dying per cent or per thousand of the population per year. If

the birth-rate exceeds the death-rate, the population grows by compound

interest, because the more people there are the more they can breed. A

calculation has been made by PC Putnam that shows the fantastic

implications of this. If mankind had sprung from a single couple living

about 12,000 years ago, and if (after the population reached a few


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27/29


TABLE 14

THE POPULATION CYCLES OF CHINA, NORTHERN INDIA AND

NORTH WESTERN EUROPE

Century (AD)

1st

2n d

3rd

4th

5th

6th

7th

8th

9th

10th

11th

12th

13th

14th

15th

16th

17th

18th

19th

20th

China

Relief

Relief

Crisis

Crisis

Crisis

Crisis

Relief

Relief

Crisis

Crisis

Relief

Relief

Crisis

Crisis

Relief

Relief

Crisis

Relief

Crisis

Crisis

N India

Crisis

Crisis

Crisis

Relief

Relief

Crisis

Relief

Crisis

Crisis

Crisis

Crisis

Crisis

Relief

Relief

Crisis

Relief

Relief

Crisis

Relief

Crisis

NW Europe

Crisis

Relief*

Crisis

Crisis

Crisis

Crisis

Crisis

Relief

Crisis

Crisis

Crisis

Relief

Crisis

Crisis

Relief

Crisis

Crisis

Relief

Relieff

Crisis

Notes:

*Due largely to importation of resources

+Due to emigration of people and importation of resources

Source: Ref 6.

hundreds) there had been one more birth than deaths per hundred per year,

then today 'the world population would form a sphere of living flesh many

thousand light years in diameter, and expanding with a radial velocity ...

many times faster than light'.

28

'In real life, as opposed to the wonderland

of mathematics, nothing of the kind can happen.'

6

So in real life, when a

population increases even at this apparently modest rate, sooner or later

one of two things must happen - either the birth-rate comes down or the

death-rate goes up (the population crisis response), and the increase is

checked. This was Malthus's greatest discovery, and he had the supreme

genius to realize that unlike animals we can choose which.

The modern methods of birth control provide ample means for

exercising the Malthusian choice - that is, for shunting out the population

crisis,

with all its horrors, by reducing the birth-rate instead. Fortunately,

birth control campaigns 'pay for themselves almost at once, and very soon

begin to increase the prosperity of the region'.

6

It would therefore be

extremely easy to mount a massive world programme of voluntary birth

control, and how welcome this would be is shown by the fact that

desperately poor women in Calcutta have been known to spend 10% of

their minuscule incomes on contraceptives. We may thus hope to reduce

the world population to the billion or so who could probably live a


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28/29

POPULATION CRISES AND POPULATION CYCLES 409

good life even in our already depleted Earth environment. It may then take

time to eliminate the stress culture resulting from past crises, but we could

make population crises and population cycles a thing of the past, and usher

in a permanent renaissance.

References

1. Russell C, Russell WMS. Overpopulation crisis. Social Biology and Human

Affairs 1984; 49: 23-42.

2.

Kormondy EJ. Concepts of Ecology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,

1969.

3.

McEvedy C, Jones R. Atlas of World Population History. Harmonsdworth:

Penguin, 1979.

4.

Russell WMS. Population and inflation. Ecologist 1971; 1 (8): 4-8.

5. Russell WMS, Russell C. The history of the human life span. Update 1976; 12:

571-88.

6. Russell C, Russell WMS. Scarcities and societal objectives. In: Polumin N, ed.

Growth without Ecodisasters? London: Macmillan, 1980: 409-28.

7. Jacobson T, Adams RM. Salt and silt in ancient Mesopotamian agriculture. In:

Caldwell JR, ed.

New Roads to Yesterday.

London: Thames Hudson, 1966:

466-79.

8. Adams RM. Agriculture and urban life in early south-western Iran. In: Caldwell

JR, ed. New Roads to Yesterday. London: Thames Hudson, 1966: 436-65.

9. Reifenberg A. The Struggle between the Desert and the Sown: Rise and Fall of

Agriculture in the Levant. Jerusalem: Publication Department, Jewish Agency,

1955.

10.

Wittfogel KA. The hydraulic civilisation. In: Thomas WL, ed. Man s Role in

Changing the Face of the Earth.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956:

152-64.

11. Beloch J. Historiche Beiträge zur Bevölkerungslebre. Vol 1. Die Bevölkerung der

Griechisch-Römischen Welt. Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1886.

12.

Heichelheim FM. Effects of classical antiquity on the land. In: Thomas WL, ed.

Man s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press,

1956: 165-82.

13.

Klein J. The Mesta: a Study in Spanish Economic History, 1273-1836.

Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1920.

14.

Toynbee AJ. Hannibal s Legacy: the Hannibalic War s Effects on Roman Life.

2. Rome and her Neighbours after Hannibal s Exit.

Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1965.

15. Russell WMS. Man, Nature and History. London: Aldus, 1967.

16.

Pacey A. The Maze of Ingenuity: Ideas and Idealism in the Development of

Technology. London: Allen Lane, 1974.

17.

Russell WMS. Population, swidden farming and the tropical environment.

Population and Environment

1988; 10: 77-94.

18. Kamen A. The Iron Century: Social Change in Europe, 1550-1660. London:

Sphere, 1976.

19.

Debeir J-C, Déleage J-P, Hémery D. In the Servitude of Power: Energy and

Civilisation Through the Ages. (trans. Barzmen J). London: Zed Books, 1991.

20.

Crombie AC. Augustine to Galileo. 2 vols. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.

2 1 . Hajnal J. European marriage patterns in perspective. In: Glass DV, Eversley

DEC,

eds.

Population in History.

London: Edward Arnold, 1965:

101-43.

22.

Hollingsworth TH. A demographic study of the British ducal families.


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Population Studies

1957 ; 11 : 4 -2 6 .

2 3 . Russell C, Russell WMS. Population Crises and Population Cycles. London:

Galton Institute, 1999.

24.

Lampkin N. Organic Farming. Ipswich: Farming Press, 1994.

2 5 . French M . The War against Women. Harm ondsw or th: Penguin , 199 3.

26.

Freemantle B. The O ctopus: E urope in the Grip of Organized Crime. London:

Or ion, 1995.

27 . Orwell G. Collected Essays. London: Mercury, 1961.

28 .

Cipolla CM. The Economic History of World Population. Harmondswor th :

Penguin, 1962.

(Accepted 1 July 2 000)

Claire Russell was born in Berlin in 1919, and escaped in 1939 to Britain, where

she later practised as a psychoanalyst for 40 years. She died in 1999.

W illiam M S Russell

was born in Plymouth in 1925. He served as a rifleman in the

12th Battalion, the King's Royal Rifle Corps, in NW Europe in 1944-45, and after

the war became a zoologist. He is currently emeritus Professor of Sociology in the

University of Reading.

The Russells worked jointly on many aspects of animal and human behaviour, and

the relations between them. Between them they wrote seven scientific books,

contributions to 42 other scientific books, and over 200 scientific papers. Claire

Russell also published a book of poems,

Words Fresh Caught in a Net,

and WMS

Russell a novel, The Barber of Aldebaran.

Correspondence: D ep artm en t of Sociology, University of Re ading , Reading

RG6 2AA.


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Population Crises and Population Cycles

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