Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The Great Britain Historical Database has been assembled as part of the ongoing Great Britain Historical GIS Project. The project aims to trace the emergence of the north-south divide in Britain and to provide a synoptic view of the human geography of Britain at sub-county scales. Further information about the project is available on A Vision of Britain webpages, where users can browse the database's documentation system online.

The Great Britain Historical GIS Project has also produced digitised boundary data, which can be obtained from the UK Data Service Census Support service. Further information is available at census.ukdataservice.ac.uk

Main Topics:

The Great Britain Historical Database is a large database of British nineteenth and twentieth-century statistics. Where practical the referencing of spatial units has been integrated, data for different dates have been assembled into single tables.

The Great Britain Historical Database currently contains :

• Statistics from the 1861 Census and the Registrar General's reports, 1851-1861
  
• Employment statistics from the census, 1841-1931
  
• Demographic statistics from the census, 1841-1931
  
• Mortality statistics from the Registrar General's reports, 1861-1920
  
• Marriage statistics from the Registrar General's reports, 1841-1870
  
• Trade union statistics for the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE), 1851-1918
  
• Trade union statistics for the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners (ASCJ), 1863-1912
  
• Official poor law statistics, 1859-1915 and 1919-1939
  
• Wage statistics, 1845-1906
  
• Hours of work statistics, 1900-1913
  
• Small debt statistics from county courts, 1847-1913 and 1938
  

There are six tables in this part of the Great Britain Historical Database :

Lee_emp holds simplified and standardised versions of the country-level employment statistics for Great Britain given in the printed census reports from 1841 to 1931, using the employment categories defined by the Standard Industrial Classification.

Emp1901m holds male employment statistics from the 1901 census for county boroughs, municipal boroughs and urban districts over 10,000 population in England and Wales.

Emp1901f holds female employment statistics from the 1901 census for county boroughs, municipal boroughs and urban districts over 10,000 population in England and Wales.

Emp1911m holds male employment statistics from the 1911 census for counties, county boroughs, municipal boroughs and urban districts over 10,000 population in England and Wales.

Emp1911f holds female employment statistics from the 1911 census for counties, county boroughs, municipal boroughs and urban districts over 10,000 population in England and Wales.

Emp1921 holds male and female employment statistics from the 1921 census for county boroughs, municipal boroughs, urban districts and rural districts, plus certain civil parishes in England and Wales.

Please note: this study does not include information on named individuals and would therefore not be useful for personal family history research.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The Great Britain Historical Database has been assembled as part of the ongoing Great Britain Historical GIS Project. The project aims to trace the emergence of the north-south divide in Britain and to provide a synoptic view of the human geography of Britain at sub-county scales. Further information about the project is available on A Vision of Britain webpages, where users can browse the database's documentation system online.

The Great Britain Historical GIS Project has also produced digitised boundary data, which can be obtained from the UK Data Service Census Support service. Further information is available at census.ukdataservice.ac.uk

Main Topics:

The Great Britain Historical Database is a large database of British nineteenth and twentieth-century statistics. Where practical the referencing of spatial units has been integrated, data for different dates have been assembled into single tables.

The Great Britain Historical Database currently contains :

• Statistics from the 1861 Census and the Registrar General's reports, 1851-1861
  
• Employment statistics from the census, 1841-1931
  
• Demographic statistics from the census, 1841-1931
  
• Mortality statistics from the Registrar General's reports, 1861-1920
  
• Marriage statistics from the Registrar General's reports, 1841-1870
  
• Trade union statistics for the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE), 1851-1918
  
• Trade union statistics for the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners (ASCJ), 1863-1912
  
• Official poor law statistics, 1859-1915 and 1919-1939
  
• Wage statistics, 1845-1906
  
• Hours of work statistics, 1900-1913
  
• Small debt statistics from county courts, 1847-1913 and 1938
  

There are four tables in this part of the Great Britain Historical Database :

Mort_age holds mortality data for males and females in age groups for all registration districts in England and Wales for each decade between 1851-60 and 1901-10, except 1871-80.

Mort_age_70 holds age-specific mortality data for the decade 1871-80 for all registration districts in England and Wales. The Registrar General's Decennial Supplement for 1871-80 did not break down by gender the statistics for individual Registration Districts.

Mort_ann holds annual data on mortality classified by cause for all registration districts in the county of London from 1860 to 1910, and for all London boroughs from 1911 to 1920.

Lon_subd holds quarterly data on infant mortality for registration sub-districts in the county of London from 1881 to 1884.

Please note: this study does not include information on named individuals and would therefore not be useful for personal family history research.

In 2023, the population of the United Kingdom reached 68.3 million, compared with 67.6 million in 2022. The UK population has more than doubled since 1871 when just under 31.5 million lived in the UK and has grown by around 8.2 million since the start of the twenty-first century. For most of the twentieth century, the UK population steadily increased, with two noticeable drops in population occurring during World War One (1914-1918) and in World War Two (1939-1945). Demographic trends in postwar Britain After World War Two, Britain and many other countries in the Western world experienced a 'baby boom,' with a postwar peak of 1.02 million live births in 1947. Although the number of births fell between 1948 and 1955, they increased again between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s, with more than one million people born in 1964. Since 1964, however, the UK birth rate has fallen from 18.8 births per 1,000 people to a low of just 10.2 in 2020. As a result, the UK population has gotten significantly older, with the country's median age increasing from 37.9 years in 2001 to 40.7 years in 2022. What are the most populated areas of the UK? The vast majority of people in the UK live in England, which had a population of 57.7 million people in 2023. By comparison, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland had populations of 5.44 million, 3.13 million, and 1.9 million, respectively. Within England, South East England had the largest population, at over 9.38 million, followed by the UK's vast capital city of London, at 8.8 million. London is far larger than any other UK city in terms of urban agglomeration, with just four other cities; Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, and Glasgow, boasting populations that exceed one million people.

The 2021 Northern Ireland Census marked the first time since records began where the Catholic share of the population was larger than the combined Protestant share. In 2021, over 42 percent of the population classified themselves as Catholic or from a Catholic background, in comparison with 37 percent classified as Protestant or from a Protestant background. Additionally, the share of the population with no religion (or those who did not answer) was 19 percent; larger than any individual Protestant denomination. This marks a significant shift in demographic and societal trends over the past century, as Protestants outnumbered Catholics by roughly 2:1 when Northern Ireland was established in the 1920s. Given the Catholic community's historic tendency to be in favor of a united Ireland, many look to the changing religious composition of the population when assessing the potential for Irish reunification. Religion's historical influence A major development in the history of British rule in ireland was the Plantation of Ulster in the 1600s, where much of the land in the north (historically the most rebellious region) was seized from Irish Catholics and given to Protestant settlers from Britain (predominantly Scots). This helped establish Protestant dominance in the north, created a large section of the population loyal to the British crown, and saw a distinct Ulster-Scots identity develop over time. In the 1920s, the republican movement won independence for 26 of Ireland's 32 counties, however, the six counties in Ulster with the largest Protestant populations remained part of the UK, as Northern Ireland. Following partition, structural inequalities between Northern Ireland's Protestant and Catholic communities meant that the Protestant population was generally wealthier, better educated, more politically empowered, and had better access to housing, among other advantages. In the 1960s, a civil rights movement then emerged for equal rights and status for both sides of the population, but this quickly turned violent and escalated into a the three-decade long conflict now known as the Troubles.

The Troubles was largely fought between nationalist/republican paramilitaries (mostly Catholic), unionist/loyalist paramilitaries (mostly Protestant), and British security forces (including the police). This is often described as a religious conflict, however it is more accurately described as an ethnic and political conflict, where the Catholic community generally favored Northern Ireland's reunification with the rest of the island, while the Protestant community wished to remain in the UK. Paramilitaries had a large amount of support from their respective communities in the early years of the Troubles, but this waned as the conflict progressed into the 1980s and 1990s. Demographic and societal trends influenced the religious composition of Northern Ireland's population in these decades, as the Catholic community had higher fertility rates than Protestant communities, while the growing secularism has coincided with a decline in those identifying as Protestant - the dip in those identifying as Catholic in the 1970s and 1980s was due to a protest and boycott of the Census. The Troubles came to an end in 1998, and divisions between both sides of the community have drastically fallen, although they have not disappeared completely.

Main Topics: The Great Britain Historical Database is a large database of British nineteenth and twentieth-century statistics. Where practical the referencing of spatial units has been integrated, data for different dates have been assembled into single tables. The Great Britain Historical Database currently contains :Statistics from the 1861 Census and the Registrar General's reports, 1851-1861 Employment statistics from the census, 1841-1931 Demographic statistics from the census, 1841-1931 Mortality statistics from the Registrar General's reports, 1861-1920 Marriage statistics from the Registrar General's reports, 1841-1870 Trade union statistics for the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE), 1851-1918 Trade union statistics for the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners (ASCJ), 1863-1912 Official poor law statistics, 1859-1915 and 1919-1939 Wage statistics, 1845-1906 Hours of work statistics, 1900-1913 Small debt statistics from county courts, 1847-1913 and 1938 There are four tables in this part of the Great Britain Historical Database : Mort_age holds mortality data for males and females in age groups for all registration districts in England and Wales for each decade between 1851-60 and 1901-10, except 1871-80. Mort_age_70 holds age-specific mortality data for the decade 1871-80 for all registration districts in England and Wales. The Registrar General's Decennial Supplement for 1871-80 did not break down by gender the statistics for individual Registration Districts. Mort_ann holds annual data on mortality classified by cause for all registration districts in the county of London from 1860 to 1910, and for all London boroughs from 1911 to 1920. Lon_subd holds quarterly data on infant mortality for registration sub-districts in the county of London from 1881 to 1884. Please note: this study does not include information on named individuals and would therefore not be useful for personal family history research.

There were 694,685 live births recorded in the United Kingdom in 2021, compared with 681,560 in the previous year. Between 1887 and 2021 the year with the highest number of live births was 1920 when there were approximately 1.13 million births, while the year with the fewest births was 1977, when there were just 657,038 births. Birth rate at a historic low in 2020 At 10.2 births per 1,000 people, the birth rate of the United Kingdom in 2020 was at a historic low. After witnessing a twenty-first century high of 12.9 in 2010, the birth rate gradually declined before a sharp decrease was recorded between 2012 and 2013. Although there was a slight uptick in the birth rate in 2021, when there were 10.4 births per 1,000 people, the total fertility rate reached a low of 1.53 births per woman in the same year. As well as falling birth and fertility rates, the average age of mothers has been increasing. In 1991, the average age of mothers at childbirth was 27.7 years, compared with 30.9 years in 2021. UK population reaches 67 million In 2022, the overall population of the United Kingdom was almost 67.6 million people. Of the four countries that comprise the UK, England has by far the highest population, at 57.1 million, compared with 5.45 million in Scotland, 3.13 million in Wales, and 1.91 million in Northern Ireland. These countries are far less densely populated than England, especially when compared to London, which had approximately 5,630 people per square kilometer, compared with just 70 in Scotland. After London, North West England was the second-most densely populated area of the UK, which includes the large metropolitan areas of the cities of Manchester, and Liverpool

Historic lists of top 100 names for baby boys and girls for 1904 to 1994 at 10-yearly intervals.

In the past four centuries, the population of the United States has grown from a recorded 350 people around the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1610, to an estimated 331 million people in 2020. The pre-colonization populations of the indigenous peoples of the Americas have proven difficult for historians to estimate, as their numbers decreased rapidly following the introduction of European diseases (namely smallpox, plague and influenza). Native Americans were also omitted from most censuses conducted before the twentieth century, therefore the actual population of what we now know as the United States would have been much higher than the official census data from before 1800, but it is unclear by how much. Population growth in the colonies throughout the eighteenth century has primarily been attributed to migration from the British Isles and the Transatlantic slave trade; however it is also difficult to assert the ethnic-makeup of the population in these years as accurate migration records were not kept until after the 1820s, at which point the importation of slaves had also been illegalized. Nineteenth century In the year 1800, it is estimated that the population across the present-day United States was around six million people, with the population in the 16 admitted states numbering at 5.3 million. Migration to the United States began to happen on a large scale in the mid-nineteenth century, with the first major waves coming from Ireland, Britain and Germany. In some aspects, this wave of mass migration balanced out the demographic impacts of the American Civil War, which was the deadliest war in U.S. history with approximately 620 thousand fatalities between 1861 and 1865. The civil war also resulted in the emancipation of around four million slaves across the south; many of whose ancestors would take part in the Great Northern Migration in the early 1900s, which saw around six million black Americans migrate away from the south in one of the largest demographic shifts in U.S. history. By the end of the nineteenth century, improvements in transport technology and increasing economic opportunities saw migration to the United States increase further, particularly from southern and Eastern Europe, and in the first decade of the 1900s the number of migrants to the U.S. exceeded one million people in some years. Twentieth and twenty-first century The U.S. population has grown steadily throughout the past 120 years, reaching one hundred million in the 1910s, two hundred million in the 1960s, and three hundred million in 2007. In the past century, the U.S. established itself as a global superpower, with the world's largest economy (by nominal GDP) and most powerful military. Involvement in foreign wars has resulted in over 620,000 further U.S. fatalities since the Civil War, and migration fell drastically during the World Wars and Great Depression; however the population continuously grew in these years as the total fertility rate remained above two births per woman, and life expectancy increased (except during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918).

Since the Second World War, Latin America has replaced Europe as the most common point of origin for migrants, with Hispanic populations growing rapidly across the south and border states. Because of this, the proportion of non-Hispanic whites, which has been the most dominant ethnicity in the U.S. since records began, has dropped more rapidly in recent decades. Ethnic minorities also have a much higher birth rate than non-Hispanic whites, further contributing to this decline, and the share of non-Hispanic whites is expected to fall below fifty percent of the U.S. population by the mid-2000s. In 2020, the United States has the third-largest population in the world (after China and India), and the population is expected to reach four hundred million in the 2050s.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the area of modern-day Italy, at the time a collection of various states and kingdoms, was estimated to have a population of nineteen million, a figure which would grow steadily throughout the century, and by the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, the population would rise to just over 26 million.

Italy’s population would see its first major disruption during the First World War, as Italy would join the Allied Forces in their fight against Austria-Hungary and Germany. In the First World War, Italy’s population would largely stagnate at 36 million, only climbing again following the end of the war in 1920. While Italy would also play a prominent role in the Second World War, as the National Fascist Party-led country would fight alongside Germany against the Allies, Italian fatalities from the war would not represent a significant percentage of Italy’s population compared to other European countries in the conflict. As a result, Italy would exit the Second World War with a population of just over 45 million.

From this point onwards the Italian economy started to recover from the war, and eventually boomed, leading to increased employment and standards of living, which facilitated steady population growth until the mid-1980s, when falling fertility and birth rates would cause growth to largely cease. From this point onward, the Italian population would remain at just over 57 million, until the 2000s when it began growing again due to an influx of migrants, peaking in 2017 at just over 60 million people. In the late 2010s, however, the Italian population began declining again, as immigration slowed and the economy weakened. As a result, in 2020, Italy is estimated to have fallen to a population of 59 million.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

The Great Britain Historical Database has been assembled as part of the ongoing Great Britain Historical GIS Project. The project aims to trace the emergence of the north-south divide in Britain and to provide a synoptic view of the human geography of Britain at sub-county scales. Further information about the project is available on A Vision of Britain webpages, where users can browse the database's documentation system online.

The Great Britain Historical GIS Project has also produced digitised boundary data, which can be obtained from the UK Data Service Census Support service. Further information is available at census.ukdataservice.ac.uk

Main Topics:

The Great Britain Historical Database is a large database of British nineteenth and twentieth-century statistics. Where practical the referencing of spatial units has been integrated, data for different dates have been assembled into single tables.

The Great Britain Historical Database currently contains :

• Statistics from the 1861 Census and the Registrar General's reports, 1851-1861
  
• Employment statistics from the census, 1841-1931
  
• Demographic statistics from the census, 1841-1931
  
• Mortality statistics from the Registrar General's reports, 1861-1920
  
• Marriage statistics from the Registrar General's reports, 1841-1870
  
• Trade union statistics for the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE), 1851-1918
  
• Trade union statistics for the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners (ASCJ), 1863-1912
  
• Official poor law statistics, 1859-1915 and 1919-1939
  
• Wage statistics, 1845-1906
  
• Hours of work statistics, 1900-1913
  
• Small debt statistics from county courts, 1847-1913 and 1938
  

There are eight tables in this part of the Great Britain Historical Database :

Plaw_c holds county-level data for England and Wales on numbers of paupers taken from the Annual Reports of the Poor Law Board and later the Local Government Board for 1st January and 1st July from January 1859 to January 1915, plus January 1919.

Plaw_c_f holds a full transcript of county-level pauperage statistics for England and Wales taken from the Annual Reports of the Poor Law Board and later the Local Government Board for 1st January and 1st July 1860, 1863, 1866, 1868 and 1879.

Plaw_u holds data taken from the Returns to Parliament made by the Poor Law Board, and later the Local Government Board listing number of paupers in each poor law union on the 1st January and 1st July. Coverage is as follows: all poor law unions in Lancashire for 1st January and 1st July from 1860 to 1871; all poor law unions in England and Wales for 1st January only from 1900 to 1912; all unions in London, Lancashire, Durham and selected major urban unions for 1st January and 1st July in 1875, 1879 and 1880.

Plaw_u_f contains a full transcript of poor law union-level pauperage statistics for selected unions taken from the Returns to Parliament. Coverage is as follows: all poor law unions in Lancashire for 1st January and 1st July from 1860 to 1871; all unions in Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Cheshire and the East and West Ridings of Yorkshire for 1st January and 1st July in 1860, 1863, 1866, 1868 and 1869.

Plaw_iw holds inter-war poor law statistics taken from the Returns to Parliament for 1st January only for all poor law unions in England and Wales from 1922 to 1930, and for all counties and county-boroughs in England and Wales from 1931 to 1939.

Plaw_20 holds poor law statistics for England and Wales for 1920 and 1921 for selected poor law union for 1st January only.

Plu_gaz converts names of poor law unions as they appear in plaw_u, plaw_u_f, plaw_iw and plaw_20 into the form used in the GIS.

Plu_gis holds names and counties of poor law unions as they appear in the GIS; used for checking names and constructing plu_gaz.

Please note: this study does not include information on named individuals and would therefore not be useful for personal family history research.

The island of Ireland is split into 32 different counties, and from 1800 until 1921 the whole island was a part of the United Kingdome of Great Britain and Ireland (although Britain had been a controlling presence on the island for considerably longer than this). In 1921 the island was split into two separate states, where the six counties with the highest population of Protestants formed part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the other 26 counties became the Independent Republic of Ireland. From 1821 until 1841, the population of these 26 counties was growing steadily, until the Great Famine from 1845 to 1849 swept across the island, particularly devastating the west and south.

The famine was caused by a Europe-wide potato blight that contributed to mass starvation and death throughout the continent, although it's impact on Ireland was much harsher than anywhere else. The potato blight affected Ireland so severely as the majority of potatoes in Ireland were of a single variety which allowed the disease to spread much faster than in other countries. People in the west and south of Ireland were particularly dependent on potatoes, and these areas were affected more heavily than the north and west, where flax and cereals were the staple. As the potato blight spread, the population became increasingly reliant on dairy and grain products, however a lot of these resources were relocated by the British military to combat food shortages in Britain. Due to disproportional dependency on potatoes, and mismanagement by the British government, over one million people died and a further one million emigrated. The Great Famine lasted from just 1845 to 1849, but it's legacy caused almost a century of population decline, and to this day, the population of Ireland has never exceeded it's pre-famine levels.

The population decline continued well into the twentieth century, during which time the Republic of Ireland achieved independence from the British Empire. After centuries of fighting and rebellion against British rule, Irish nationalists finally gained some independence from Britain in 1921, establishing an Irish Republic in the 26 counties. There was a lot of conflict in Ireland in the early 1900s, through the War of Independence and Irish Civil War, however the population of the Republic began growing again from the 1960s onwards as the quality of life improved and the emigration rate declined. The population was at it's lowest from 1926 to 1971, where it remained at just under three million, but in the following fifty years the population has grown by over two million people.

In 1800, the population of the region of present-day India was approximately 169 million. The population would grow gradually throughout the 19th century, rising to over 240 million by 1900. Population growth would begin to increase in the 1920s, as a result of falling mortality rates, due to improvements in health, sanitation and infrastructure. However, the population of India would see it’s largest rate of growth in the years following the country’s independence from the British Empire in 1948, where the population would rise from 358 million to over one billion by the turn of the century, making India the second country to pass the billion person milestone. While the rate of growth has slowed somewhat as India begins a demographics shift, the country’s population has continued to grow dramatically throughout the 21st century, and in 2020, India is estimated to have a population of just under 1.4 billion, well over a billion more people than one century previously. Today, approximately 18% of the Earth’s population lives in India, and it is estimated that India will overtake China to become the most populous country in the world within the next five years.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This data was originally published in the reports of the Registrar-General for England and Wales. It was computerised by the Great Britain Historical GIS Project and its collaborators. It forms part of the Great Britain Historical Database, which contains a wide range of geographically-located statistics, selected to trace the emergence of the north-south divide in Britain and to provide a synoptic view of the human geography of Britain, generally at sub-county scales.

In this period, 1911 to 1973, the main reporting units were over 1,500 local government districts, as compared to c. 600 Registration Districts pre-1911. As a result, most tabulations provide data only for the larger urban units, plus aggregates covering all Rural Districts and all other urban units in each county. This study centers on the main exception to this, an annual table providing counts of all births, all deaths and all infant deaths in all districts, appearing in the Registrar-General's Annual Reports from 1911 to 1920, then in the RG's Statistical Reviews from 1921 to 1973. Later reports include additional variables. This study also includes more limited transcriptions of causes of death and age-specific mortality.

Main Topics:

The main annual table for local government districts 1911-73 provides an estimate of total population and counts of births and deaths for all years. Pre-1973, births are categorised by legitimacy as well as sex. Infant deaths under 1 year are counted for all years, stillbirths and deaths under 4 weeks from 1949, and deaths under 1 week from 1958. Various rates are also computed. Slightly different data were reported during World War 2.

The table of annual age-specific causes of death holds data for census years only, 1921 to 1971,for, typically, "London and Metropolitan Boroughs, County Boroughs, Aggregates of other Urban and of Rural Districts in each Administrative County", for varying numbers of causes of death (1921 = 33, 1961 = 64, 1971 = 7) and, generally, ten-year age bands.

The other two tables provide more information on causes of death and age at death, but only for the 1910s and 1920s (Graham Mooney contributed to the table of causes of death 1911-20).

During the eighteenth century, it is estimated that France's population grew by roughly fifty percent, from 19.7 million in 1700, to 29 million by 1800. In France itself, the 1700s are remembered for the end of King Louis XIV's reign in 1715, the Age of Enlightenment, and the French Revolution. During this century, the scientific and ideological advances made in France and across Europe challenged the leadership structures of the time, and questioned the relationship between monarchial, religious and political institutions and their subjects. France was arguably the most powerful nation in the world in these early years, with the second largest population in Europe (after Russia); however, this century was defined by a number of costly, large-scale conflicts across Europe and in the new North American theater, which saw the loss of most overseas territories (particularly in North America) and almost bankrupted the French crown. A combination of regressive taxation, food shortages and enlightenment ideologies ultimately culminated in the French Revolution in 1789, which brought an end to the Ancien Régime, and set in motion a period of self-actualization.

War and peace

After a volatile and tumultuous decade, in which tens of thousands were executed by the state (most infamously: guillotined), relative stability was restored within France as Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in 1799, and the policies of the revolution became enforced. Beyond France's borders, the country was involved in a series of large scale wars for two almost decades, and the First French Empire eventually covered half of Europe by 1812. In 1815, Napoleon was defeated outright, the empire was dissolved, and the monarchy was restored to France; nonetheless, a large number of revolutionary and Napoleonic reforms remained in effect afterwards, and the ideas had a long-term impact across the globe. France experienced a century of comparative peace in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars; there were some notable uprisings and conflicts, and the monarchy was abolished yet again, but nothing on the scale of what had preceded or what was to follow. A new overseas colonial empire was also established in the late 1800s, particularly across Africa and Southeast Asia. Through most of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, France had the second largest population in Europe (after Russia), however political instability and the economic prioritization of Paris meant that the entire country did not urbanize or industrialize at the same rate as the other European powers. Because of this, Germany and Britain entered the twentieth century with larger populations, and other regions, such as Austria or Belgium, had overtaken France in terms of industrialization; the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian War was also a major contributor to this.

World Wars and contemporary France

Coming into the 1900s, France had a population of approximately forty million people (officially 38 million* due to to territorial changes), and there was relatively little growth in the first half of the century. France was comparatively unprepared for a large scale war, however it became one of the most active theaters of the First World War when Germany invaded via Belgium in 1914, with the ability to mobilize over eight million men. By the war's end in 1918, France had lost almost 1.4 million in the conflict, and approximately 300,000 in the Spanish Flu pandemic that followed. Germany invaded France again during the Second World War, and occupied the country from 1940, until the Allied counter-invasion liberated the country during the summer of 1944. France lost around 600,000 people in the course of the war, over half of which were civilians. Following the war's end, the country experienced a baby boom, and the population grew by approximately twenty million people in the next fifty years (compared to just one million in the previous fifty years). Since the 1950s, France's economy quickly grew to be one of the strongest in the world, despite losing the vast majority of its overseas colonial empire by the 1970s. A wave of migration, especially from these former colonies, has greatly contributed to the growth and diversity of France's population today, which stands at over 65 million people in 2020.

In 1800, the region of present-day Iraq had an estimated population of just over one million people. The population of Iraq would grow slowly throughout the 19th century, reaching just over two million by the beginning of the 20th century. However, Iraq’s population would begin to rise rapidly in the 1920s, as modernization programs implemented by the British administration, aided by the discovery of oil in 1927, would see mortality rates fall and living standards rise for much of the country. As a result, Iraq would grow to have a population of just under seven million by the time of the Iraqi Republic's establishment in 1958. Population growth would continue to increase following the creation of the republic, doubling to fourteen million by the 1980s; according to these estimates, the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s did little to change the trajectory of Iraq's population growth, nor did the Gulf War of 1990-1991, despite Iraq suffering up to half a million fatalities in these conflicts. Iraq's population growth did slow in the early 2000s however, with the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. While the initial invasion would see relatively few casualties (compared to previous conflicts), the resulting economic turmoil and political instability, combined with the rise of the Iraqi insurgency and civil war in the region, would cause population growth to slow for several years. Population growth would recover starting in the 2010s, and by 2020, Iraq is estimated to have a population of just over forty million.

From 1800 until the late twentieth century, there was a steady increase in Afghanistan's population. Throughout the nineteenth century, Afghanistan became a battleground for the British Empire, who tried to control the area in order to prevent Russian expansion towards the British Raj. Despite resisting the British invasion in the first Anglo-Afghan War, (where the British Army was almost completely wiped out), the Second Anglo-Afghan War in 1880 saw Britain seize control of the region. In contrast to the neighboring colonies on the Indian subcontinent, Britain did not colonize Afghanistan for economic purposes, therefore they did not invest in agriculture or infrastructure, nor introduce medicine in the same way they did in the Raj, and focused only on Afghanistan's international affairs. Independence and progress The Third Anglo-Afghan War, where Afghan forces invaded British India in 1919, resulted in Afghanistan's independence finally being declared after two months of conflict. The next decade saw some major reforms that attempted to modernize Afghan society, (notable progress was made for women's rights and education) however this alienated many conservative and religious tribes, and a civil war broke out in 1928. After the war (and brief usurpation) the new King of Afghanistan, Nadir Khan, consolidated power, and also moved to modernize the country, but more gradually than his predecessors in order to avoid further alienation and conflict. Khan's approach remained in place until the 1970s, when a bloodless coup established a republic. The republic never achieved political stability, and the Sauri Revolution of 1978 resulted in the formation of the communist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Continuous war Despite some progressive reforms, such as banning forced marriages and opening a space for women in politics, the determination to promote state atheism combined with the country's economic dependence on the Soviet Union led to serious opposition from Afghan people, particularly in rural areas. On December 24, 1979, the Soviet Union (backed by the Afghan government) invaded the country, and the ensuing decade-long guerilla war resulted in as many as two million fatalities and three million wounded, as well as two million internally displaced persons and five million refugees abroad. Soviet withdrawal was seen as a western victory, as they had supported the Taliban in their fight against the Soviets, however a decade later the Taliban refused to hand over Osama Bin Laden and other al-Qaeda suspects to the US, following the 9/11 attacks in 2001. This led to US and British forces launching Operation Enduring Freedom in October 2001, and an intensive bombing campaign followed, destroying many major cities in the country. The Taliban government was toppled in December 2001, and in 2002 a western-led rebuilding of the country began. Over the past two decades, many displaced Afghans have returned home, leading to some economic growth, however guerilla fighting continues and there is a strong military presence in the country (including many Taliban controlled areas). In 2020, Afghanistan remains one of the poorest and most politically unstable countries in the world, however the rapid population growth experienced in recent decades is expected to continue well into the future, as improvements in medical care and humanitarian aid become more widespread across the country.

This statistic shows the total population of the Kingdom of Serbia from 1834 to 1910. In the early nineteenth century Serbia was under the control of the Ottoman Empire, and was granted de facto independence from the Ottomans in 1817 (although the Ottomans still occupied Belgrade until 1867). With the weakening of the Ottoman Empire in the 1800s, and the expansion of other European powers such as Austria and Russia, Serbia's borders changed frequently and over time it gained stability and international acceptance as a new independent state. The population given here is not of the modern-day area of Serbia, but rather the nineteenth century Kingdom of Serbia, which was significantly smaller.

In 1834, the population of the Kingdom of Serbia was just 678 thousand people, although there were many ethnic Serbs living outside these borders under the rule of other kingdoms. The population then grew rather steadily to 1.35 million in 1874, before it grows to 1.9 million in 1884. This huge jump in the population is a result of the acquisition of new territory from the Ottomans, which added over 300,000 people to the Kingdom, and the new data also included military personnel, which was not included in the previous entries.

From 1884 onwards the population continues to grow, and it reaches 2.9 million people by 1910, which is the final collection of data before the First World War. World War I began on July 28th 1914 when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia in retaliation for the assassination of Franz Ferdinand by a Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Princip, in Sarajevo one month before. By the end of the war as many as 1.3 million Serbs died as a direct result of the conflict, which is the highest percentage of any overall population involved in the war, and almost sixty percent of all Serbian men died.

In 1800, the region of Germany was not a single, unified nation, but a collection of decentralized, independent states, bound together as part of the Holy Roman Empire. This empire was dissolved, however, in 1806, during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras in Europe, and the German Confederation was established in 1815. Napoleonic reforms led to the abolition of serfdom, extension of voting rights to property-owners, and an overall increase in living standards. The population grew throughout the remainder of the century, as improvements in sanitation and medicine (namely, mandatory vaccination policies) saw child mortality rates fall in later decades. As Germany industrialized and the economy grew, so too did the argument for nationhood; calls for pan-Germanism (the unification of all German-speaking lands) grew more popular among the lower classes in the mid-1800s, especially following the revolutions of 1948-49. In contrast, industrialization and poor harvests also saw high unemployment in rural regions, which led to waves of mass migration, particularly to the U.S.. In 1886, the Austro-Prussian War united northern Germany under a new Confederation, while the remaining German states (excluding Austria and Switzerland) joined following the Franco-Prussian War in 1871; this established the German Empire, under the Prussian leadership of Emperor Wilhelm I and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. 1871 to 1945 - Unification to the Second World War The first decades of unification saw Germany rise to become one of Europe's strongest and most advanced nations, and challenge other world powers on an international scale, establishing colonies in Africa and the Pacific. These endeavors were cut short, however, when the Austro-Hungarian heir apparent was assassinated in Sarajevo; Germany promised a "blank check" of support for Austria's retaliation, who subsequently declared war on Serbia and set the First World War in motion. Viewed as the strongest of the Central Powers, Germany mobilized over 11 million men throughout the war, and its army fought in all theaters. As the war progressed, both the military and civilian populations grew increasingly weakened due to malnutrition, as Germany's resources became stretched. By the war's end in 1918, Germany suffered over 2 million civilian and military deaths due to conflict, and several hundred thousand more during the accompanying influenza pandemic. Mass displacement and the restructuring of Europe's borders through the Treaty of Versailles saw the population drop by several million more.

Reparations and economic mismanagement also financially crippled Germany and led to bitter indignation among many Germans in the interwar period; something that was exploited by Adolf Hitler on his rise to power. Reckless printing of money caused hyperinflation in 1923, when the currency became so worthless that basic items were priced at trillions of Marks; the introduction of the Rentenmark then stabilized the economy before the Great Depression of 1929 sent it back into dramatic decline. When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, the Nazi government disregarded the Treaty of Versailles' restrictions and Germany rose once more to become an emerging superpower. Hitler's desire for territorial expansion into eastern Europe and the creation of an ethnically-homogenous German empire then led to the invasion of Poland in 1939, which is considered the beginning of the Second World War in Europe. Again, almost every aspect of German life contributed to the war effort, and more than 13 million men were mobilized. After six years of war, and over seven million German deaths, the Axis powers were defeated and Germany was divided into four zones administered by France, the Soviet Union, the UK, and the U.S.. Mass displacement, shifting borders, and the relocation of peoples based on ethnicity also greatly affected the population during this time. 1945 to 2020 - Partition and Reunification In the late 1940s, cold war tensions led to two distinct states emerging in Germany; the Soviet-controlled east became the communist German Democratic Republic (DDR), and the three western zones merged to form the democratic Federal Republic of Germany. Additionally, Berlin was split in a similar fashion, although its location deep inside DDR territory created series of problems and opportunities for the those on either side. Life quickly changed depending on which side of the border one lived. Within a decade, rapid economic recovery saw West Germany become western Europe's strongest economy and a key international player. In the east, living standards were much lower, although unemployment was almost non-existent; internationally, East Germany was the strongest economy in the Eastern Bloc (after the USSR), though it eventually fell behind the West by the 1970s. The restriction of movement between the two states also led to labor shortages in the West, and an influx of migrants from...

Prior to 1829, the area of modern day Greece was largely under the control of the Ottoman Empire. In 1821, the Greeks declared their independence from the Ottomans, and achieved it within 8 years through the Greek War of Independence. The Independent Kingdom of Greece was established in 1829 and made up the southern half of present-day, mainland Greece, along with some Mediterranean islands. Over the next century, Greece's borders would expand and readjust drastically, through a number of conflicts and diplomatic agreements; therefore the population of Greece within those political borders** was much lower than the population in what would be today's borders. As there were large communities of ethnic Greeks living in neighboring countries during this time, particularly in Turkey, and the data presented here does not show the full extent of the First World War, Spanish Flu Pandemic and Greko-Turkish War on these Greek populations. While it is difficult to separate the fatalities from each of these events, it is estimated that between 500,000 and 900,000 ethnic Greeks died at the hands of the Ottomans between the years 1914 and 1923, and approximately 150,000 died due to the 1918 flu pandemic. These years also saw the exchange of up to one million Orthodox Christians from Turkey to Greece, and several hundred thousand Muslims from Greece to Turkey; this exchange is one reason why Greece's total population did not change drastically, despite the genocide, displacement and demographic upheaval of the 1910s and 1920s. Greece in WWII A new Hellenic Republic was established in 1924, which saw a decade of peace and modernization in Greece, however this was short lived. The Greek monarchy was reintroduced in 1935, and the prime minister, Ioannis Metaxas, headed a totalitarian government that remained in place until the Second World War. Metaxas tried to maintain Greek neutrality as the war began, however Italy's invasion of the Balkans made this impossible, and the Italian army tried invading Greece via Albania in 1940. The outnumbered and lesser-equipped Greek forces were able to hold off the Italian invasion and then push them backwards into Albania, marking the first Allied victory in the war. Following a series of Italian failures, Greece was eventually overrun when Hitler launched a German and Bulgarian invasion in April 1941, taking Athens within three weeks. Germany's involvement in Greece meant that Hitler's planned invasion of the Soviet Union was delayed, and Hitler cited this as the reason for it's failure (although most historians disagree with this). Over the course of the war approximately eight to eleven percent of the Greek population died due to fighting, extermination, starvation and disease; including over eighty percent of Greece's Jewish population in the Holocaust. Following the liberation of Greece in 1944, the country was then plunged into a civil war (the first major conflict of the Cold War), which lasted until 1949, and saw the British and American-supported government fight with Greek communists for control of the country. The government eventually defeated the Soviet-supported communist forces, and established American influence in the Aegean and Balkans throughout the Cold War. Post-war Greece From the 1950s until the 1970s, the Marshall Plan, industrialization and an emerging Tourism sector helped the Greek economy to boom, with one of the strongest growth rates in the world. Apart from the military coup, which ruled from 1967 to 1974, Greece remained relatively peaceful, prosperous and stable throughout the second half of the twentieth century. The population reached 11.2 million in the early 2000s, before going into decline for the past fifteen years. This decline came about due to a negative net migration rate and slowing birth rate, ultimately facilitated by the global financial crisis of 2007 and 2008; many Greeks left the country in search of work elsewhere, and the economic troubles have impacted the financial incentives that were previously available for families with many children. While the financial crisis was a global event, Greece was arguably the hardest-hit nation during the crisis, and suffered the longest recession of any advanced economy. The financial crisis has had a consequential impact on the Greek population, which has dropped by 800,000 in 15 years, and the average age has increased significantly, as thousands of young people migrate in search of employment.

In 1820, the islands of present-day New Zealand had a population of approximately 100,000 people. This figure would fall until the early 1840s, partly as a result of European diseases brought by colonizers, and a series of destructive inter-tribal wars among the Māori peoples. These conflicts were named the Musket Wars due to the European weapons whose introduction instigated the conflicts, and the wars saw the deaths of between 20,000 and 40,000 Māori, from 1807 to 1837. After falling to just 82 thousand in the 1840s, the population would begin to rise again in 1841 following the establishment of New Zealand as an official British colony, with a strong promotion of European settlement by British citizens sponsored by the Church of England. European migration to New Zealand was low in these early decades, but increased in the mid-19th century, particularly following the discovery of gold in New Zealand’s South Island in the 1860s. This growth would continue throughout the 1870s, in part the result of a strong promotion of mass migration from Britain by Premier Julius Vogel’s administration.

Early 20th century However, between 1881 and the 1920s, the New Zealand government heavily restricted Asiatic migration to the islands, resulting in a fall of population growth rate, which would remain until the Second World War. The country would experience a dip in population during the First World War, in which New Zealand would suffer approximately 18,000 military fatalities, and another 9,000 lost to the coinciding Spanish Flu epidemic. The population would stagnate again in the Second World War, which resulted in the death of almost 12,000 New Zealanders. In the years following the war, New Zealand would see a significant increase in population due to the mixture of a baby boom and a migrant spike from Europe and Asia, following a large demand for unskilled labor. Recent decades This increase continued for several decades, until international factors, such as the oil crises of 1973 and 1979, and the UK's accession to the European Economic Communities (which ended most of New Zealand's trade agreements with Britain; it's largest trade partner), greatly weakened New Zealand's economy in the 1970s. As a result, population growth stagnated during the 1970s, while economic problems persisted into the early 2000s. In contrast, the Great Recession of 2008 did not impact New Zealand as severely as most other developed nations, which allowed the economy to emerge as one of the fastest growing in the world, also leading to dropped unemployment levels and increased living standards. In 2020, with a population of almost five million people, New Zealand is regarded as one of the top countries in the world in terms of human development, quality of life and social freedoms.