Massimo Livi-Bacci - Population and Nutrition: An Essay on European Demographic History

Population and Nutrition

An Essay on European Demographic History

Massimo Livi-Bacci

Translated by Tania Croft-Murray
With the Assistance of Carl Ipsen

Cambridge University Press

Cambridge

New YorkPort Chester

MelbourneSydney

Cambridge Studies in Population, Economy and Society in Past Time 14.

Series Editors:

Peter Laslett , Roger Schofield and E. A. Wrigley
ESRC Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure

and Daniel Scott Smith
University of Illinois at Chicago

Recent work in social, economic and demographic history has revealed much that was previously obscure about societal stability and change in the past. It has also suggested that crossing the conventional boundaries between these branches of history can be very rewarding.

This series will exemplify the value of interdisciplinary work of this kind, and will include books on topics such as family, kinship and neighbourhood; welfare provision and social control; work and leisure; migration; urban growth; and legal structures and procedures, as well as more familiar matters. It will demonstrate that, for example, anthropology and economics have become as close intellectual neighbours to history as have political philosophy or biography.

Cambridge Studies in Population, Economy and Society in Past Time

Land, kinship and life-cycle edited by Richard M. Smith

Annals of the labouring poor: social change and agrarian England 16601900 K. D. M. Snell *

Migration in a mature economy: emigration and internal migration in England and Wales 18611900 Dudley Baines

Scottish literacy and the Scottish identity: illiteracy and society in Scotland and Northern England 16001800 R. A. Houston

Neighbourhood and society: a London suburb in the seventeenth century Jeremy Boulton

Demographic behavior in the past: a study of fourteen German village populations in the nineteenth century John E. Knodel

Worlds within worlds: structures of life in sixteenth-century London Steve Rappaport

Upland communities: environment, population and social structure in the Alps since the sixteenth century Pier Paolo Viazzo

Height, health and history: nutritional status in the United Kingdom 15381840 Roderick Floud, Kenneth Wachter and Annabel Gregory

10 Famine, disease and the social order in early modern society edited by John Walter and Roger Schofield

11 A general view of the rural economy of England, 15381840 Ann Kussmaul

12 Town and country in pre-industrial Spain: Cuenca 15401870 David Reher

13 A stagnating metropolis: the economy and demography of Stockholm 17501850 Johan Soderberg, Ulf Jonssen and Christer Persson

14 Population and nutrition: an essay on European demographic history Massimo Livi-Bacci *

Titles available in paperback are marked with an asterisk.

Cambridge University Press

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, So Paulo, Delhi

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

Originally published in Italian as

Popolazione e Alimentazione: Saggio sullastoriademografica Europea

by Societ editrice il Mulino , Bologna 1987

and Societ editrice il Mulino , Bologna 1987: 2nd ed. 1989

First published in English by Cambridge University Press 1990 as

Population and nutrition: an essay on European demographic history

English translation Cambridge University Press 1991

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Livi-Bacci, Massimo.

Population and nutrition: an essay on European demographic history/ Massimo Livi-Bacci: translated by Tania Croft-Murray,

p. cm.

(Cambridge studies in population, economy and society in past time: 14)

Translation

Includes bibliographical references

1. Europe Population History. 2. Nutrition Europe History.

3. Food supply Europe History. I. Title. II. Series.

Contents

Figures

World population by continent, 12001900

Increases of six populations as a percentage of European growth

The relationship between fertility, R, life expectancy, e and growth,

The Malthusian system of positive and preventive checks during a period of demographic expansion and one of decline

Life expectancy in some populations

Calorie supply in France by composition and source, eighteenth to twentieth centuries

Calorie supply in Italy by composition and source, nineteenth to twentieth centuries

Malnutrition and mortality

Indices for wheat prices and deaths in Siena, sixteenth to eighteenth centuries

Indices of wheat prices and deaths in England, France and Tuscany (170414=100)

Life expectancy, e, total population and peers, England, 15501799

Percentage variations in the probability of death in certain countries during the first mortality transition, eighteenth to nineteenth centuries

Energy consumption in certain European zones, fourteenth to twentieth centuries

Daily per capita consumption of bread and cereals in certain European zones, fourteenth to twentieth centuries

Real wages in England, thirteenth to nineteenth centuries, for farmhands and carpenters

Prices and wages in some European countries in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries

Real wages and life expectancy in England, 15411850

Real wages in Florence and frequency of mortality crises in Tuscany, fourteenth to sixteenth centuries

Real wages in Milan and frequency of mortality crises in north-central Italy, seventeenth to eighteenth centuries

Tables

World population by area, 12001900

The development of six European populations, 16001850

Three standards of energy requirement (daily caloric intake)

Average theoretical caloric requirements for several populations

Nutrient requirements and diseases resulting from their deficiency

Per capita daily calorie supply by origin and composition in France and Italy, eighteenth to twentieth centuries

Influence of nutritional level on certain infective processes

Energy consumption of thirty-two young men before and after six months of semi-starvation

Coefficients of elasticity for deaths with respect to wheat prices in England, 15481834

Coefficients of elasticity for deaths with respect to wheat prices in England and France, 16701829

Coefficients of elasticity for deaths in certain localities in Tuscany with respect to wheat prices in Siena, 16091760

Life expectancy at birth for some European populations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Incidence of certain groups of infectious disease on mortality in some countries in the nineteenth century

Infant and child mortality in four European countries during the second half of the eighteenth century

Caloric balance of some European populations, fourteenth to twentieth centuries (daily calories per head)

Unit price per 1,000 calories for a number of foodstuffs in Florence, 160019

Daily per capita supply of bread and cereals, in grams, in Europe, fourteenth to nineteenth centuries

Meat consumption (yearly kg per head) in Europe, fourteenth to nineteenth centuries

Height in cm of soldiers under the Hapsburg Monarchy by region of birth, and in Sweden, generations 17401830

Phases in nutrition and demography among European populations

Before the cycle of plagues broke out in the fourteenth century, the population of Europe fell short of the 100 million mark; four centuries later, at the start of the Industrial Revolution, it was close on 150 million and had topped 300 million by the end of the nineteenth century. The quantitative history of Europe is beset by catastrophes, slow progress and periods of unstable stagnation and its aspect would undoubtedly have been quite different had its demographic growth been faster, or slower, than it actually was.