UK vs France – 300 years of population change in one glance

Posted by vladgrinch

39 Comments

  1. The UK now relies much more on immigration, while France still gets more growth from births.

    Both countries are aging fast – and without migration, population decline would already be reality.

  2. BenjaminHarrison88 on

    Was it the wars that caused France to lag so much between 1900 and 1950 or something else?

  3. Map of UK misses a large bunch of land in the 1710-1900 maps. That piece of land didn’t broke off until after year 1922. Just sayin’ 🤷‍♂️

  4. melmboundanddown on

    Strange the population growth was so slow in France from 1800 to 1850. Oh, wait, Napoleon.

  5. Well, france experienced the boom a lot earlier, the cut off is made for dramatic effect.

  6. It’s crazy to imagine what France would look like with 150m inhabitants. The same ratio as 1800s.

    Paris would be 20m habitants, other regional metropolis would be in the 5-10 m.
    GDP could be also 3x bigger.
    Ww1 and 2 likely vastly different. Germany would never have become a unified country.

  7. Solid-Move-1411 on

    It’s funny how none of the comments are mentioning the real reason lol

    French Revolution crashed France TFR from 6-7 to just slightly above 2 and it only went more downhill from there.

    France used to be most populated European country up until early 1800s even more than Russia. In late 1700s, France was in fact 4th or 5th most populated country in the world. If it maintained similar TFR to UK or Germany, France would be around 200M+ people today probably even more since English and Germans had migration rate to Americas unlike French.

  8. Excuse my ignorance but what is the difference between net migration and natural growth? And why does it say 1990-2024

  9. I think most people don’t know how small the population of England used to be compared to its continental neighbours – especially France and Spain – during the Middle Ages and early modern period. It gives a different perspective when thinking about the history of that period, particularly the various conflicts involving England. England was up against enemies that vastly outmatched them in terms of manpower and resources.

  10. EmergencyThese6791 on

    Image that in the same time, many Englishmen and his families move to Americas co colonize the continent.

    Few Frenchmen move to Americas.

  11. Internal-Impression5 on

    According to the historian it’s because France started its demographic transition way before the other European countries (as for 1770-1790) whereas it has started in the late 19th century in the rest of europe

  12. Former-Chocolate-793 on

    A couple of things:

    1 the population of the UK would have included the modern day republic of Ireland prior to 1950.

    2 Britain had massive emigration during the 19th and well into the 20th century. Mostly to the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Did the French emigrate in similar numbers? If so, where did they go?

  13. Hopefully we can see those numbers drop back down a couple million, would love to see Britain back around 40 million one day.

  14. DerGyrosPitaFan on

    It’s crazy how one of the reasons for brexit was to reduce immigration (especially from the ex-soviet member states like poland but also refugees because of the crisis in 2015), and yet immigration *tripled* with new laws, inviting people the pro-brexiters are even *less* fond of, with immigration surpassing that of the EU members like france

  15. Alphabet_Letter92 on

    So basically large scale wars that define the century are bad for population growth.

  16. The effect of the Napoleonic wars here can’t be understated. Several cohorts almost sacrificed entirely for the glory of a tyrant.

  17. Alan-TheDetroyer on

    If you’ve ever driven across France and the UK it’s alarming how much bigger France really is, but half of it is empty af and the other half is full of French people so it’s practically uninhabitable

  18. Part of the reason Napoleonic Wars happened was there was just so many French men available to recruit for war activities versus the other side.