In early modern Europe the study of historical demography is beset with pitfalls as it was in a pre-statistical age. However there are means to provide a fairly accurate picture of population growth between the period 1500-1800. Parish records prior to the reformation and land registers are the most reliable forms of demographic data and provide information relating to the population of individual towns. Population growth occurs due to natural increase, which is when there are a greater number of births rather than the number of deaths and also on account of migration.
Indeed, population growth with a healthy and fertile population was crucial for a state in the early modern period. If a state was to be economically successful and compete well against other states it had to have a flourishing population. Population growth during the period was unpredictable to say the least. For example, often people were vulnerable to the extremes of environment that would cause famine and as a result the mortality rate would increase meaning there would be population losses.
Similarly, disease would have catastrophic effects on population growth given the lack of sophisticated remedies available to combat them.From 1500 Europe's population was still experiencing growth from the period of post Black Death recovery that had ravaged through Europe. During the century Europe's population as a whole began to increase possibly due to a relative absence of destructive wars and a lull in the frequent attacks of epidemics. However this growth was uneven with the highest rate of population growth in the North in the Scandinavian countries, Britain and the Low Countries.
The Scandinavian countries by 1600 registered on advance of two thirds of their 1500 levels. As Kamen describes 'urbanisation was a notable feature of the period.1'In addition a greater security of food supply after 1500 in a period of harvests meant there were more marriages and at an earlier age due to the increased ability to pay dowry's and social pressures towards marriage and securing an heir. The age of marriage is seen as of crucial importance to the fertility rate as older women produce fewer children.
If women are bearing more children there is a greater chance that one or more of the children will survive through to adulthood and produce children themselves. So, it is through the multiplier effect that the population increases.However there is little evidence for this assumption because parish registers were not kept systematically in this period. If we look at figure 1.1 it is evident in Europe at the time of pre-1750 that most women got married at the age of twenty five, in fact it is estimated four fifths of women were married by the age 25 in this period.
