Modes of production and demographic patterns in nineteenth-century France.

Abstract

This research focuses on the relationship between modes of production and demographic patterns. Specifically, it attempts to discover whether the large and enduring regional variations in fertility and nuptiality which characterized 19th-century France can be accounted for by variations in modes of production. The findings indicate that differences in modes of production were associated with variations in population patterns, though not always in the ways originally predicted. The data show that areas of capitalist production were characterized by markedly higher levels of nonmarital fertility and, under certain conditions, higher total fertility and earlier marriage as well. The implications of these findings for some major theories of demographic change are discussed. Few areas of research have yielded as many new and exciting discoveries in recent years as has historical demography. The proliferation of smalland large-scale studies in a variety of countries and time periods has forced demographers to rethink some long-held ideas and to develop new theories more in accord with the historical record. In doing so, they have turned to some traditional sociological sources generally neglected in the field of population studies. The purpose of this paper is to examine some of these new developments and to assess their ability to explain a problem which continues to perplex historical demographers, the persistence of large regional variations in population patterns in 19th-century France.