looks like carroll quigley's predictions are true:
Most stable and primitive societies, such as the American
Indians before 1492 or medieval Europe, have no great population
problem because the birthrate is balanced by the death rate. In
such societies both of these are high, the population is stable,
and the major portion of that population is young (below eighteen
years of age). This kind of society (frequently called Population
Type A) is what existed in Europe in the medieval period (say about
1400) or even in part of the early modern period (say about 1700).
As a result of
the increased supply of food in Europe after 1725, and of men's
increased ability to save lives because of advances in sanitation
and medicine after 1775, the death rate began to fall, the
birthrate remained high, the population began to increase, and the
number of older persons in the society increased.
This gave rise to what we have called the demographic explosion (or
Population Type B). As a result of it, the population of Europe
(beginning in western Europe) increased in the nineteenth century,
and the major portion of that population was in the prime of life
(ages eighteen to forty-five), the arms-bearing years for men and
the childbearing years for women.
At this point the demographic
cycle of an expanding population goes into a third stage
(Population Type C) in which the birthrate also begins to fall. The
reasons for this fall in the birthrate have never been explained in
a satisfactory way, but, as a consequence of it, there appears a
new demographic condition marked by a falling birthrate, a low
death rate, and a stabilizing and aging population whose major part
is in the mature years from thirty to sixty. As the population gets
older because of the decrease in births and the increase in
expectation of life, a larger and larger part of the population has
passed the years of hearing children or bearing arms. This causes
the birthrate to decline even more rapidly, and eventually gives a
population so old that the death rate begins to rise again because
of the great increase in deaths from old age or from the casualties
of inevitable senility. Accordingly, the society passes into a
fourth stage of the demographic cycle (Population Type D). This
stage is marked by a declining birthrate, a rising death rate, a
decreasing population, and a population in which the major part is
over fifty years of age.
It must be confessed that the
nature of the fourth stage of this demographic cycle is based on
theoretical considerations rather than on empirical observation,
because even western Europe, where the cycle is most advanced, has
not yet reached this fourth stage. However, it seems quite likely
that it will pass into such a stage by the year 2000, and already
the increasing number of older persons has given rise to new
problems and to a new science called geriatrics both in western
Europe and in the eastern United States.
As we have said, Europe has
already experienced the first three stages of this demographic
cycle as a result of the Agricultural Revolution after 1725 and the
Sanitation-Medical Revolution after 1775. As these two revolutions
have diffused outward from western Europe to more peripheral areas
of the world (the lifesaving revolution passing the food-producing
revolution in the process), these more remote areas have entered,
one by one, upon the demographic cycle. This means that the
demographic explosion (Population Type B) has moved outward from
western Europe to Central Europe to eastern Europe and finally to
Asia and Africa. By the middle of the twentieth century, India was
fully in the grasp of the demographic explosion, with its
population shooting upward at a rate of about 5 million a year,
while Japan's population rose from 55 million in 1920 to 94 million
in 1960. A fine example of the working of this process can be seen
in Ceylon where in 1920 the birthrate was 40 per thousand and the
death rate was 32 per thousand, but in 1950 the birthrate was still
at 40 while the death rate had fallen to 12. Before we examine the
impact of this development on world history in the twentieth
century let us look at two brief tables which will clarify this
process.
The demographic cycle may be
divided into four stages which we have designated by the first four
letters of the alphabet. These four stages can be distinguished in
respect to four traits: the birthrate, the death rate, the number
of the population, and its age distribution. The nature of the four
stages in these four respects can be seen in the following
table:
The Demographic Cycle
Stage A B C D
Birthrate High High Falling Low
Death
rate High Falling Low Rising
Numbers
Stable Rising Stable Falling
Age
Many
young Many in
prime Many
Middle-aged Many old
Distribution (Below
18) (18-45) (Over
30) (Over
50)
The consequences of this
demographic cycle (and the resulting demographic explosion) as it
diffuses outward from western Europe to more peripheral areas of
the world may be gathered from the following table which sets out
the chronology of this movement in the four areas of western
Europe, central Europe, eastern Europe, and Asia:
Diffusion of the Demographic Cycle
Areas
Western Central Eastern
Dates Europe Europe Europe Asia
1700 A A A A
1800 B A A A
_______
1850 B
| B A A
|________________
1900 C B
| B A
|________________
1950 C C B
| B
|____________
2000 D D C B
In this table the line of greatest
population pressure (the demographic explosion of Type B
population) has been marked by a dotted line. This shows that there
has been a sequence, at intervals of about fifty years, of four
successive population pressures
which might be designated with the following names:
Anglo-French
pressure, about 1850
Germanic-Italian
pressure, about 1900
Slavic
pressure, about 1950
Asiatic
pressure, about 2000
This diffusion of pressure outward
from the western European core of Western Civilization can
contribute a great deal toward a richer understanding of the period
1850-2000. It helps to explain the Anglo-French rivalry about 1850,
the Anglo-French alliance based on fear of Germany after 1900, the
free-world alliance based on fear of Soviet Russia after 1950, and
the danger to both Western Civilization and Soviet Civilization
from Asiatic pressure by
2000.
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