Did other large European cities exhibit similar phenomena during this time? It seems plausible to me that within language groups there might be one primate city that exercises an outsized pull effect. For English this appears to be London, but did this happen with Paris for French or perhaps Milan for Italian, Vienna for German speakers etc? If so, what are the parallel mechanisms by which these cities pulled newcomers in? Can we establish a common thread/theme? I'd be interested to know!
Nowhere else did the same really, because most of the other cities essentially stayed the same size until their countries in turn industrialised or started adopting fairly widespread agricultural improvements. They had also typically grown much more slowly in the centuries before. And London continued to expand even while the rest were industrialising - it was the largest city in the world for most of the nineteenth century, only losing the top spot to New York c.1920s.
Take these numbers with a grain of salt, as I'm taking them from just one of the mega databases of city size (Reba, M. L., F. Reitsma, and K. C. Seto. 2018. Historical Urban Population: 3700 BC - AD 2000. NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC)), but:
Paris had already had about 200k souls (with some fluctuations up and down) since the 13thC. It then began to grow again in the 17thC, with over 500k by 1700. So perhaps there's something there, but France was far, far larger in population terms than England, so proportionately this isn't all that impressive really. The French urbanisation rate grew only a tiny bit.
Milan seems to have grown very very slowly. Already perhaps 80k in 1400, yet still only 120k in 1800 when it suddenly started to grow again. Compared to overall population, essentially no change - Italian urbanisation, which was already high in 1500, was still about the same rate in 1800.
Vienna does see a bit of growth it seems. From 30-40k in 1500-1600 - only a little smaller than London - but rising to only 100k by 1700. London by then had reached 575k! Austria does seem to have urbanised a little (Bob Allen gives figures of 5% for 1500, rising to 8% by 1800) but again pretty small. Germany's urbanisation rate essentially doesn't change.
Might graph a bunch of these, and check up on some of the figures in more detail, for a future post and the book to really highlight just how interesting London is by comparison.
Interesting! I'd love to see a comparison between each city during their respective periods of industrialization/ag reform. London also seems rather unique in that it was less often threatened by war thanks to the channel and the navy, so perhaps that allowed for institutions to feel safer in investing and developing assets there (in a sort of eggs in one basket approach) as compared to spreading them out among other cities, allowing it to snowball faster? Just thinking aloud here :)
It's a good thought, though London was rebel central for the English Civil War. And occasionally threatened by Spanish and Dutch attacks. I actually do think innovation in ship design has a lot to do with it - but largely on the commercial / ship defensibility side. (e.g. https://antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-invention-sails-force) Key thing to remember here is that before the late 16thC the seas around Britain were considered more of a highway for invaders than a protective moat. Its potential as a moat only emerged because of the choice to concentrate on the navy (the loss of Calais in the 1550s, James VI of Scotland becoming de facto heir to England in the 1580s/90s, and the subjugation of Ireland in the 1590s also helped with this reorientation away from needing land forces and forts).
A comparison I need to look at in more detail is the Netherlands, however. They didn't have any especially large cities on the London scale, but because they were all connected by sea and river many of them may have constituted a de facto single urban area. I'd need to look at their growth rates to see if it was comparable. Though of course the Low Countries were also already highly urbanised already.
Amsterdam is probably a key city to compare: from about 10,000 inhabitants in 1500 to around 200,000 in 1700. A rate of growth that was faster than that of London, even if London remained bigger in absolute terms.
Thank you, this is a well constructed arguement and very enjoyable. With regard to point three. Are there any estimates for how large a portion of agricultural production was exported? Or for any subsets like grain, during this 1550-1650 period?
Had missed this question, apologies Harald. Had a quick check of the more obvious potential sources, and nothing much coming up. So will have to go digging. A useful question. I suspect that compared to the total it will be very low, as so much grain would have been consumed locally. It was so expensive to transport overland. But some areas - particularly coastal East Anglia - will likely have had surprisingly high exports in the good years. Another complication with any statistic of course being that it could have fluctuated quite dramatically from year to year and depending on the laws in force and the quality of the harvest. It's only in 1670 that grain exports were permitted no matter the price at home (before then they were only permitted when grain at home was under a certain fixed price). This was still subject to emergency embargoes if the harvests were especially bad, but these were imposed only infrequently - in 1698, 1709, 1741 - so on the whole it's only really from 1670 that there's free export.
Presumably you see alignment with Bob Allen’s work on factor induced technical change, ie. Industrial innovation was driven by relative labour scarcity and the development of energy sources (coal), which were themselves driven by demand from London’s mercantile growth?
Funnily enough I disagree with most elements of Allen's theory on factor-induced technical change. But I do think his outline of London's early trade-driven growth is pretty much spot-on.
"If you stumble across more evidence or hints of London’s early pull, please do let me know!"
------------------------
Seems like a moment to mention the real life mercer, patron and Lord Mayor of London Richard Whittington, and in particular the mythology of migration in the form of the celebrated folk tale very loosely inspired by his life "Dick Whittington and his Cat" - which reflects a popular reception of ideas of migration to London, the perils and the possibilities>
Yes, a great suggestions! You and someone else on twitter had noted the revival of Whittington stories in the 17thC. Definitely worth my looking into these some more. Thanks.
Interesting, Anton. I’ve not engaged for a while. Feasts of county-men residing far from home is far from unknown in the rest of world. I am of course thinking of Chinese native place associations. These can be found anywhere in the world where there are large numbers of Chinese even today, and were hugely important in the past, serving protective, welfare, commercial and community functions. In parts of Southeast Asia the local state would devolve governance of the resident foreign community to those associations and their headmen. There’s a big literature on this, but these forms of sojourner associations and their activities, so common in many parts of the world over the centuries, probably have not been given as much attention in the UK context as they would seemingly deserve.
I think it's interesting to compare with the Netherlands (just using figures from Wikipedia here, forgive me):
British population in 1500: 3.9m
Dutch population in 1500: 1m
British population in 1700: 8.6m
Dutch population in 1700: 1.9m
As another commenter has pointed out, Amsterdam saw even faster growth than London. Perhaps the only reason London capped out so much larger was because it had a greater rural population to draw from. Even in 1700, London represented less than 7% of England's population. Over 25% of the Netherlands would have had to live in Amsterdam for it to reach the same size.
Theoretically, all those English migrants to London could have moved to Amsterdam instead, but why deal with a language barrier and foreign customs when there's a burgeoning commercial center in your own country?
Did other large European cities exhibit similar phenomena during this time? It seems plausible to me that within language groups there might be one primate city that exercises an outsized pull effect. For English this appears to be London, but did this happen with Paris for French or perhaps Milan for Italian, Vienna for German speakers etc? If so, what are the parallel mechanisms by which these cities pulled newcomers in? Can we establish a common thread/theme? I'd be interested to know!
Nowhere else did the same really, because most of the other cities essentially stayed the same size until their countries in turn industrialised or started adopting fairly widespread agricultural improvements. They had also typically grown much more slowly in the centuries before. And London continued to expand even while the rest were industrialising - it was the largest city in the world for most of the nineteenth century, only losing the top spot to New York c.1920s.
Take these numbers with a grain of salt, as I'm taking them from just one of the mega databases of city size (Reba, M. L., F. Reitsma, and K. C. Seto. 2018. Historical Urban Population: 3700 BC - AD 2000. NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC)), but:
Paris had already had about 200k souls (with some fluctuations up and down) since the 13thC. It then began to grow again in the 17thC, with over 500k by 1700. So perhaps there's something there, but France was far, far larger in population terms than England, so proportionately this isn't all that impressive really. The French urbanisation rate grew only a tiny bit.
Milan seems to have grown very very slowly. Already perhaps 80k in 1400, yet still only 120k in 1800 when it suddenly started to grow again. Compared to overall population, essentially no change - Italian urbanisation, which was already high in 1500, was still about the same rate in 1800.
Vienna does see a bit of growth it seems. From 30-40k in 1500-1600 - only a little smaller than London - but rising to only 100k by 1700. London by then had reached 575k! Austria does seem to have urbanised a little (Bob Allen gives figures of 5% for 1500, rising to 8% by 1800) but again pretty small. Germany's urbanisation rate essentially doesn't change.
Might graph a bunch of these, and check up on some of the figures in more detail, for a future post and the book to really highlight just how interesting London is by comparison.
Interesting! I'd love to see a comparison between each city during their respective periods of industrialization/ag reform. London also seems rather unique in that it was less often threatened by war thanks to the channel and the navy, so perhaps that allowed for institutions to feel safer in investing and developing assets there (in a sort of eggs in one basket approach) as compared to spreading them out among other cities, allowing it to snowball faster? Just thinking aloud here :)
It's a good thought, though London was rebel central for the English Civil War. And occasionally threatened by Spanish and Dutch attacks. I actually do think innovation in ship design has a lot to do with it - but largely on the commercial / ship defensibility side. (e.g. https://antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-invention-sails-force) Key thing to remember here is that before the late 16thC the seas around Britain were considered more of a highway for invaders than a protective moat. Its potential as a moat only emerged because of the choice to concentrate on the navy (the loss of Calais in the 1550s, James VI of Scotland becoming de facto heir to England in the 1580s/90s, and the subjugation of Ireland in the 1590s also helped with this reorientation away from needing land forces and forts).
A comparison I need to look at in more detail is the Netherlands, however. They didn't have any especially large cities on the London scale, but because they were all connected by sea and river many of them may have constituted a de facto single urban area. I'd need to look at their growth rates to see if it was comparable. Though of course the Low Countries were also already highly urbanised already.
Amsterdam is probably a key city to compare: from about 10,000 inhabitants in 1500 to around 200,000 in 1700. A rate of growth that was faster than that of London, even if London remained bigger in absolute terms.
Very interesting article, thanks!
I love this post, it gives a real insight into the texture of the past. Your Substack is delightfully informative, and so clearly written.
Thank you Lorenzo!
Thank you, this is a well constructed arguement and very enjoyable. With regard to point three. Are there any estimates for how large a portion of agricultural production was exported? Or for any subsets like grain, during this 1550-1650 period?
Had missed this question, apologies Harald. Had a quick check of the more obvious potential sources, and nothing much coming up. So will have to go digging. A useful question. I suspect that compared to the total it will be very low, as so much grain would have been consumed locally. It was so expensive to transport overland. But some areas - particularly coastal East Anglia - will likely have had surprisingly high exports in the good years. Another complication with any statistic of course being that it could have fluctuated quite dramatically from year to year and depending on the laws in force and the quality of the harvest. It's only in 1670 that grain exports were permitted no matter the price at home (before then they were only permitted when grain at home was under a certain fixed price). This was still subject to emergency embargoes if the harvests were especially bad, but these were imposed only infrequently - in 1698, 1709, 1741 - so on the whole it's only really from 1670 that there's free export.
Presumably you see alignment with Bob Allen’s work on factor induced technical change, ie. Industrial innovation was driven by relative labour scarcity and the development of energy sources (coal), which were themselves driven by demand from London’s mercantile growth?
Funnily enough I disagree with most elements of Allen's theory on factor-induced technical change. But I do think his outline of London's early trade-driven growth is pretty much spot-on.
"If you stumble across more evidence or hints of London’s early pull, please do let me know!"
------------------------
Seems like a moment to mention the real life mercer, patron and Lord Mayor of London Richard Whittington, and in particular the mythology of migration in the form of the celebrated folk tale very loosely inspired by his life "Dick Whittington and his Cat" - which reflects a popular reception of ideas of migration to London, the perils and the possibilities>
Yes, a great suggestions! You and someone else on twitter had noted the revival of Whittington stories in the 17thC. Definitely worth my looking into these some more. Thanks.
Interesting, Anton. I’ve not engaged for a while. Feasts of county-men residing far from home is far from unknown in the rest of world. I am of course thinking of Chinese native place associations. These can be found anywhere in the world where there are large numbers of Chinese even today, and were hugely important in the past, serving protective, welfare, commercial and community functions. In parts of Southeast Asia the local state would devolve governance of the resident foreign community to those associations and their headmen. There’s a big literature on this, but these forms of sojourner associations and their activities, so common in many parts of the world over the centuries, probably have not been given as much attention in the UK context as they would seemingly deserve.
I think it's interesting to compare with the Netherlands (just using figures from Wikipedia here, forgive me):
British population in 1500: 3.9m
Dutch population in 1500: 1m
British population in 1700: 8.6m
Dutch population in 1700: 1.9m
As another commenter has pointed out, Amsterdam saw even faster growth than London. Perhaps the only reason London capped out so much larger was because it had a greater rural population to draw from. Even in 1700, London represented less than 7% of England's population. Over 25% of the Netherlands would have had to live in Amsterdam for it to reach the same size.
Theoretically, all those English migrants to London could have moved to Amsterdam instead, but why deal with a language barrier and foreign customs when there's a burgeoning commercial center in your own country?