Орта ғасырларда Еуропа мен Жерорта теңізі аймағының демографиясы

Human demography in Europe and the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages

Medieval demography is the study of human demography in Europe and the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages. It estimates and seeks to explain the number of people who were alive during the Medieval period, population trends, life expectancy, family structure, and related issues. Demography is considered a crucial element of historical change throughout the Middle Ages. The population of Europe remained at a low level in the Early Middle Ages, boomed during the High Middle Ages and reached a peak around 1300, then a number of calamities caused a steep decline, the nature of which historians have debated. Population levels began to recover around the late 15th century, gaining momentum in the early 16th century. The science of medieval demography relies on various lines of evidence, such as administrative records, wills and other types of records, archaeological field data, economic data, and written histories. Because the data are often incomplete and/or ambiguous, there can be significant disagreement among medieval demographers.

The population levels of Europe during the Middle Ages can be roughly categorized: During the period from 150 to 400, with the intermittent appearance of plague, the population of the Roman Empire ranged from a high of 70 to a low of 50 million, followed by a fairly good recovery if not to the previous highs of the Early Empire. Serious gradual depopulation began in the West only in the 5th century and in the East due to the appearance of bubonic plague in 541 after 250 years of economic growth after the troubles which afflicted the empire from the 250s to 270s. Proximate causes of the population decrease include the Antonine Plague (165–180), the Plague of Cyprian (250 to 260), and the Crisis of the Third Century. European population probably reached a minimum during the extreme weather events of 535–536 and the ensuing Plague of Justinian (541–542). Some have connected this demographic transition to the Migration Period Pessimum, when a decrease in global temperatures impaired agricultural yields.

A major plague epidemic struck the Mediterranean, and much of Europe, in the 6th century. The Early Middle Ages saw relatively little population growth with urbanization well below its Roman peak, reflecting a low technological level, limited trade and political, social and economic dislocation exacerbated by the impact of Viking expansion in the north, Arab expansion in the south and the movement of Slavs and Bulgarians, and later the Magyars in the east. Manorial surveys and some allusions to provincial hearth taxes suggest a population of 5 million for Carolingian France. Presumed densities of settlement support estimates of 4 million for Italy and a similar number for Iberia, as well as German lands (including Scandinavia); 6 million for Slavic lands and perhaps 2 million for Greece and southern Balkans; 1.5 million people for the entire British Isles.

In the 10th–13th centuries, agriculture expanded into the wilderness, in what has been termed the "great clearances". Reasons for this expansion and colonization include an improving climate known as the Medieval warm period, which resulted in longer and more productive growing seasons; the end of the raids by Vikings, Arabs, and Magyars, resulting in greater political stability; advancements in medieval technology allowing more land to be farmed; 11th century reforms of the Church that further increased social stability; and the rise of Feudalism, which also brought a measure of social stability. and is estimated to have reached a peak of 73.5 million to as high as 100 million. England – The population of England, between 1.25 and 2 million in 1086, is estimated to have grown to somewhere between 3.7 million and 5–7 million, By 1300, the population of the entire province of Tuscany may have then surpassed 2 million people — a level the region would not reach again until after 1850. France – In 1328, France is believed to have supported between 13.4 million people (in a smaller geographical area than today's) and 18 to 20 million people (in the present day area), the latter not reached again until the early modern period. In the fourteenth century, under Angevin dynasty (1308 1386), the population of the Kingdom reached around 3 million, before the Plague. Transylvania, in the eastern part of the Kingdom, had around 550.000 people by 1300. Wallachia – The region in the Southern part of modern Romania had a population of around 400,000 in fifteenth century. Constantinople – In 1203 the population of Constantinople stood 400,000 to 500,000; when the Byzantines reclaimed the city in 1261 there were only about 35.000 inhabitants left. The population of the city stood between 40,000 and 50,000 by the 1450s. The number of people captured by the Ottomans after the fall of the city was around 33,000.

By the 14th century, the frontiers of settled cultivation had ceased to expand and internal colonization was coming to an end, but population levels remained high. Then a series of events—sometimes called the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages—collectively killed millions. Starting with the Great Famine in 1315 and the Black Death from 1348, the population of Europe fell abruptly. The period between 1348 and 1420 saw the heaviest loss. In parts of Germany, about 40% of the named inhabitants disappeared. He also wrote a book after that article. Regardless of the cause, populations continued to fall into the 15th century and remained low into the 16th because the plague returned in cycles over the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, although subsequent plagues, such as the "children's plagues" of the 1360s were less virulent than the Great Plague of 1347–1348.