A fascinating study at the intersection of religious history and economics; I'll post in the territory I expect to get the highest yield in insight (next time, ~spirituality)
The author here argues that cultural shifts in 18th century France, generally in the way of dechristianization, precluded a tempering of their population growth. Effectively, this study argues that in terms of their GDP per capita, France was able to keep up with England at a time when the latter had been forerunning the industrial revolution.
Using this genealogical data, I estimate that the decline in fertility took hold in France in the 1760s, more than a century earlier than in any other country. The average number of children per woman declined from more than 4.5 to 3.5 in less than 40 years. In the meantime, the average English woman was bearing six children. There, as in the rest of the world, the Malthusian mechanism was very much alive and would be for an additional century. In England, the industrial revolution made people richer, but they spent their additional wealth having more children.
So, the demographic transition took place exceptionally early in France, but why? In my research, I argue that the diminished sway of the Catholic Church, nearly 30 years before the French Revolution, was the key driver of the fertility decline. Since at least Tocqueville, and more recently Emmanuel Todd, we know that a sustained loosening of traditional religious moral constraints took place in the mid-eighteenth century, at a scale and extent that no other country has achieved.
Their methodology of looking at the language of wills in the absence of qgenealogical record-keeping was fascinating.
At the end of the seventeenth century, most testators referred to God, Paradise, or various saints in their wills. On the eve of the French Revolution, they used more secular language and expressions, such as ‘indispensable tribute that we owe to Nature’, to discuss death. Other measures, such as requests for requiem masses (perpetual masses for the dead), bequests, offerings to the church, or even invocations of the Virgin Mary or average weight of funeral candles, all declined significantly.
Also there are some juicy details about the early days of - gasp - contraception:
Methods of contraception beyond delayed marriage, ‘the fatal secrets unknown to any animal but man’, have long been known. The most famous, most readily available, and likely most effective method at the time, coitus interruptus, was even evoked in the Bible. However, these methods were not widely used, especially following the Counter-Reformation, when the Catholic Church, threatened by the spread of the Protestant Reformation, took ‘be fruitful and multiply’ seriously and the purpose of marriage became explicitly multiplicative.
With the loss of influence of the Church, the clergy could not oppose fertility controls anymore. In the eighteenth century, Casanova resorted to condoms (English riding coats, which were were made of linen or animal intestines, and weren’t too effective or widespread) and the enlightened elites and bourgeoisie of France practiced libertinage, les plaisirs de la petite oie (the pleasures of the little goose, to refer to mutual masturbation), and plenty of other pleasures alike. Ordinary people, liberated ‘from the teachings, the restrictions, and the yoke of the Catholic Church’, simply used coitus interruptus.
The article concludes that population growth wasn't a significant factor in maintaining the living standards in a pre-industrialized France. Namely, shifting cultural attitudes toward religion prompted a tempering of people's attitudes toward fertility.
It draws some interesting conclusions about what this could mean in today's terms, which I still haven't formed a strong opinion on:
What can we learn from this? Today, the political and economic prospects of an empty planet are a worry for many, as more and more countries reach fertility rates below replacement levels. The population of China is projected to halve by 2100. The historical fertility transition in France shows that demographic decline – at least while still above replacement levels – does not necessarily spell society’s eternal doom. In particular, it could be a way for developing countries to adapt to climate change, by reducing the pressure of overpopulation and generating a ‘demographic dividend’, where the ratio of working-age to dependent population rises, raising average incomes and living standards
The decline of Catholicism, and fertility, in eighteenth-century France turned it from a demographic powerhouse – the China of Europe – to merely a first-rank European power among several, but also allowed it to keep up with British living standards without an industrial revolution. Ideas have consequences.