Historical Demography

Historical demography reconstructs the populations of the past — their size, structure, and the fertility, mortality, and migration of earlier eras.

Scope

It covers family reconstitution and parish-register analysis, pre-industrial demographic regimes, and the long-run history of population.

Core questions

• What were past populations like?
• How can historical population data be reconstructed?
• How did pre-industrial demographic regimes work?
• How did population change over the long run?

Key concepts

• Family reconstitution
• Parish registers
• Preindustrial demographic regime
• Nuptiality
• Crisis mortality
• Long-run population history

Key theories

Family reconstitution

Laslett and the Cambridge Group reconstructed pre-industrial household and family structure from records.

Population history

Wrigley and Schofield reconstructed centuries of English population dynamics from parish registers.

History

Historical demography developed through the Cambridge Group's family-reconstitution methods (Laslett, Wrigley, Schofield), revealing the demography of pre-industrial societies.

Debates

Was the pre-industrial family nuclear?

Laslett's finding of predominantly nuclear households challenged assumptions about extended-family pasts.

Key figures

• Peter Laslett
• E. A. Wrigley
• Roger Schofield

Seminal works

• laslett-1965
• wrigley-schofield-1981

Frequently asked questions

What is family reconstitution?

A method linking births, marriages, and deaths in parish registers to reconstruct the demography of past families and populations.