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France's baby bust

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Re: France's baby bust

#191

Post by [deleted] »

ciphol wrote: post #93
makeitdouble wrote: post #67

The more I read this, the less I get his point on the religious influence. > It is unclear why the Catholic Church’s influence waned so quickly and why France was the first country to secularize. But then, if he doesn’t know enough about what’s happening in France during that period, how can he pin down the demographic decline as caused by the Catholic Church’s decline ? What if it was a completely different reason t…

> how can he pin down the demographic decline as caused by the Catholic Church’s decline ? He gives several data points for secularization, such as the language people chose to use in their wills. Since there is a strong general correlation between low fertility and low religion, it seems likely that these are causally linked in 18th century France, rather than coincidentally happening at the same time. It's a harder…

[deleted]

Re: France's baby bust

#192

Post by ameister14 »

anovikov wrote: post #149
barry-cotter wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Industrial Revolution was why they were able to colonise the world. Being much, much more productive means you can afford a lot more bullets/cannon/artillery/small arms and you need less of your population as a share growing food. Europeans were better at war than anyone else because Europe was always at war somewhere. It was geographically fragmented enough that any one power becoming hegemonic never happened ag…

Conquest went in 3 main stages. Spain and Portugal did it first, long before Industrial revolution (which Spain had much much later and only halfway, and Portugal never had at all). They did it because they could: finishing reconquest of their territories from Arabs in the late XV century, they only saw foreign expansion as continuation of the same trend: Christendom acquires more land from the infidels, with divine…

The UK did not acquire territories because of religious issues and to push out Puritans. It was economics. Your explanation in general is a massive oversimplification - most of the time, governments weren't intentionally driving colonization. England favored economic growth with corporations running the show.

Jamestown, for example, was not founded by the government of England but instead by an investment company in search of riches. The Puritans as well; the government didn't put them on a boat, they bought a charter from the Virginia Company.

Re: France's baby bust

#193

Post by ameister14 »

blululu wrote: post #140
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The timing is wrong though. Industrial Revolution started in 1760. By that time the British had already laid the foundation for their rule of India, and the other powers also were well on their way to colonization. In fact, looking at the timing, one could almost make the argument that the Industrial Revolution was the effect of colonization and exploitation of the rest of the world and not the cause.

The Watt steam engine is roughly contemporaneous with the Battle of Plassey and the British ascendency over Bengal, but the Watt steam engine is not the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. It built upon cultural and technical innovations from 50 years prior. The British had been engaged in a radical period of industrialization since the start of the 16th century.

The British absolutely had not engaged in a 'radical period of industrialization' from 1500 on. That's just not correct.

The major corporate movement didn't even start until the 17th century.

Re: France's baby bust

#194

Post by lotsofpulp »

School-Cotton wrote: post #154
philwelch wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can be nominally Catholic without doing a particularly good job of actually believing in and practicing the tenets of the religion. In fact, this is sort of the rule rather than the exception in much of Europe and North America.

IME a lot of French people consider themselves to be “Catholic” if they’ve been baptized, even if they’re completely atheist.

The way to think about this is that people affiliate themselves with tribes for multiple reasons.

One can philosophically not care at all about the beliefs of Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, etc, but for the purposes of interacting with members of their tribe, and signaling to other members of their tribe that they are in that tribe, they might still describe themselves as being “Catholic” (or whatever).

Re: France's baby bust

#195

Post by qwytw »

anovikov wrote: post #149
barry-cotter wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Industrial Revolution was why they were able to colonise the world. Being much, much more productive means you can afford a lot more bullets/cannon/artillery/small arms and you need less of your population as a share growing food. Europeans were better at war than anyone else because Europe was always at war somewhere. It was geographically fragmented enough that any one power becoming hegemonic never happened ag…

Conquest went in 3 main stages. Spain and Portugal did it first, long before Industrial revolution (which Spain had much much later and only halfway, and Portugal never had at all). They did it because they could: finishing reconquest of their territories from Arabs in the late XV century, they only saw foreign expansion as continuation of the same trend: Christendom acquires more land from the infidels, with divine…

> Netherlands for the purpose of trade (was before Industrial revolution and industry wasn't involved),

That's arguable. I mean they didn't have the steam engine, but besides that the Dutch economically was relatively industrialized according by most other metrics (high urbanization, high amount of energy usage (wind, peat, water), relatively very high labor productivity etc.)

Trade allowed the Netherlands to acquire huge amounts of capital but unlike some other countries (e.g. Spain) they didn't waste it and instead invested into dramatically increasing the productivity of their economy .

Re: France's baby bust

#196

Post by [deleted] »

ciphol wrote: post #94
woodruffw wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t say attrition overwhelmed the overall growth pattern. Most evidence suggests that it’s a proportion that increases with overall religious population, with compounding or confounding. factors (e.g. increasing or decreasing participation in a broader secular society). Haredim “get away” with minimizing participation in many ways, which makes their attrition rates lower than comparable religious groups. But tha…

Modernization drew a lot of people away from traditional religion. But Hasidim and the Amish etc are "post modern". They have developed various cultural features to "immunize" themselves against the temptations of modernity. There is no reason for this to start failing at any particular point, except perhaps when they become too much of an imposition on the rest of society, which pushes back on them.

[deleted]

Re: France's baby bust

#197

Post by qwytw »

ameister14 wrote: post #192
anovikov wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conquest went in 3 main stages. Spain and Portugal did it first, long before Industrial revolution (which Spain had much much later and only halfway, and Portugal never had at all). They did it because they could: finishing reconquest of their territories from Arabs in the late XV century, they only saw foreign expansion as continuation of the same trend: Christendom acquires more land from the infidels, with divine…

The UK did not acquire territories because of religious issues and to push out Puritans. It was economics. Your explanation in general is a massive oversimplification - most of the time, governments weren't intentionally driving colonization. England favored economic growth with corporations running the show. Jamestown, for example, was not founded by the government of England but instead by an investment company in…

For quite a while the North American colonies weren't really that valuable economically compared to the ones in the Caribbean or Asia.

British colonies were somehow able to attract massive amounts of settlers and eventually became self sustainable. The Dutch, French and others could never achieve that and mainly relied on the fur trade with the Native populations.

Re: France's baby bust

#198

Post by qwytw »

ameister14 wrote: post #193
blululu wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Watt steam engine is roughly contemporaneous with the Battle of Plassey and the British ascendency over Bengal, but the Watt steam engine is not the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. It built upon cultural and technical innovations from 50 years prior. The British had been engaged in a radical period of industrialization since the start of the 16th century.

The British absolutely had not engaged in a 'radical period of industrialization' from 1500 on. That's just not correct. The major corporate movement didn't even start until the 17th century.

The Dutch did though and they later kickstarted the industrial revolution in Britain.

Re: France's baby bust

#199

Post by LawTalkingGuy »

rayiner wrote: post #132
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one in France talks about western culture. The main parties which have made Islam a theme are staunchly anti-American. France has had a strong separation between the state and religion for a century. It’s one of the less religious country in the world and a significant part of the population is still strongly against any kind of religion especially the Catholic Church.

Remind me which country is the one with the hijab ban in schools? Is it america or is it France? And you want to tell me you’re not having a religious conflict over there?

Do you truly believe that hijabs and only hijabs (or maybe other Islamic symbols) are banned? Because if so I've got some good news for you - all overt religious symbols are treated equally.

Re: France's baby bust

#200

Post by AlbertCory »

This is a very thorough piece of research. In particular, if you're saying "in industrialized societies you don't need as many children" you've missed the entire point of the article: he's demonstrating that "having fewer children" began long before industrialization.

> during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when France was defeated after a solitary battle against a single opponent.

I was always curious about that war, since "Sedan" is the only battle you ever read about (plus maybe The Commune), so I read a book on it. There were quite a few battles leading up to it. The Germans had better artillery, and their field commanders had more latitude for improvisation.

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