World Population

Total World Population in Selected Years:

Percentages of World Population by Area and Date:

date	China	India	Other	Europe	Africa	other
			Asia
400 BC	27	24	21	18	7	3
200 BC	28	21	23	18	7	3
0	30	21	18	18	10	3
200 AD	32	22	15	19	9	3
400 AD	27	25	17	17	10	4
600 AD	23	26	24	13	10	4
800 AD	23	29	18	13	13	4
1000	23	30	17	14	12	4
1100	31	26	14	14	11	4
1200	32	24	14	16	11	3
1300	23	25	15	22	11	4
1400	21	28	18	17	12	4
1500	23	25	18	19	11	4
1600	28	25	17	18	10	2
1700	25	27	16	20	10	2
1750	30	24	15	19	9	3
1800	35	21	13	20	8	3
1850	35	19	12	22	7	5
1900	28	18	14	24	7	9
1950	21	18	19	21	8	13
1975	18	20	21	16	10	15
1997	21	21	18	13	13	14

 

Notes:

While world population growth in a sense transcends the narrative of human history, it has important implications both for the writing of history and prediction of its future course.

First, the space given particular peoples and regions in books of world history should roughly mirror their populations. Together, India and China have consistently had one third to one half of the earth’s population. These nations should have comparable coverage in world history. Since world history is a creation story, that formula is not strictly observed; events that have originated important practices and institutions should, of course, be disproportionately represented in the histories. Even so, world history should describe the experience of the bulk of humanity rather than of any particular subgroup.

Second, to take population into consideration in world history’s design helps to restore proportionality to a scheme in which historical epochs become steadily shorter in terms of time. In terms of man-years of human experience, the five epochs would become more comparable in size. World historians tend to neglect modern times.

Finally, with respect to the future course of humanity, population growth is on a collision course with the earth’s finite territory and resources. Continued growth at present rates is physically impossible. We may confidently predict that something will happen to curtail the further growth of human populations on earth even if we cannot say what this will be.

Source: Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones, Atlas of World Population History (Penguin, 1978)

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