40

The Structures o f Everyday Life

The statistics for China are based on official censuses, but are not on that account, of course, unquestionably valid. They are derived from fiscal sources, which means they are very likely to involve fraud and deception. A.P. Usher1 8 was right to think that the figures were, on the whole, too low; accordingly he increased them, with all the uncertainty an operation of this type involves. The latest historian1 9 to venture into this field of hypothetical calculations has done the same thing. The original figures reveal flagrant impossibilities, increases and decreases abnormally large even for the Chinese. They probably often measure the level of order and authority in the Empire as much as the level of population. Thus the overall figure fell by seven million in 1647 as compared with the preceding year, at the time of the vast Won San-Kwei peasant revolt. The absentees were not dead; they were avoiding central authority. When such rebels come to heel, the statistics register a sharp increase far exceeding even the maximum possible natural increase of the population. In addition, the censuses were not always made on the same basis. Before 1735 they only counted the jen-ting, tax-payers, men aged between sixteen and sixty. Their number therefore has to be multiplied, assuming that they repre sented 28% of the total population. After 1741 on the other hand, the census counted the actual number of persons and gave the population as I43 million, while calculations based on the number of jen-ting produce a figure of 97 million for 1734. The two totals can be correlated, since calculation allows plenty of scope for juggling, but the exercise will satisfy no one.20 However, specialists agree that these figures do have some value over the long term, and the oldest statistics - relating to the China of the Mings (1368-1644) - are by no means the most questionable. We can thus see the sort of material we shall have to work with. These figures, represented on a graph, only establish an approximate balance between Europe (extended to the Urals) and China (limited to the main territory of its provinces). And today the balance inclines more and more in Chinas favour, because of its higher birth rate. But approximate as it is, this broad equivalence between Europe and China is probably one of the most visible structures in world history over the last five or six centuries. It offers a starting point for our approximate calculations of world population. World population According to the first valid statistics, which became available in the nineteenth century (the first real census - for England - was in 1801), China and Europe each represented roughly a quarter of all mankind. Obviously the validity of -applying this proportion to the past is not automatically guaranteed. Europe and China, both then and now, are the most highly populated regions of the world. Since their rates of increase were higher than elsewhere, it might perhaps be appropriate to use a ratio of one to five for the period before the eighteenth