Does anyone know where I can get stats for city populations in years past?

[Marscaleb]

I have a scene where someone needs to state a city's population, but I have no frame of reference how big a population of X is at any given year.
I can look up real-world cities in various parts of Europe and see modern populations, but I don't know what they would have been like in 1900.
I could extrapolate and say my city has a population of 10,000 or 5,000 or whatever, but I don't know what that would really look like for given era.

Does anyone know where I can find populations for cities in years past? Even if I don't have a complete list of every city I could want, it would be helpful to find a nearby big city and say "okay, in X year they were Y big, so if my city needs to be smaller I'm looking at Z." I don't want to pick a number just to find that it rivals a major port city of the time.

For my story right now, I'm looking to compare it to cities in Germany and Denmark in 1900, pre-WW1 stuff. But I expect this is a resource a lot of people would be interested in.

 

[pmmg]

Just a google search. Berlin had 1.8 million ppl in 1900.

 

[CupofJoe]

I'd say this would be a good use of AI. The information is probably out there, so let ChatGPT [other LLMs are available] do the legwork. Just make sure to check the sources it is citing. It might take a couple of tweaks to the prompt to get you what you want.

 

[Mad Swede]

OK, for Denmark in general and Köpenhamn in particular you should go to the official Danish statistics website:

Danmarks Statistik

A rough set of population numbers for Köpenhamn is as follows:

1450: approximately 4500 people
1500: approximately 10 000 people
1650: approximately 30 000 people
1700: approximately 65 000 people
1800: approximately 100 000 people
1850: approximately 130 000 people
1860: approximately 155 000 people
1870: approximately 181 000 people
1880: approximately 235 000 people
1890: approximately 313 000 people
1900: approximately 360 000 people

Note that the population increases significantly in the 1800s. You need to think a bit about how organised and industrialised your society is, as these are factors in determining how big a city can get.

 

[AlexS]

I have a scene where someone needs to state a city's population, but I have no frame of reference how big a population of X is at any given year.
I can look up real-world cities in various parts of Europe and see modern populations, but I don't know what they would have been like in 1900.
I could extrapolate and say my city has a population of 10,000 or 5,000 or whatever, but I don't know what that would really look like for given era.

Does anyone know where I can find populations for cities in years past? Even if I don't have a complete list of every city I could want, it would be helpful to find a nearby big city and say "okay, in X year they were Y big, so if my city needs to be smaller I'm looking at Z." I don't want to pick a number just to find that it rivals a major port city of the time.

For my story right now, I'm looking to compare it to cities in Germany and Denmark in 1900, pre-WW1 stuff. But I expect this is a resource a lot of people would be interested in.

I just google "population of <city name> <year>" and usually get reliable results.

 

[Aldarion]

I have a scene where someone needs to state a city's population, but I have no frame of reference how big a population of X is at any given year.
I can look up real-world cities in various parts of Europe and see modern populations, but I don't know what they would have been like in 1900.
I could extrapolate and say my city has a population of 10,000 or 5,000 or whatever, but I don't know what that would really look like for given era.

Does anyone know where I can find populations for cities in years past? Even if I don't have a complete list of every city I could want, it would be helpful to find a nearby big city and say "okay, in X year they were Y big, so if my city needs to be smaller I'm looking at Z." I don't want to pick a number just to find that it rivals a major port city of the time.

For my story right now, I'm looking to compare it to cities in Germany and Denmark in 1900, pre-WW1 stuff. But I expect this is a resource a lot of people would be interested in.

I found these...

Biggest Cities in Europe in 1900

Name the most populous European cities in the year of 1900.

www.jetpunk.com

The 20 Largest Cities in Europe in 1900

Europe accounts for 11% of all continents’ total population and has been growing increasingly every year. It is the third most populated continent with almost 750 million people, falling behind Africa and Asia. In 1900, Europe was the second-largest continent by population with 406 million...

journeyz.co

The Nineteenth-Century Urbanization Transition in the First World

 

[skip.knox]

Yeah, 1900 is easy. Even 1800 isn't too hard. But there was not a national census before the late 1700s, and nothing very reliable even at the city level. It becomes inference, deduction, and guesswork. But the above advice does return results (e.g., population of Venice in 1500 was around 180,000). If you're just trying to get a sense of perspective, it's out there. A query for "list of largest cities in europe in 1600" gave me, among other links, this gem:

List of largest European cities in history - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[ThinkerX]

Yeah, 1900 is easy. Even 1800 isn't too hard. But there was not a national census before the late 1700s, and nothing very reliable even at the city level. It becomes inference, deduction, and guesswork. But the above advice does return results (e.g., population of Venice in 1500 was around 180,000). If you're just trying to get a sense of perspective, it's out there. A query for "list of largest cities in europe in 1600" gave me, among other links, this gem:

List of largest European cities in history - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

A lot of cities lost a lot of people after the fall of the Roman Empire, Rome in particular.

 

[Miles Lacey]

Just one thing to keep in mind when looking up population figures for a city in 1900. The boundaries of the city in 1900 may not be the same as now so it would be a good idea to check what was, or wasn't, part of that city in 1900 as opposed to now.

For example, in 1900 Berlin had an area of 66 km² and a population of 1.9 million. In 1920 Berlin's borders were exapanded to 878 km² and its population shot up to about 3.8 million.

Another example is London. Greater London is 1,572 km² and has 9,089,736 people living there. However, Greater London didn't exist until 1965. Prior to then London referred to the County of London which was 303 km². In the 1901 census there were 4,536,563 people living in the county. Fortunately, the old county coincides with present-day Inner London so population comparisons can still be made.

However, there is good news. Some cities haven't changed their borders in centuries like Bremen, Hamburg and Copenhagen Municipality. Thus, with these places you'll be comparing the proverbial apples with apples.

 

[skip.knox]

A lot of cities lost a lot of people after the fall of the Roman Empire, Rome in particular.

Yes, and invasions and the Justinian Plague. All in all, a rough few centuries in there.

Cities provide many conveniences to their citizens. They also provide many conveniences to raiding hordes.

 

[Aldarion]

Yes, and invasions and the Justinian Plague. All in all, a rough few centuries in there.

Cities provide many conveniences to their citizens. They also provide many conveniences to raiding hordes.

Was the loss of population due to raiding hordes, however, or because countryside got devastated by the raids and the plagues, thus reducing its ability to actually support the city size? No food, no town. Plus, most of the larger cities appear for the purposes of trade... so when raving hordes of barbarians make trading slightly more perilous than saying no to one's wife, it is only natural that large trading cities would have to slim down a couple of sizes.

That being said, hordes would have a direct impact on the physical size of the city, though not necessarily the population: smaller circumference makes city walls much easier to defend, so even if you haven't lost any population (unlikely), you'd still want to reduce the physical size of the inhabited area if you are hurriedly making new fortifications.

 

[Prince of Spires]

Was the loss of population due to raiding hordes, however, or because countryside got devastated by the raids and the plagues, thus reducing its ability to actually support the city size? No food, no town.

It probably depends on the size of the city. The issue for ancient Rome for instance wasn't the raiders running through the countryside. That countryside couldn't keep Rome fed anyway. It was the collapse of the trade routes running to Rome (especially from Egypt) that meant that Rome couldn't keep feeding its people.

That being said, hordes would have a direct impact on the physical size of the city, though not necessarily the population: smaller circumference makes city walls much easier to defend, so even if you haven't lost any population (unlikely), you'd still want to reduce the physical size of the inhabited area if you are hurriedly making new fortifications.

This I feel is a bit a simplification of all the factors going into defending walls. Defending a larger city can actually be more economical in terms of manpower. Simply because the surface area of a city increases faster than the circumference (doubling the wall length could get you 4 times the area). So you could fit more people per meter of wall in the larger city, meaning you would have more defenders per stretch of wall.

Also, it depends on any natural features included in the wall. And things like access to food and water. And one large city is probably easier to defend that 4 small ones.

 

[skip.knox]

It's exceedingly difficult to say what lead to losses in particular places. We simply don't have the right kind of records.

Populations rebound .... absent other factors. Cities are magnets; if the population suffers a demographic crisis, you tend to get people migrating in from the countryside. But now add invasions on a major scale--including the invaders actually settling in the region--then the usual dynamic is disrupted. Now add plague or severing of food supplies, then we can see long-term population decline.

WRT city walls, someone help me out here, but I can't name a single instance where a city constructed walls *inside* the perimeter of older walls. They pillages existing walls, sure, but that was to constructing buildings, not walls. I'd like to learn of such exceptions.

 

[Aldarion]

It probably depends on the size of the city. The issue for ancient Rome for instance wasn't the raiders running through the countryside. That countryside couldn't keep Rome fed anyway. It was the collapse of the trade routes running to Rome (especially from Egypt) that meant that Rome couldn't keep feeding its people.

Rome was very much an exception, though.

This I feel is a bit a simplification of all the factors going into defending walls. Defending a larger city can actually be more economical in terms of manpower. Simply because the surface area of a city increases faster than the circumference (doubling the wall length could get you 4 times the area). So you could fit more people per meter of wall in the larger city, meaning you would have more defenders per stretch of wall.

Uh... read again what I wrote.

so even if you haven't lost any population (unlikely), you'd still want to reduce the physical size of the inhabited area if you are hurriedly making new fortifications.

If you look at ancient cities, where defense was either unnecessary (Pax Romana) or relied primarily on massive field armies, you have wide streets, geometric layout, and city walls either do not exist at all or are relatively weak and linear (again, geometric layout). And cities themselves are physically massive, comparatively speaking.

By contrast, late Roman cities and forts, as well as those of early Medieval period, are typically small, very densely populated, and buildings inside the city have some very interesting design elements intended to save space (although IIRC that had more to do with avoiding taxes than outright urban planning).

Yes, if you have a city of 10 000 people and city of 50 000 people with equal population density, city of 50 000 will be more economical in terms of defense. But that is only assuming equal population density. And in both cases, reducing the defended area - that is, increasing the population density - would make the city more defensible (unless, that is, doing so requires abandoning some very prominent natural defenses - e.g. optimal size for the city of Paris, defense-wise, is equal to the size of Ile de la Cite, whatever its population).

Also, it depends on any natural features included in the wall. And things like access to food and water. And one large city is probably easier to defend that 4 small ones.

True. But none of that is really relevant to my original point.

Populations rebound .... absent other factors. Cities are magnets; if the population suffers a demographic crisis, you tend to get people migrating in from the countryside. But now add invasions on a major scale--including the invaders actually settling in the region--then the usual dynamic is disrupted. Now add plague or severing of food supplies, then we can see long-term population decline.

Agreed. But cities have some hard size limits, primarily related to logistics (food etc). Disrupt that, and you reduce the maximum attainable size. Which is why we see reduction in average size of cities during times of upheaval, such as the Migration Period in the Western Europe, or Anatolian cities during the 7th - 9th centuries.

WRT city walls, someone help me out here, but I can't name a single instance where a city constructed walls *inside* the perimeter of older walls. They pillages existing walls, sure, but that was to constructing buildings, not walls. I'd like to learn of such exceptions.

They usually didn't. What typically happened in cases I have meant was that you had an original city that was a trade hub, very large and situated on a very accessible point - such as rivers, open plains and such (particularly rivers in the open plains). But in new conditions these attributes that made it extremely good trading spot would also make it extremely vulnerable to enemy attack, so population would pack up and move to a different, more defensible spot.

For example, you have ancient Salona which got sacked, and its surviving population established the city of Split in Diocletian's palace. Ragusa was constructed on an island by survivors of destroyed cities such as Epidaurum. During the Arab invasions, in 852 Pope Leo settled Corsican refugees in Porto.

That being said, there were cases where cities that did not have walls previously constructed new walls well inside the old city borders, effectively reducing the physical size of the city. One such example is Rome, where Aurelian's walls enclosed only a portion of the inhabited area of the city. Byzantine cities often either relocated or contracted (or typically both) following the beginning of troubles in the 7th century:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316247406_Byzantine_Sagalassos

In other cases, city had long since expanded well beyond the limits of its old city walls during the Pax Romana, and then again contracted to the old limits delineated by walls once troubles started again - e.g. Ancyra, Amorion, Amastris...