202410111005 Status: #idea Tags: #history #fertility_rates #british_empire #american_revolution # Fringe religious groups drove population growth in British North America The British West Indies and Spanish American Empire had the benefit of being supremely profitable areas. This attracted a large number of men to oversee the resource extraction and govern the colonies, but placed less emphasis on the arrival of European women and children (particularly in the West Indies due to its unforgiving and hazardous climate). By contrast, North America offered relatively little in the way of economic gain. Instead, it had the allure of a "virgin continent" - there were far fewer natives in what is now the United States and Canada when compared with the Spanish Empire, and none had reached the civilizational complexity of the Incans or the Aztecs. As a result, the wilderness was left largely uncultivated and, in many places, unpopulated. This attracted a variety of extreme religious groups who wanted to avoid persecution (or simply felt that the British Anglican church had betrayed the ideals of the Protestant Reformation). Here, we find groups such as the Puritans and the Quakers coming to the New World in the hopes of creating a "perfect society", without the influence and constraints of the old continent. Since these religious groups were primarily motivated by finding a new way of life, they brought their children and their wives alongside them. Moreover, these religious colonies encouraged high marriage rates and early marriage ages, ensuring that there was ample time for women to have as many children as possible. This preservation of the married family unit, along with their religious tendencies to "be fruitful and multiply", led many parts of British America to have extremely high fertility rates - perhaps the highest in the world during the mid-to-late 1600s and 1700s. "Both Canada and the white population of the English colonies experienced increases of **2½ percent per year during the eighteenth century**. Seventeenth-century rates, beginning from a low base and more influenced by immigration, **were even higher**. In contrast, the expansion of population in **early modern Europe rarely exceeded 1 percent per annum** over an extended period." (emphasis mine). [[The Demographic History of Colonial New England]] [[The British Empire was built in a decentralized way]] --- # References [[Empire_ the rise and demise of the British world order and the lessons for global power]] [[The Demographic History of Colonial New England]]