386 
Recent Expansion 
We may note very briefly the condi- 
tions which made possible the great 
and sudden expansion in the numbers 
of the European peoples in the nine- 
teenth century. Evidently these con- 
ditions affected the English-speaking 
peoples to a greater extent than any 
others; for their numbers have in- 
creased ninefold since the beginning 
of last century. They now form more 
than a fourth of all the peoples of 
European origin, whereas in 1800 they 
were less than one-eighth. 
It is clear that this particular expan- 
sion is chiefly due to the peopling of 
North America; for that continent now 
contains two-thirds of the English- 
speaking peoples, whereas it contained 
only one-fifth of them in 1800." The 
growth began with the industrial revo- 
lution, when the application of me- 
chanical power increased the produc- 
tion of manufactured goods and so led 
to an increase in the populations of 
the industrial areas. The increased 
demand for food was at first met by a 
more intense cultivation of the home- 
land; but the insufficiency of this 
source of food was shown in the 
“hungry forties’? of last century. The 
pressure of a hungry people removed 
fiscal barriers which had hindered the 
free import of food, while the im- 
provements in transport made the 
virgin lands west of the Appalachians 
accessible, and the population of 
Great Britain multiplied on a food 
supply obtained from oversea. The 
demand stimulated the colonization of 
North America and the even greater 
11 Populations of the English-speaking peo- 
ples in millions (Whites only): 
USOte Britishelislesheiane soe ieee 15.9 
Ganadatinern or ionic oe Oot 
TS OO MWR SH Ase Aas ro4 teres Rees RU toe oer 4.3 
Motal ese, rere cea ee herciere 20. 3 
LOSI Britisht isles ase ae ee 49 
1941 Australia and N.Z..... | 59 
SoutheAtricaa sewer 1 
Canada and Newfound- 
MAN Geese ccrlstee/eherchakaplsuehe | 127 
1940 MON SHA Saas fekionions qa 119 
Motala aw cecaoctscin cent 186 
ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1948 
increase of its population. But there 
is little likelihood of the discovery of 
another New World to allow an- 
other such expansion of numbers until 
man conquers the equatorial jungles. 
Distribution 
The final limiting factor to the 
growth of population is that of the 
food supply; and since man must 
obtain practically the whole of his 
food from the land,!* the next im- 
portant questions in this study are 
‘What is the extent of the available 
land?”? and “How much of this land 
is capable of being used for the sup- 
port of mankind by the production of 
materials for food, shelter, and tools, 
with which to satisfy human wants?” 
The area of the lands outside the 
polar regions is known to a fair degree 
of accuracy. Omitting the perma- 
nently icebound lands, the total area 
of the remainder, the available land, 
is about 50 million square miles.¥ 
Thus the average density of popula- 
tion is nearly 40 persons per square 
mile, a figure which may be of some 
interest as a basis for comparisons; 
though in fact the density varies very 
widely, and the most characteristic 
feature of the distribution of popula- 
tion is its extreme unevenness. 
Of the total of 2,000 million people 
the greater number live in three com- 
paratively small regions of particularly 
favorable environment (see fig. 1). In 
the northwest of the Old World the 
populous region of Europe is limited 
on the north by the parallel of 60° N. 
latitude and the upper valley of the 
river Volga, on the east by the Ural 
Mountains and the Caspian and Per- 
sian Deserts, and on the south by the 
12 Tt is not possible to determine with any 
precision what amount or proportion of 
human food is obtained from the sea. This 
does not affect the value of our estimates of 
population capacity, since these supplies are 
included in the resources of the existing 
populations on which those estimates are 
based. 
13 C. B. Fawcett, The extent of the cultiv- 
able land, in Geographical Journal, Decem- 
ber 1930. 
