Urban population in Germany, 1500 - 1850 Ulrich Pfister† 90/2020 † Department of Economics, University of Münster, Germany wissen•leben WWU Münster Urban population in Germany, 1500–1850 Ulrich Pfister University of Münster Department of Economics Institute of Economic and Social History Domplatz 20-22 D-48147 Münster [email protected] April 14, 2020 Abstract In situations where few data are available to document economic activity, the size of the urban population is a valuable indicator for economic development and the spatial pattern of an economy. This study improves the basis for investigations into the quan- titative urban history of Germany by constructing a novel database of the population size of 412 cities that had at least 5000 inhabitants between 1500 and 1850. Compared with earlier databases it uses a considerably larger body of sources, and it improves the resolution of data by interpolating and extrapolating annual series. The resulting series of total urban population is consistent with recent work on aggregate demo- graphic trends in Germany. The trajectory of the urbanization rate shows that Ger- many began its transition from stagnation to growth around 1800, several decades be- fore the onset of industrialization. Regional urbanization rates converged (rather than diverged) in 1815/19–1858, that is, during the transition to the first stage of industrial- ization. Discussion of individual regional histories suggests state formation, (proto- )industrialization and regional population density as possibly relevant determinants of urban growth in the area and time period studied. Keywords: Urban growth, economic development, economic demography. JEL classification: N13, N33, N93, O47. Contents 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 1 2 A database of urban population ......................................................................................... 2 2.1 Coverage, sources, and data issues ................................................................................... 2 2.2 Creating annual series ...................................................................................................... 7 3 From stagnation to growth: National and regional urbanization rates ..................... 10 3.1 Aggregate urban population and the urbanization rate in a European perspective ...... 10 3.2 Contrasting regional experiences ................................................................................... 17 4 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 24 Appendix ................................................................................................................................ 27 A1 Principal data series ........................................................................................................ 27 A2 Additional details on data handling ............................................................................. 30 A2.1 Towns not included in database .................................................................................. 30 A2.2 Towns located in Posen, East and West Prussia, and Schleswig ................................ 30 A2.3 Cases with missing first data point ............................................................................. 31 A3 The urban population database .................................................................................... 32 A4 References ......................................................................................................................... 52 A4.1 Official statistics .......................................................................................................... 52 A4.2 Deutsches Städtebuch .................................................................................................. 52 A4.3 Secondary works used as data sources ......................................................................... 53 A4.4 General bibliography.................................................................................................... 57 1 Introduction The aim of this study is to improve the basis for investigations into the quantitative urban history of Germany in 1500–1850. In situations where few data are available to document economic activity, the size of the urban population is a valuable indicator for both economic development and the spatial pattern of economic activity. Hence, the urbanization rate has served as dependent variable in research into diverse topics such as the economic effects of the Protestant Reformation, of institutional reforms un- dertaken at the beginning of the nineteenth century and of infrastructure development (Acemoglu et al. 2011; Cantoni 2015; Hornung 2015; Keller and Shiue 2016). The principal basis of this and other recent research that involves the urban history of Germany is the handbook compiled by Bairoch et al. (1998). Bairoch et al. list the population of individual towns, rounded to thousand in intervals of 100 years until 1700 and 50 years for later periods. The inclusion criterion is a minimum of 5000 in- habitants; territories are defined according to post-1945 boundaries. For Germany, the Deutsche Städtebuch initiated by Keyser (1939; see Appendix A4.2 for the full list of ref- erences) constitutes the principal source. This study extends the work of the Bairoch group in three respects. First, I extend the body of consulted works, so that coverage is more complete. Second, I increase the resolution of the available information by doc- umenting all information on the population size of a town and by interpolating and extrapolating annual population series for each town. Finally, regional coverage is made consistent with the boundaries of historical Germany that are applied by recent research in historical demography. This makes it possible to derive robust estimates of the national urbanization rate. While the main purpose of this study is to serve as a basis for future research into the quantitative economic history of Germany during the premodern era, it also pro- duces several substantive results. The first result relates to the long-term development of the German economy. The urbanization rate was largely constant at slightly below 10 percent during the early modern era and began to increase around 1800. Thus, the transition from stagnation to growth began several decades before the onset of rapid industrialization in the 1830s and 1840s. This finding is consistent with the trajectories of other indicators for economic development. Secondly, I also provide a descriptive overview of regional urbanization rates, mostly for the first half of the nineteenth cen- tury, selectively also back to the 1740s. Regional disparities were more marked than for urbanization rates based on a juridical criterion and declined at the beginning of industrialization. State formation, (proto-)industrialization and regional population density turn out as promising explanations of urban growth during this period deserv- ing more intensive research. The text comes in two main parts. Section 2 gives an overview of the new urban population database. Details are relegated to Appendices 2 and 3. The data themselves are available from the author on request. Section 3 presents national and regional ur- banization rates, relates them to a European context and discusses potential forces driving urban growth that merit future research. Section 4 concludes. 1 2 A database of urban population 2.1 Coverage, sources, and data issues This study develops annual population series of 412 towns located in Germany and having at least 5000 inhabitants sometime between 1500 and 1850. The database con- sists of two parts: The first comprises the information on population size given in the sources; it is presented in Appendix A3. The second part is made up of the annual series constructed on the basis of the source information. The database is available from the author on request. What follows describes data coverage, the sources used, and issues with historical population data. Since censuses were taken in shorter and longer intervals, the data drawn from the sources are not contiguous, and constructing annual series requires interpolation and extrapolation. Section 2.2 explains the corre- sponding rules. The urban population database covers towns located in historical Germany ac- cording to the definition underlying a recent reconstruction of Germany’s demo- graphic past. It includes the territories that were part of both the Holy Roman Empire (Altes Reich), dissolved in 1806, and the Kaiserreich of 1871. Relative to the Deutsche Bund, the inter-state organisation founded in 1815 in succession to the early modern Reich, this covers all member territories except for the Habsburg lands (Austria, Bohe- mia and Moravia, present-day Slovenia) and the territories that were part of the Low Countries (Limburg and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg). Relative to the Kaiserreich, this area excludes the Prussian provinces of Posen, Eastern and Western Prussia, the Duchy of Schleswig (the northern half of the Province of Schleswig-Holstein), and Al- sace-Lorraine. None of these territories belonged to the early modern Reich. In com- parison to the Old Reich, the present definition excludes the Habsburg lands (which in those days also comprised the southern Netherlands), except for the Vorderen Lande (situated in today’s