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A survey of world demography over the last two centuries or so, from the late eighteenth century to the present. Not sure this is the best overview of the subject. His discussion of capitalist takeoff in Britain is fairly cursory, just one example of histographic narrowness.
Morland argues that "populism" (Trump, Le Pen, AfD) is not primarily about economic anxiety but about the changing ethnic composition of Europeanized countries (p.154-159). Seems to assume that ethnicity and class are distinguished in everyday consciousness, a dubious proposition.
p62 - Spain's American empire was insubstantial, because the Spanish did not settle there en mass, and were thus unable to really control those territories. Britain's empire was nominal until its demographic transition allowed it to send millions of people born in Britain abroad to administer the empire. Mass settlement also made possible the cultivation of more land (and raising of cattle).
p65 - Malthus wrote about conditions in the U.S., and specifially highlighted the possibility of population doubling in a generation thanks to the availability of essentially unlimited quantities of fertile land. Louisiana purchase understood by Napolean as a wise deal given huge numerical preponderance of English speakers among European colonists.
p66 - In 1850 there were 23 million U.S. residents. After 1848, the U.S. absorbed the northern half of Mexico, whose total population was only 100k.
p68 - 'Anglo-Saxons' like Cecil Rhodes and J.R. Seeley believed that they would have a demographic advantage forever, and would therefore dominate the world. They did not foresee that the demographic transition would occur elsewhere.
p75 - It's not entirely clear what caused birth rates to decline in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (as between contraception, abortion, abstinence, etc).