Karl-Theodor von Inama-Sternegg, “E. Levasseur, La population française. Tome 3me.” (1892)

Inama-Sternegg’s review presents the concluding volume of Levasseur’s study of French population as a synthesis of demographic evidence with economic explanation and political judgment. Having previously reviewed the first two volumes, he concentrates here on the movement from their empirical analysis toward general propositions about population, prosperity, and the international balance of power:

Der dritte (Schluss-) Band enthält mit den Ausführungen über die Gesetze der Bevölkerung und das Gleichgewicht der Nationen die Synthese des weitläufigen Materiales, dessen Analyse in den beiden früheren Bänden ausgeführt ist.

English translation: The third (concluding) volume, with its discussions of the laws of population and the equilibrium of nations, contains the synthesis of the extensive material whose analysis was carried out in the two earlier volumes.

The review follows the volume’s two-part structure. The first part examines population in relation to prosperity, beginning with Malthus and the laws of population growth before considering subsistence, poverty, public assistance, and French fertility. The second considers the equilibrium of nations and races, although Inama-Sternegg’s account chiefly develops comparisons among European great powers. Connecting these parts is the question of how France should respond to its unusually slow population growth. The review’s central argument is that neither state-sponsored fertility incentives nor expectations of a rapid demographic reversal offer a convincing answer. Public health, economic achievement, and cultural capacity provide more credible grounds for national strength.

Inama-Sternegg locates Levasseur’s analysis within the agitation for faster population growth that had continued since the Second Empire. His examples convey the coercive and redistributive possibilities entertained by French policymakers: withholding voting rights from unmarried adult men, increasing charges imposed on bachelors, publicly educating a child from a large family, and supporting unmarried mothers who wished to raise their children. These proposals make fertility a question of citizenship, taxation, and public expenditure, rather than simply a matter of private family life. Against this background, the reviewer emphasizes Levasseur’s opposition to state attempts to increase births:

Levasseur verhält sich gänzlich ablehnend gegen die versuchten Mittel einer Beförderung der Kinderfrequenz durch den Staat.

English translation: Levasseur takes an entirely negative position toward the measures attempted by the state to promote childbearing.

The reviewer explicitly endorses Levasseur’s rejection of free education for every eighth child, an offer introduced in 1884 but sustained for only a few years. Tax relief for parents with seven living children likewise required restriction after its fiscal cost became apparent. The criticism thus rests on administrative experience and financial consequences, not merely on abstract hostility to intervention. Military service introduces a different constraint: shortening it might increase marriage, but Europe’s political circumstances made such a proposal difficult to advance. Demographic policy remained subordinate to the security demands that population anxiety itself helped intensify.

Levasseur’s preferred intervention shifts attention from producing more births to preventing deaths. More effective public health could combat epidemics and childhood diseases, the two major sources of high mortality identified in the review. The underlying demographic distinction is stated succinctly:

Eine irgend namhafte Veränderung in den Zügen der Bevölkerungsbewegung erwartet Levasseur nicht; die Abnahme der Geburtenhäufigkeit kann aber durch eine grössere Abnahme der Sterblichkeit compensiert werden.

English translation: Levasseur does not expect any appreciable change in the patterns of population movement; the decline in the birth rate can, however, be offset by a greater decline in mortality.

This position separates population growth from fertility alone. It also places French experience within a wider relationship between prosperity and reproductive behavior. Levasseur regards France’s wealth as a principal cause of its low fertility and expects other great powers to experience slower growth as their prosperity increases. He regrets the low French birth rate but does not expect it to rise. Inama-Sternegg therefore presents a prognosis that combines concern with restraint: deeply established dispositions cannot simply be transformed by incentives or patriotic appeals.

The international comparisons give that prognosis its political urgency. The review reproduces tables contrasting population totals and rates of increase across the nineteenth century. France’s population rose only modestly while those of several competitors expanded much faster. Its share of the population of the great powers fell from 21 percent in 1816, when there were five such powers, to scarcely 13 percent in 1890, when there were six. These figures turn a domestic concern about fertility into a problem of relative international weight. Yet the conclusion is adaptation rather than demographic competition at any price:

Frankreich muss sich in das Unvermeidliche schicken und die Mittel zur Stärkung seiner politischen Position auf anderen Gebieten des Lebens, in der Steigerung seiner wirtschaftlichen und kulturellen Leistungsfähigkeit suchen; das ist so ziemlich das Endergebnis der sehr interessanten Ausführungen, welche Levasseur diesem Capitel widmet.

English translation: France must resign itself to the inevitable and seek the means of strengthening its political position in other spheres of life, in increasing its economic and cultural capacity; that is, more or less, the final conclusion of the very interesting discussions that Levasseur devotes to this chapter.

Inama-Sternegg closes by emphasizing the qualified optimism of this argument. Immigration and colonial emigration may favor France’s economic and cultural development, while reduced mortality can mitigate declining fertility. Continued civilizational leadership depends on combating the defects and cultivating the virtues of civilization, rather than restoring numerical predominance. The reviewer characterizes Levasseur’s conclusion as both warmly patriotic and philosophical, with confidence grounded especially in French history. The review’s significance lies in this distinction between demographic size and national capacity: it acknowledges the political force of population statistics while resisting their elevation into an exclusive measure of a country’s future.