Embedded Files
With the Agricultural Revolution came, for the first time in human history, a large surplus of food. As a result, populations which were kept low through starvation, famine, and disease, began to grow. As you can see from the graph, for most of the time people had civilisations the world’s population was well under a billion, but in the time of the Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions the population begins to rise rapidly. Because fewer people were dying young they also had the opportunity to have larger families, adding to the population pressures. Although mortality rates among children were still much higher than today, families remained large. At the start of the 18th century, women typically gave birth to eight to ten children; however, due to high mortality rates, only raised five or six children.
By 1835, the average number of children dropped to 4.9. Despite the birth rate continuing to drop, the average life expectancy rose, resulting in higher populations.
A potato affected by blight
Today the world still suffers from environmental disasters. Parts of the world still occasionally have famines and starvation affects many people in the poorest countries. Unlike today, however, there were no relief agencies like the United nations to organise food shipments, nor were there television advertisements asking people to donate money to help starving people.
One place that suffered a natural disaster was Ireland. People in Ireland, especially the poor, had come to depend on the potato as their main source of food in the middle of the 19th Century. Men would eat up to 60 potatoes every day as part of their diet. When a disease known as “potato blight” destroyed much of the crop in 1845 more than a million Irish died. This natural disaster was the source of a great deal of population movement around the world. To escape the famine, which lasted for 7 years, another million Irish emigrated to places like the United States and Australia. In Toronto, Canada, more than half the population of 1851 had come from Ireland. Ireland lost a quarter of it’s population to starvation and emigration in this time.
Group Work
Group Work
Form groups of 3. Each group member needs to complete ONE of the following activities in your books.
Questions
Questions
1. What benefit did the Agricultural Revolution bring?
2. What happened because of the surplus of food?
3. What was an effect of fewer young deaths?
4. Typically, how many children were women having in the 18th century?
5. How does the world help victims of natural disasters today?
6. Describe the diet of Irish people in the middle of the 19th Century.
7. What caused the destruction of the potato crop in 1845?
8. How many people left Ireland and where did they go?
Thinking
Thinking
Answer each question in a paragraph response:
What reasons can you think of, including food production, that would have caused the world’s population to remain low for so long?
What problems do we have in society because of the excess of food being produced?
What do you think would happen to Australia if the crops that we depend upon such as wheat were to suddenly die?
Creative
Creative
Write a letter to the British Parliament in the year 1650 warning them of what is to come. You must provide reasonable solutions to managing the upcoming revolutions within Britain.
Consider:
Human Migration
Pollution
Population Increase
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