The Opportunity to Multiply: Demographic Aspects of Modern Colonialism

The era of modern colonialism has also been the period of rapid and accelerating population increase throughout most of the world. The beginning of this trend was in Europe, and along with the expansion of European-originating influences, shock waves of demographic change seized larger and larger parts of mankind. The culmination of this trend may not yet be in sight; the lack of economic balance which it has brought to many countries belongs to the legacy of the colonial era and constitutes one of the principal socio-economic problems of the present and the immediate future. Its probable continuation cannot be ignored here; forecasts of population growth made by the United Nations or found in other recent literature will therefore be discussed along with the historical data on population change. The latter as well as the former must perforce be presented in rather broad terms, as magnitudes rather than as precise data.