Famille et population en Chine du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle à la lumière d'un ouvrage récent de Liu Ts'ui-Jung

摘要

Taking as its starting point the huge sample of 260.000 people born in China between the 13th and the 19th century used by Liu Ts'ui-Jung in her récent study on Lineage population, our study aims at assessing the premodern demographic evolution of China. Inasmuch the method of family reconstruction actually limited the scope of the her book, Liu Ts'ui-Jung was not able to go beyond the description of a specific demographic regime defined by three elements : 1) universal marriage ; 2) a moderate level of masculine fertility ; and 3) a life expectation at 15 comprised between 30 and 40. Thèse conditions would not allow the constitution of many extended households, whereas the annual rate of growth would be somewhere around 1 %, a situation having little in common with the présent day "population explosion". Using data included in the book, but not considered for the démonstration, we have been able to establish a dramatical deterioration of the mortality pattern from the middle of the 18th century onwards. Accordingly, the proportion of widows increases whereas fertility declines. These new findings shed a new light on the history of the Chinese population which would be characterized with a long period of growth followed by a crisis generated by a surge of the mortality rate.