What this is
The Technic civilization future history takes off in
our near future, in the year 2055 (THE SATURN GAME), and the Great
Survey begins in 2150. Thus, the earliest part of the Technic history
falls within a period for which we now have plausible
world population projections. Armed with these projections and some
guesstimates regarding mean population growth rates per annum, it is
possible to extrapolate - roughly - the Human population in the
Polesotechnic and Imperial Eras.
I will in this endeavour make use of Sean Brooks
revision of Sandra Miesels chronology of the Technic civilization,
because it just makes sense. Thus I take the Empire to have been founded
in the early 27th century rather than
the 28th and Flandry’s time to be the 32nd century, him being born around 3100 AD, not in 3000 AD.
We also know the rough number of inhabited planets at
the height of the Empire - 100.000 worlds acknowledged the supremacy of
the Terran Emperors, although even in the late Empire there were
occasional human colonies who did not, and some
worlds were primarily inhabited by non-human sophonts. Even so, we can
calculate a rough average population for a human world during the height
of the Empire. But we also see that
average might well not be typical. There is reason to believe that only the earliest human colonies ever became worlds with populations counted in the billions.
Since the Technic stories give some data regarding
the population and time of founding for certain colonies like Nyanza, we
can use our growth estimates to count backwards and determine the
likely size of the initial colonising population.
Armed with this information, we can speculate somewhat informedly about
the difference between old, populated worlds and the typical colonial
Imperial world. For example, we will find that even in the late Empire,
Terra herself would have been exceptional
for its massive population, outstripping any other human world by a
large margin.
Where to begin?
The UN at present estimates
(World Population prospects, 2019) that the world population will reach
around 10,9 billion in 2100, although warning that it might grow as much
as to around 13 billion or more worst case.
If we interpret the “Time of Chaos” as a serious disturbance of
civilization – famines, plagues, ecological disasters, wars – perhaps
even nuclear - then those numbers would have to be knocked back a bit –
but on the other hand increased wealth after the end
of those upheavals and consequent raised standards of living compared
to those the UN predicts might, ironically, knock them back more!
The Time of Chaos
The Technic History begins with a “Time of Chaos”
taking place in the decades before THE SATURN GAME – although the nature
of those troubles is left unclear. It might have been no more than our
present sorry times being looked back at with
horror from a better future, a time when indeed we are risking ruining
both Earth and civilization. But we can make an educated guess.
In 2009, prof. John Beddington, chief scientific
adviser to the British government predicted what he called “a perfect
storm of shortages” – energy, food and water by 2030, which would usher
in an era of international conflict and upheaval.
This is around the same time we’d expect the coming climate disaster to
really start to bite, which of course only reinforces the good
professors projections.
This indeed sounds a lot like a “Time of chaos”.
It is not necessary to speculate on the actual
sequence of events, but by 2055 the world was unified under one
government, there was ample energy thanks to the introduction of
efficient fusion power, and other environmental issues had been
solved or were in the process of being solved by means of moving
production and mining into space. Fusion power alone could well have
solved the energy and climate crisis – but it is almost unimaginable
that we would peacefully arrive at a World Government,
the core of the future Solar Commonwealth. It is more likely that a
period of savage wars over dwindling resources begun in the 2030s and/or
2040s. This might have caused a powerful coalition of nations to
confederate to restore global order, in effect creating
the embryo of the future Solar Commonwealth. In any case, the World
Government, whether already known as the Commonwealth or not and whether
by military means or not, won a complete victory. The only hint PA
gives as to the identity of the winning faction
is that the Technic civilization was a heir to the Western one – so
reasonably, we could guess that the coalition was at least lead by
western powers. It is also notable that Anglic is the dominant Technic
language.
Assumptions regarding world population and growth rates in early Technic Era
Given the probability of large scale casualties from the climate crisis and wars, possibly even limited nuclear war, plus the expected lower birth rates at higher standards of living during the 2nd half of the 21st century, I’m going to assume a world population of 10 billion in 2100, somewhat down from UN estimates.
As for the rate of growth until then, the most
developed countries (Europe and North America) are expected to have
virtually zero population growth during the coming 80 years, growing
very slightly until 2050, and then contracting in the
following 50 years back to 2020 levels. But assuming essentially zero
growth is incompatible with what we know of the Technic era. World
population will peak because the resources of Earth are not
inexhaustible, leading to the cost of raising children gradually
raising until a balance is struck. But Technic civilization,
eventually expanding to a hundred thousand worlds, knows not such
limitations. Also, Technic civilization is not quite the same as
Western. Standards of living are higher, the society richer. The
number of children each couple decides to have will be dictated only to
a very small extent by economic opportunities, most people will afford
to have about as many or as few children as they want.
And this, in fact, comes very close to the current
situation in Sweden, a country whose rates of births to deaths is
notably higher than most other western countries. While taxes are
admittedly high, child care is all but free, schooling
is free, even higher education is free. “Free” is of course deceptive,
since taxation still has to be payed – but this is regardless of having
children or not, and children are in fact also directly subsidized by
the state. Of course, children still need
to be clothed, feed, housed and brought up, but for the vast majority
of Swedes, the number of children they choose to have is limited far
more by their life style preferences than by financial considerations.
Thus I am going to assume that the proportion
of net births (births minus deaths) to population in Sweden is close to
the natural growth rate of a human race living in affluence, security
and with mostly western values. There will of course be groups retaining
religious and/or cultural mores dictating
much larger families – but so are there in Sweden, where roughly 20% of
current population is either born abroad or born of two parents born
abroad. Much if not most of this group originates outside of Europe.
So Swedish growth rates it is. And this annual rate
of net births to total population was for the period 2013-2019 on
average 0,25% per annum, varying between 0,23% and 0,27%. This gives a
reasonable growth rate to be applied to the human
population as a whole in the Technic Era.
The first colonies
Another thing we can perhaps infer is that in the
World-State that followed the time of Chaos, it eventually became
possible to allow open borders and global freedom om movement. The
reason for this supposition is that it is stated that the
first wave of colonization was driven by a desire to preserve national
identity in a world that was gradually moving towards a monoculture.
Thus were founded ethnic-based colonies such as Germania, Nuevo Mexico,
Dayan, Denitza and many others. This freedom
of movement is only imaginable if the less developed areas of Earth
were able to catch up with the more developed ones, which is also part
of the underlying assumptions influencing the overall human growth
rates. Compare with the European Union, where freedom
of movement before the inclusion of the former eastern bloc countries
caused no resentment whatsoever, while afterwards, it contributed
substantially to Brexit. Migration that moves small numbers both ways is
much less threatening, indeed is seen as much more
as personal opportunity than threat. But over a span of centuries, even
such limited migration would undoubtedly meld the nations of the world
ever closer together, a process reinforcing the effects of a global mass
culture. This was a likely a very drawn
out process, still very much uncompleted by the times of van Rijn and
Falkayn (see HOW TO BE ETHNIC IN ONE LESSON) but more so in Flandry’s
days.
This desire to preserve national cultures explains
the otherwise puzzling appearance of League Latin as a trader lingua
franca. To the newly formed ethnic worlds, using the Anglic of the Solar
Common-wealth as a common language was probably
unthinkable, at least early on. A resurrected, dead language like
League Latin was much more palatable.
Using these assumptions defined earlier, we’ll find
that by 2150 when the Great Survey was launched, human population would
have reached roughly 11,3 billion, making conditions on Earth rather
cramped. In the following 50 years, humans colonised
a number of worlds in a first wave of expansion. These worlds must
later have become the most important and populous worlds of the Empire,
as we will now show.
If we follow our extrapolated growth curve, human population would rise from 11,3 to 12,8 billion by the end of the 23rd
century. Given that Earth would have been rather crowded at the time,
we can assume that most of this increase
went off-world, indeed it is likely that Earth population dwindled
somewhat. But with many planets colonised already, and especially if the
initial wave of colonisation was driven by “ethnic” motives as is
implied, then there would have been much less incentives
to start new colonies in the following centuries – there are not that
many nations on Earth! Rather than founding a new colony, most people
would emigrate from the “old country” on Earth to the new “national”
planet where there would still be ample space.
There are currently around 6.000 ethnic groups on Earth, if we go by
language as a definition, but most of these are very small and already
on the verge of assimilation into larger groups at present in 2020 AD. A
century on, most of these would have disappeared.
On the other hand, the largest ethnic groups would have had little
reason to fear assimilation into a Globish culture already in the 23rd century. Thus, it would be mainly small to middle size ethnicities that
would feel the need to set down roots
in a new world. This might explain why we never hear of a Han Chinese
planet, but we do hear about Germania, Sassania (Persian), Dayan
(Jewish/Israeli), Nuevo Mexico, Hermes (Scandinavian), Unan Besar
(Malayan) and so on. Even adding a few planets colonised
not on ethnical but ideological basis (like pacifist Esperance), these
colonies numbered at most a couple of hundred. Some of the first
colonies would not necessarily have been ethnic but merely a
cross-section of the polyglot populations of Earth – Alpha
Centauri springs to mind, being likely among the first worlds
colonised.
I will refer to these first colonies as the “Great
Worlds” because of their later prominence among others in terms of
population and importance.
By the end of the first wave of colonization, we
would have nearly 3 billion humans living on perhaps 200 major colonies
at most, and any number of much smaller colonies set up not for
ethnical/ideological reasons but for commercial, like
mining or trade, or simply pure pioneering drive. Their population
would remain largely insignificant although growing in the coming
two-three centuries, unless for some reason attracting a large number of
colonists from Earth. The average Great World would
have perhaps 15 million inhabitants, mostly emigres arriving over the
course of the last half century. The largest would have more. Consider
for example the planet of Germania, one of the most important of the
early “ethnic” colonies. If we start with the
current estimate of 150 million Germans of all subgroups in 2020, and
always assuming that there will be no real population growth in the
developed nations from here to 2100, then we could assume that by 2200,
Germans as a whole would number a little over
190 million. If, again, we assume most of the growth to go off-world,
then Germania could have as much as 40 million inhabitants by that date,
maybe slightly more. Other worlds would have correspondingly less.
The Polesotechnic league era
Total human population would approach 24 billion by the mid-25th
century, the start of the era of Nicholas van Rijn and David Falkayn.
If we assume more or less constant Earth population – maybe growing to
12 billion to allow for
increased wealth and technology making room for more, then we have
another 12 billion people distributed across roughly 200 Great Worlds
and any number of smaller ones.
Given that even these “Great Worlds” were still
virtually empty compared to Earth, and that inevitably they would have
grabbed the best, most human-inhabitable worlds available after the
Great Survey, it is reasonable to assume there was
very little colonisation of new worlds going on - most of those wanting
to emigrate from Earth choosing one of the existing colonial worlds.
And any emigration from the larger colonies would be mainly by those fed
up with their rustic monoethnic surroundings,
instead longing for the cosmopolitan sophistication of old Earth, since
untouched land would still have been plentiful on their existing
worlds. This would not change throughout the era of the Polesotechnic
League – even by its very end around 2600 AD, with
around 35 billion human beings in total, the average Great World had no
more than 120 million people – the same as Earth around 1000-500 BC.
Smaller colonies remained minuscule for the most part, unless one for
some reason caught the fancy of would-be emigres
from Earth. Even so, their inhabitants were likely counted in the
thousands, rather than millions.Break-up of the Commonwealth and The Times of Troubles
The collapse of the Commonwealth would cause not only
the birth of the Terran Empire, but a second wave of human
colonisation. The first of these new colonists were driven by a will to
escape the ever more overbearing and corrupt Commonwealth
– among these would be Avalon, founded by David Falkayn among others.
While not driven by ethnological motifs, like the first wave, they would
in many cases have originated from monocultural Great Worlds and thus
at least start also monocultural. Soon though,
the violent collapse of the Commonwealth would drive a number of people
to escape from the wrecked Earth and Great Worlds of the fallen
Commonwealth. In the case of the Great Worlds, they were still so
sparsely inhabited that even after having been devastated
by invasion and plunder, the colonists could revert to farming to feed
the population. This means that, unless several Great Worlds were
depopulated by war, on the whole the growth of Human population would
not have been greatly affected. In the case of Earth
however, the devastation would have caused severe scarcity, even
famine. While there would have been refugees from every Great World,
those from Earth would logically have been the most numerous.
Probably in many cases, those small colonies founded
earlier for commercial purposes would now receive waves of refugees –
others would settle on entirely new worlds, hoping to escape attention
from raiders. Among these would be less than
ideal planets, like Ocean-covered Nyanza (THE GAME OF GLORY), which
after five centuries and a second wave of colonization had 10 million
inhabitants in Flandry’s time. The original ones had South African
roots, but did most likely not escape directly from
Earth, but rather probably some unmentioned Bantu Culture Great World.
There is mention of a second German colony from which the land-bound
Lubbers hail – Deutschwelt. This might be a parallel case of a colony
set up by refugees from Germania.
This second wave of colonies were probably numerous,
because the need to escape and hide would have been ongoing during the
Times of Troubles. These extended for long enough that some planets,
like Denitza, Hermes, Aeneas or Ansa became culturally
militarised. If we assume that humanity suffered no great genocide
during this era, and that emigration to the Great Worlds from Earth more
or less stopped during this time, then at the close of the Times of
Troubles around 2700 AD there would be around 44
billion humans, with about 10 billion still living on Earth, 28 billion
inhabiting the two hundred or so Great Worlds and another 6 billion
descended from refugees spread out over much of the remining 100.000
worlds of the future Empire – with on average around
60.000 inhabitants each. Of course, some would be substantially larger,
like Avalon or Nyanza.The Imperial Era
During the rule of the Terran Empire, the Imposition
of the Pax and resumption of Trade would have allowed Terra herself to
prosper again. Being the centre of Empire, we could expect her
population to swell – emigration would largely stop,
or even be reversed, especially early in the history of the Empire when
Terra and her immediate neighbourhood were safe, but many human worlds
were not. Also, as the Empire expanded, the administrative needs for
manpower would have grown enormous so that at
it’s peak, Terra held an population far above over what it could
sustain with its own resources. Similar to Italy in the Roman Empire,
the capital became parasitic, dependent on the provinces even for its
basic needs.
By 2900 AD, towards the end of the era of Imperial
expansion, the human race would amount to about 73 billion people,
whereof perhaps as many as 18 billion lived on Terra herself, 45 billion
on the Great Worlds (average population above 200
million) and the final 10 billion spread out over the 100.000 worlds
mostly settled during the Times of Trouble (average population ca
100.000).
By Flandry’s time in the 32nd century,
total numbers of the human race surpassed 120 billion. Because even the
Great Worlds were still sparsely populated by this time, there was
little colonisation going on, there still being plenty
of space on each. The population of Terra stagnated around 20 billion
and remained at zero growth. Around 75 billion lived in the Great Worlds
of the Empire, still with on average below 400 million inhabitants,
similar to Earth in the High Middle Ages. But
on the on the 100.000 worlds of the Empire, now 25 billion people made
their lives. On average, there were still no more than a quarter of a
million people on each. Given that a few, like Nyanza, had populations
counting in the millions though, the typical
colonial world would have been even less densely populated. Even at
this late stage, Terra outstripped the population of almost any other
human world by 20 to one.The Long night
Before the fall of the Empire around 3500 AD, human
population surpassed 325 billion. Of these more than 200 billion were on
the Great Worlds, by now with an on average population of a billion
each. Terra herself, remained at 20 billion and
the small worlds made up the remainder with now, on average, a million
people each. But this time, the greater the world, the larger the fall.
With much larger populations, and dependent on the produce from a myriad
smaller colonies, the Great Worlds suffered
a collapse similar of that of Terra during the Time of Troubles. Terra
herself was completely unable to sustain her swollen population after
the fall of the Empire, and having been thoroughly plundered, there were
few star ships to allow the surplus to escape,
nor industries left to build new ones. In the decades following the
ravage of Terra billions died of famine and epidemics. The resulting
turmoil rendered the planet essentially ungovernable – it become a
post-apocalyptic nightmare. Most likely, 70-80% of the
peak Imperial population perished. What was left was an agricultural
world not much more populous than some of the former Great Worlds, its
natural resources depleted to the point of hampering any resurrection of
civilization. The Great worlds suffered less,
but were still plundered to the bone and left with little more than
agriculture to barely be able to sustain their populations. And the
myriad small colonies, too small to fend for themselves could do little
more than subsist – if they were lucky - as imports
of everything from energy cells to star ships ceased. Those who
depended on imported nutrient supplements were doomed. It would be a
thousand years before some of the former Great Worlds had rebuilt enough
to relaunch civilisation, but we can be certain that
it was on those planets that it happened, given the disparity in human
resources and potential for self-reliance between Great Worlds and
second wave colonies.
After the fall of the Terran Empire, our population
growth projections no longer hold. Probably total population plummeted,
even if Terra made up only a small part of humanity by then. Many
colonies would have died out entirely, although
the vast majority did not. The Human race eventually recovered and took
to the stars once more. But that is a different story.
