The Human Tide

Population size and growth are the lens for this history of the modern world. Paul Morland argues that the biggest events of recent centuries cannot be properly understood without asking how many people lived in a country, how fast that number was changing, and where those people moved.

The book takes in Britain's imperial rise and decline, America's arrival as a superpower, and the shifting threats posed by Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and Soviet Russia. Each of these is read through demography, the study of population.

A central idea is the demographic transition, a period of rapid population change that first appeared in the British Isles and then spread across the globe. Morland follows how that pattern shaped the course of world history, and how it has made and unmade nations, continents and empires.

This is narrative non-fiction pitched at general readers who want a way into the forces behind familiar headlines. It treats population as the underlying explanation for how the present world came about, and it moves across countries and eras to make that case.