After the Industrial Revolution, London became the first city

>>74199570
>After the Industrial Revolution, London became the first city since ancient Rome to reach 1 million people. The Industrial Revolution led to population booms around the world, followed by the baby boom after WWII. Why the fuck has Europe stagnated so much? The rest of the world grew, the rest of the world developed, but Europe still has relatively small populations and a bunch of old ass architecture. What happened?
Because like any other civilization past their golden age we got comfy, stagnated and now we're paying the price for it.

>>74199605

But even third world countries like Senegal feel more modern than most of Europe. They aren't exactly the cleanest but they don't feel like they're out of a fairytale from the dark ages.

What you see in third world countries is what England was like during the Industrial Revolution. High birth rates and low death rates causing a huge population boom. People moving into the cities. Random orphan children running around. Lots of crime and trash everywhere.
It's simply because Europe and other developed countries are in Stage 4/5 of its demographic transition while most other countries are in Stage 2/3 so eventually those countries in Africa are going to plateau and drop.
Never before in history have we reached stage 5 which is when the death rates exceed the birth rates (because of an aging population). Only two countries are like this: Germany and Japan. Japan is worrisome because they don't have immigrants at least to replace them. At least Germany has rapefugees but I'm sure actual ethnic Germans have a negative growth rate.

>>74199687

I'm not really talking about that though. Even in countries that had relatively low populations compared to England, they now have overwhelmingly huge populations while England has remained low.

But what I'm referring to most is the "modernism" seen around the world. While everyone else was constructing massive cities and doing global trade, Europe was too busy fighting each other and then after WII they just never made a comeback despite having the money to do so. Sure they're some of the wealthiest nations in the world but they all look like they're stuck in the past.

>>74199570
>After the Industrial Revolution, London became the first city since ancient Rome to reach 1 million people
I call bullshit

"Europe" has 600+million people.Is it really consisered small?

>>74199570
>The Industrial Revolution led to population booms around the world, followed by the baby boom after WWII.
Fuck.
That "prosperity" should have only been kept for Europe and America.
I can't even buy a doghouse for humans to live.

>>74199570
>London became the first city since Rome to reach 1 million people

Not counting Beijing, Nanjing, Chang'an, or Edo.

>>74199789

They have made a comeback. Living standards greatly improved during the postwar period when compared to before and scientific R&D is still highly concentrated there. They also get a huge chunk of global tourism, and though your mileage may vary if that's actually a good thing, it's an indicator of how influential their culture continues to be.

It's more the case that everyone else is catching up, and the thing about industrialization and technology is that it's a hell of a lot easier, cheaper, and faster to copy (and improve, though I'm not sure how much that applies to China) than to lead the field.

>>74199945

Pretty sure the Chinese population in total was very small at the time. China had roughly the same population as the entire Roman Empire (when it was around) and it didn't grow too much until the 1800s (at least when compared to other parts of the world).

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>>74200113

Since the fall of the Roman Empire, no other polity could really come close to the sheer population size of China, and that remained as true then as it does now. The population of the Ming was about 150 million at its end; the Qing, as you can see from the chart below, was 303 million by 1791. This easily surpasses the entire population of Europe at the time.

China also tended to have the biggest cities, with only a few, relatively rare exceptions. They pretty much reached the limit of how many people you could cram into one area without railroads.