Population of Westeros

[Alden Rothack]

Spain was not only host to centuries of religious wars its also got a desert and it still managed to have a population of 9 million

Which for comparison makes it denser population than the suggested population for the Reach

[Craving Peaches]

10 minutes ago, Alden Rothack said:

Spain was not only host to centuries of religious wars its also got a desert and it still managed to have a population of 9 million

Which for comparison makes it denser population than the suggested population for the Reach

I thought that figure for Spain was for population in  the 18th Century, not medieval Spain. And after Spain was a unified country, not lots of different kingdoms at war with each other.

[Ran]

17 minutes ago, Alden Rothack said:

Spain was not only host to centuries of religious wars

And the Reach has been home to countless wars for thousands of years between the kings of the Reach and those of the Iron Islands, the Rock, the stormlands, and Dorne.

17 minutes ago, Alden Rothack said:

its also got a desert

The extreme depopulation of the area to this day is not due to the desert, according to analysis from demographers. Other similar regions are more populated. Spain is uniquely depopuilated.

17 minutes ago, Alden Rothack said:

Which for comparison makes it denser population than the suggested population for the Reach

6 million in the 1400s, IIRC.

[Alden Rothack]

the population of Spain drops by a third between the 12th and late 13th century but increases by nearly as much starting in the mid to late 15th century, the climate in Spain is closer to Dorne than the Reach but Spain is certainly a good choice for a minimum threshold.

the Reach as Spain gets you 12 to 18 million depending on time period

[Vaegon the dragonless]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

And the Reach has been home to countless wars for thousands of years between the kings of the Reach and those of the Iron Islands, the Rock, the stormlands, and Dorne.

It seem's to me that to keep population low those war would have to be quite disastrous, wich does not seem the case. To me the wars before the Conquest seem like alot less destructive then the later civil wars under the Targaryen. So Im not sure that conflict would be a reason for low population.

[Ran]

5 minutes ago, Vaegon the dragonless said:

It seem's to me that to keep population low those war would have to be quite disastrous, wich does not seem the case. To me the wars before the Conquest seem like alot less destructive then the later civil wars under the Targaryen. So Im not sure that conflict would be a reason for low population.

We don't really know anything about most of them. The point is that attempting to draw 1-to-1 comparisons to any real place or any real history without recognizing that there are a number of things in the history of the setting (and even its cosmology, re: seasons) that means we can't in fact say, "Well, this place was X, so it should be Y." 

As I said, Stone ended up hitting on a number not dissimilar to our own. He didn't think it was great, but then he seemed to misunderstand aspects of the setting that might have changed his assumptions.

[Alden Rothack]

There are but we would have to expect them to adapt otherwise there would be massive dieoffs every winter which doesn't seem to the case, the fact that hundreds to thousands of old fighting men exist argues that even in the Umber lands or the northern mountains the effect is not demographically large.

Hell they somehow survived a generation long winter then again winterfell holds more people than survived the last ice age in the real world.

[Alden Rothack]

24 minutes ago, Vaegon the dragonless said:

It seem's to me that to keep population low those war would have to be quite disastrous, wich does not seem the case. To me the wars before the Conquest seem like alot less destructive then the later civil wars under the Targaryen. So Im not sure that conflict would be a reason for low population.

Probably only in Dorne, the Riverlands appears to have been kicked about both before and after, Dragons do probably increase things a fair bit across the board but its unclear by how many.

[Alden Rothack]

19 minutes ago, Ran said:

We don't really know anything about most of them. The point is that attempting to draw 1-to-1 comparisons to any real place or any real history without recognizing that there are a number of things in the history of the setting (and even its cosmology, re: seasons) that means we can't in fact say, "Well, this place was X, so it should be Y." 

As I said, Stone ended up hitting on a number not dissimilar to our own. He didn't think it was great, but then he seemed to misunderstand aspects of the setting that might have changed his assumptions.

Lyman specifically says that none of them are credible and excluded results which suggested populations over 40 million including every result over 40 people per square mile to fit their point.

[Ran]

None of them are credible to him simply because he doesn't really understand the setting (does he mention what possible impact the wonky seasons could have? Not in his initial analysis, and then makes some incorrect assumptions -- literally one of the first things Cat remarks on seeing of King's Landing while at sea is the granaries, but he suggests there's no sign of such things) and gets some actual facts wrong about it. Doesn't change the fact that the most he can say about the most credible figure of 34.5 million is it's "tough", because of his priors regarding the "right" population density.

But, funnily enough, figures in the 40 million range keep showing up -- his first estimate based on a rough guesstimate of urban population hits at 42 million people, but then he thinks he can do better.

Anyways, end of the day, with some 50+% of the Seven Kingdoms being extremely low density for climate and geography reasons, there's room for the other 50% to be of a higher density and evening out to a feasible density that also happens to match several different estimation methods. 

 

[Alden Rothack]

Lyman specifically states that low population densities and huge cities don't go together than does exactly that to get his conclusion, Lyman for example virtually excludes towns from the urban calculations to get 2 million urban dwellers

Lyman based on his article article on Medieval Demographics seems to like low population densities for some reason.

[Aldarion]

On 9/13/2022 at 9:30 PM, Alden Rothack said:

I was wondering why many people like Ran favour an exceptional low population of 40 Million for the Seven Kingdoms when based on the size and fertile nature of the Reach and the Riverlnds they could easily have more than that on their own, 40 million also gives it a population density lower than 12th century Scotland which isn't compatible with the fertile lands seen in the south.

I ran some numbers here if you are interested:

https://fantasyview.wordpress.com/2020/04/21/population-of-westeros/

Anyway, specific number of 40 million is... not impossible, but not the only plausible one. It is just the simplest estimate (army = 1% of population), but may well be wrong. You can go from as low as 12 million to as high as 98 million people. Anything below or above that is difficult to support, although I personally do favor the higher end of the scale.

[SeanF]

6 hours ago, Aldarion said:

I ran some numbers here if you are interested:

https://fantasyview.wordpress.com/2020/04/21/population-of-westeros/

Anyway, specific number of 40 million is... not impossible, but not the only plausible one. It is just the simplest estimate (army = 1% of population), but may well be wrong. You can go from as low as 12 million to as high as 98 million people. Anything below or above that is difficult to support, although I personally do favor the higher end of the scale.

Generally, I prefer the higher estimates.  There are five cities in the Seven Kingdoms, with perhaps a million and a quarter people.  But there are plenty more settlements (probably hundreds) that would have been viewed as cities in a medieval setting.  Bear in mind that in 1377, places like Exeter, with 4,000 people, and Coventry, with 8,000, were cities.  England’s second city, York, had 12,000.  Overall, the urban population was about 8% of total population size.

I think the link between army sizes and population is broken by virtue of the fact that most regions could never field all their fighting men in one place, because they’d starve.  A region like the Reach might have 200,000 fighting men, but would be quite incapable of keeping that number supplied in one place.  If the Reach is fully mobilised, it has one army at Oldtown, one at Kings Landing, one heading for Storms End, but also, vast numbers in garrisons, depots, and guarding lines of communication.

 

[Aldarion]

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

Generally, I prefer the higher estimates.  There are five cities in the Seven Kingdoms, with perhaps a million and a quarter people.  But there are plenty more settlements (probably hundreds) that would have been viewed as cities in a medieval setting.  Bear in mind that in 1377, places like Exeter, with 4,000 people, and Coventry, with 8,000, were cities.  England’s second city, York, had 12,000.  Overall, the urban population was about 8% of total population size.

 

Eh, that varies a lot. In medieval times, anything with walls was often classed as a city - smallest city could have as a few as 40 inhabitants, so long as it had (stone) walls and a city charter. As for proportion of population, 8% I suspect is true for England, but could be anywhere between 2% and 20%.

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

I think the link between army sizes and population is broken by virtue of the fact that most regions could never field all their fighting men in one place, because they’d starve.  A region like the Reach might have 200,000 fighting men, but would be quite incapable of keeping that number supplied in one place.  If the Reach is fully mobilised, it has one army at Oldtown, one at Kings Landing, one heading for Storms End, but also, vast numbers in garrisons, depots, and guarding lines of communication.

 

Probably, although I'm not sure Martin actually respects logistics in that sense. Robb's army is small enough for its behavior to be excused - 20 000 men is just about the upper limit you can feed by foraging - but something like Wildling host at the Wall or Renly's army would have been in danger of starvation. Westeros is a far cry from having Byzantine or Ottoman administrative organization, after all.

[Alden Rothack]

10 hours ago, Aldarion said:

I ran some numbers here if you are interested:

https://fantasyview.wordpress.com/2020/04/21/population-of-westeros/

Anyway, specific number of 40 million is... not impossible, but not the only plausible one. It is just the simplest estimate (army = 1% of population), but may well be wrong. You can go from as low as 12 million to as high as 98 million people. Anything below or above that is difficult to support, although I personally do favor the higher end of the scale.

I don't think less than 40 Million is supportable by how the Kingdoms are described (Whether thats probable) but they could absolutely go to 75 to 80 million given that every Kingdom except the Iron Islands is big, fertile or both

 

4 hours ago, SeanF said:

Generally, I prefer the higher estimates.  There are five cities in the Seven Kingdoms, with perhaps a million and a quarter people.  But there are plenty more settlements (probably hundreds) that would have been viewed as cities in a medieval setting.  Bear in mind that in 1377, places like Exeter, with 4,000 people, and Coventry, with 8,000, were cities.  England’s second city, York, had 12,000.  Overall, the urban population was about 8% of total population size

Yes, Westeros for some reason reseves city for the London or bigger places and keeps all the others towns, a few hundred 'towns' and a few thousand towns could easily contain the same or more people as the Five Cities