Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/28

ties that the Taeping rebellion (1850-64), which was probably not more destructive of human life than some of the convulsions accompanying previous changes of dynasty, caused the population to decline by two-fifths, which would mean that during that period of fourteen years the death rate was nearly doubled throughout the moiety of the Empire affected by the outbreak. Again at the close of the thirteenth century, the Mongol invasion was attended with such slaughter that the great province of Szchuan emerged from the carnage with less than a million inhabitants, whereas it has now nearly eighty millions; and during the rebellions that preluded the fall of the Ming dynasty in the seventeenth century, the depopulation of certain parts of the Empire was on a scale which has been compared to the results of the Great Plague in England.

It appears from the above figures that the average population of the eighteen provinces is now 314 per square mile, the most thickly populated part being the nine eastern provinces, for which the ratio is 450 per square mile, and the most thinly populated the nine southern and western with a corresponding figure of 237. Great Britain is the only European country where the average (289 to the square mile) is not greatly less than that of the eighteen provinces, and Bengal alone, with 440 to the square mile, approaches the figure for the nine eastern provinces.