After 1670 in Spain and after 1715 in France there was very distinct increase in the agricultural product. This rise was paralleled by a certain increase in population. In France, and perhaps in other Western European countries as well, this economic revival was particularly significant. From the 1320s to the end of the seventeenth century it seems that the population of France scarcely exceeded a maximum of 20 or 21 million inhabitants. In the eighteenth century, for the first time, this figure was to be substantially surpassed: around 1788–9 the population of France reached 27 million. This demographic development clearly provided a very positive stimulus to agricultural production. However, if one looks at agricultural growth in the eighteenth century over the whole of Central and Western Europe, then the factors responsible for this growth seem less obvious and more divergent than they had been between 1450 and 1560. One of the indications is that the demographic trends underlying the agricultural expansion were not the same. In the eighteenth century the population rose less dramatically, in percentage terms, than it had done during the period from 1450 to 1550. In France in this earlier period the population had increased by 100% or possibly more, whereas it rose by only 29% between 1700 and 1789. Generally speaking, agriculture did not expand in a uniform manner during the eighteenth century.