INTRODUCTION

It is commonly assumed that the accelerated expansion of urbanization in Western Europe in the nineteenth century was primarily a result of large-scale industrialization. This was clearly the case in relation to areas dominated by coal mining and iron and steel production, such as the towns in the Ruhr valley, in northern France, as well as in the West Midlands in England. However, other urban communities, for example port-cities and commercial and service centres, frequently registered population growth on the basis of pre-industrial employment structures and only later underwent industrialization. In particular, with increasing functional specialization within the urban hierarchy of individual European nation-states in the course of the nineteenth century, many port-cities became disproportionately dominated by shipping, commerce and maritime-related activities. They frequently failed to develop a strong and widely-based manufacturing industry and tended to concentrate on the processing or refining of imported raw materials, or acted as centres for a variety of commercial activities from warehousing to trade, banking and insurance. Although individual port-cities, such as Genoa and Glasgow (Felloni, chapter 3, above; Gibb, 1983; Cage, 1987), were able to shift their sectoral emphasis in the course of the nineteenth century, with a perceptible diversification in their employment structures, the emergence of industrial ports is essentially a more recent phenomenon. As a result the development of most port-city economies led to the persistence of pre-industrial employment structures aggravated by an increased demand for poorly-paid, casual labour.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the dynamics of demographic change in Bremen in the nineteenth century. In this context Bremen was typical of many European port-cities: for most of the period under consideration it remained disproportionately dependent on trade and commerce, as well as traditional, small-scale handicraft production. It was only after the completion of key infrastructural improvements in railway communications and port facilities that large-scale industrial development took place in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. The chapter will therefore examine the demographic implications of urbanization within an essentially pre-industrial framework. It will attempt to assess the interrelationship between the specific pattern of economic development in Bremen and contemporary trends in fertility, mortality and in-migration.