Demographic Decline
For those who extend the General Crisis outside Europe, one symptom is dramatic population decline. For example, with the collapse of the Ming Dynasty the population of China fell by approximately 50 million between 1600 and 1644, a decrease of over 30%. Likewise, Germany's population was reduced by approximately 15% to 30% in the Thirty Years War. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth also lost about a third of its population.
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“We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall—which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)