It did have some slight degree of autonomy in the beginning, similar to the Grand Duchy of Finland, but after the 1830 November Uprising, Russia de facto annexed it. e
It wasn't exactly a part of Russia. Poland was partitioned between Russia, Prussia and Austria in years 1772-1795, and we didn't regain independence until 1918.
Source:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partitions_of_Poland
Poland did not exist until little over 100years ago.
After 150 years of attempting to erase Polish nationality, we had two wars and 50 years of communism just to be where we are.
There's a famous anecdote of [Széchenyi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istv%C3%A1n_Sz%C3%A9chenyi) wanting to rename it because Pest sounded ugly to him in English but his suggested name **Honderű** (home bliss) had to be turned down by a French speaking friend of his for it sounding like "honte de rue" (street shame)
To be fair, it was the time before the Austro-Hungarian Empire with the Habsburgs. The 1848-49 Independence war with Austria didn't end well for us, so until 1867 we were not handled as equal parties by the Austrians.
Funnily enough, no. By 1854 Athens had already been the capital of the Kingdom of Greece for twenty years already (capital status transferred from Nafplion in 1834 during the reign of King Otto). At the time, the population of Athens was even less, around 7000 people.
Exactly. London has absorbed (fully or partially) many of its surrounding counties, like Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, Essex and Hertfordshire.
If London was still just London, it would still be absolutely massive, but with a population closer to 5, maybe even 6 million.
I would bet it’s less than that by any old borders. “Inner London” established 1847 as a statistical area but a government in 1855 has a modern population of 3.4 million. I think that’s what this source would quote as London. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_London
Same with Northern cities like Manchester, If the survey covered all the parts of GM nowadays it would have been far more. Also when deindustrialization happened many left to go to London
Not really. Athens became the capital 20 years before (1834) and Greece was an independent state for 26 years(or 33 if you count from when the war of independence started) by that time...
I know, but 20 years is not a very long time to build and rebuild a new capital being a country recovering from a devasating war. Refugees, destruction, a new government had to be set up, not to mention certain parts that weren't exactly playing nice with this new government.
The palace (the seat of government) was not finished until 1843. The new Academy only got started in I believe the 60s. The cathedral was done around that time as well, and many other hallmarks of a grand European capital would wait until the 80s to be built.
After the fall of Constantinople, we spread all over Europe & Russia. For instance, the last Greek Royal blood (Komninos) along with his guard and citizens, requested permission to land in Italy. Italy replied "Yes" but with one condition, the Greeks would disperse throughout Italy. We didn't accept; thus, we took permission by the Genovese only to land in Corsica.
Another instance, the plans for the liberation were made in Russia by Greeks. During the Ottomans, only Greece had won her autonomously administrative area (Peloponnesus). Then liberation came, Greeks from all over Europe started coming back.
That's a very short, without details description. If people think the Jews managed to remain as a coherent group, wait until you hear ours. Also, in contrast to the Jews, we remained mostly homogenous.
It wasn't abandoned. It was just a small regional town by the time of the Greek Revolution. The city gradually declined in importance during the Middle Ages. The centers of Greek culture/civilization in ERE/Byzantine, Latin States, Venetian, and Ottoman times were other cities.
Interesting how Prussia is a country, while other german states are not. Munich=Germany instead of Bavaria, Hamburg=Germany instead of, well, Hamburg.
(Germany was only united in 1871)
The countries in general are all messed up. Ireland didn't exist, neither did Italy, Turkey was the Ottoman Empire, and so on. I suspect this was made much, much later, possibly post-WW1.
Both Budapest and Prague are listed as Austria. If it was made post WWI, they should have been listed under Hungary and Czechia. Or it's just inconsistent. That's a possibility.
Great points. Turkey has been called that colloquially from time to time while being ottoman, but I'd agree that this is probably a post 1923 piece. Not sure if this has any implication on the credibility.
Came here for that. Seems like Prussia, Würtemberg (Stuttgart) and "Austria" (which includes the rest of the rest of the empire and is therefore not entirely german...) get called by name, Rest of the german Ex-HRE states just called Germany... Too much of a clusterfuck to bother the readers with details?
But what really confuses me is, that Württemberg is mentioned, while Bavaria is called Germany. I am kinda proud of it. But I thought Bavaria was more important back then. Especially because Baden and Württemberg were to separated countries.
You're right, it's strange, since Bavaria was a bigger kingdom than Württemberg, almost the size like today. Württemberg was even smaller, there also was the Kingdom Hohenzollern back then, which now is a part of it.
Just a guess, but it could be because the Holy Roman Empire was nearing its end at this time, with Prussia and Austria fighting for supremacy over the German world. Guessing that all those German states that belonged to neither were just classified under "Germany" even though the country did not yet exist officially.
Formal unification into "Germany" started in 1866, but that was under the Austrian Emperor's influence, so Prussia wouldn't initially have been part of that. It was a confederation of 39 states and they also created a customs union and a trade union, it was a mix of what is now Austria and Southern Germany. In contrast there was the North German Federation, which was mostly Prussia and the small city states and excluded Austria.
So this list from 1877 makes perfect sense.
Despite the name sounding german/swedish the city was actually founded by Russia. By Peter the Great who worked very hard to westernize Russia and turn st petersburg into a "window to the west" (kronstadt is an island just outside st petersburg)
He only managed a surface level modernization. Russia was still Russia with a veneer of westernization. Case in point, St. Petersburg was built with hundreds of thousands of chained serfs under the whip of their masters.
That's extremely unfair, given that Peter I ended up transforming Muscovy from a backwards country into a great European power capable of defeating Sweden, which was quite an achievement and required significant reforms of basically every aspect of society (administration, navy, industry, education, sciences etc.)
Also, yes Russia had serfdom under Peter, but this was also the case in Prussia and in Austria. And Western Europe had slaves and benefited massively from their trade.
>transforming Muscovy from a backwards country into a great European power capable of defeating Sweden
Not only that, he also won major victories against the Ottomans
What’s strange there’s no Kyiv. I expected to see “Kyiv, Russia” in the list. According to wikipedia, it had a population of 29000 in 1835 and expanded to 70+ thousands in 1862
Yes, you have to realize that only in 1861 were the Russian serfs formally freed. There is no use for large cities in a feudal, pre-industrial society.
Moscow was always huge, since the establishment of Tsardom at least. 100-200k inhabitants, when the second biggest cities in eastern Europe had like 40-50k.
Yes, but compared to the population of the Russian empire, it was small until Soviet times. Russia, like all of Eastern Europe was overwhelmingly rural until the 20th century.
Worth noting here that Moscow was not the capital of Russia at the time and had suffered a lot of destruction during Napoleon's invasion, further reducing it...
I don't think it's actually a list of the top 100, just a selection of 100 cities. There are some just from the UK alone that had a higher population than the last 20 or so on this list.
In fact, the title of the list doesn't say it's the top 100 most populous, just the populations of 100 of the principal cities, but it is still weird that Edinburgh is missing.
I mean at this point Glasgow was growing to become by far the most important city in Scotland and the "second city of the empire". So Glasgow is no surprise as even to this day it's much bigger than Edinburgh but as for the others, I have no clue.
How England industrialized sooner than other countries, drawing people to its cities.
France was around 36.5M at that time
What would be UK was 27.5M population
It is _really_ hard to wrap my head around London not just being more populous than Constantinople, but actually having _triple_ the population. London truly is the sardine can of metropolises.
To put it into perspective -
First cities to hit 1 million population:
1. Rome - ~100BC
2. Alexandria - ~30BC
3. Chang'an - ~700
4. Baghdad - ~910
5. Hangzhou - ~1200
6. Beijing - 1775
7. London - 1800
8. Paris - 1850
9. New York - 1872
10. Vienna - 1875
11. Berlin - 1877
12. Tokyo - 1886
13. St Petersburg - 1890
14. Moscow - 1897
London was the most populous city of the world then – rivalled maybe by Tokyo.
EDIT: No. I just looked it up – Tokyo had a population of only about 600,000 in 1870 (the oldest number I could find).
[This web page](https://trustforlondon.org.uk/data/population-over-time/) claims the population for London had now exceeded the 1939 peak of 8.6 million - 2022 numbers are 8.9 m with a projected million more by 2035.
source
It's true. It's because the concept of commuter towns and suburbs began to become a thing with the rise of electric railways and motor cars, so people moved outwards. Living in the city was associated with poverty and slums.
Then the bombing of the war, then even more car-based culture from the 50s.
So the population of southern England was always increasing, it was just more distributed. London today is incredibly low-density by European standards.
I don't know the details, but it could also be that England wad also earlier with integration of surrounding towns into their cities.
For example, I know that Berlin in 1850 had different borders than Berlin today.
Until 1920, Berlin had a size of roughly 65 km². At that point, the "Great Berlin Projekt" included many surrounding communities into Berlin, swelling it up to roughly 880 km². I think London expanded a lot earlier on, not having that large of a metropolitan area outside of the city.
Kyiv had around [70k in the 1860s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Kyiv#CITEREFBritannica1910), probably would be around 40-50k at this time. Like many European cities, although it had a medieval core, it was very small until urbanization during the second half of the 19th century.
Right but Edinburgh is more of a ‘principal’ city than Aberdeen, Dundee and Paisley.
Bearing in mind it’s Scotland’s capital, had been for 400 years at this point, had only been overtaking by Glasgow as Scotland’s most populous city about 20-30 years prior and had a population of 200k at this stage.
Yeah, same inconsistency with Germany (that was only united in 1871): Berlin is referred to as "Berlin, Prussia", while Munich is referred to "Munich, Germany" (Munich was the capital of the kingdom of Bavaria then).
It was also common with maps back then. Italy and Germany are shown as the same regions, with either the states shown in dotted lines or not at all. Only on more detailed/zoomed in maps are the internal states shown as separate. I guess regional names was also more common used for names back then, while states were coloured in borders; for example I have never seen a 19th century or early 20th century map use the term "United Kingdom", but instead use "British Isles".
Yes, the Ottoman Empire did not invest in literacy or societal modernization. Wallachia and Moldavia were used as piggy banks by the central Ottoman authorities. High taxes plus no investments or modernization = poverty.
That empire worked by conquering new territories and strip-mining them. Ultimately it spelled their downfall to empires that could better utilise acquired lands.
The poverty and neglect of the Ottoman Empire led to the national awakening movements of all the Balkan ethnicities (Greek, Romanian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Serbian…etc). Basically, why should the rules be made 2000 km away with no regard to the local inhabitants?
This is what happened to the Austro-Hungarian empire as well, though later on. The Russian empire was different due to the sheer number of people and size of the empire. It was a constantly expanding feudal entity for basically almost 400 years until its collapse.
Yeah according to https://www.jstor.org/stable/44816245 Kraków had around 40k people at the time so it should have made the list, though I'm surprised it was this small compared to Lviv (Lemberg on the list)
Why was Naples the largest Italian city during this period? Was the shift towards Northern Italian just beginning or was the south more centralized during this period?
Italy still hadn't unified by then and Naples had been the biggest city in Italy for a LONG time already. As to why that was, I'm not entirely sure but, iirc, Naples was the most industrialized city in the peninsula up until unification, when the focus shifted drastically towards the north.
Napoli was the capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and infact Palermo was big too. This was the biggest kingdom in Italy since the fall of Rome. Napoli is one of the most important cultural cities of the time, between 1700 and 1860, until the conquest from Savoia and Garibaldi, when everything was brought in the north. After 1861, a lot of factories were delocalized in the north, so it started a mass migration.
This contributed to the explosion of the actual problem of the city and of the south.
Naples was the capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the kingdom was extremely centralized, and rails extended for just a few km around Naples. Despite the North being split up in city-states, every major city in the North was connected by rail at the time of unification, allowing industry to flourish in multiple cities.
Naples still has a ton of people compared to most Northern cities.
Back then it was the capital of the largest Italian state, so it’s not terribly surprising it was the largest city.
I mean, it’s the third largest city now, arguably the second largest metropolitan area by population (including Caserta and other places). It’s just that Milan (and Rome) grew a lot by internal migration after unification and during the post-war economic boom.
Were Croatia and Serbia excluded from the list? Because I have a list here from 1857 and both a lot of cities from Serbia and Croatia should be on this list. Zagreb had 40k people in 1857, I doubt 3 years before that they had below 24k
[CROATIA : urban population (populstat.info)](http://populstat.info/Europe/croatiat.htm)
I've checked Serbia as well, you can check yourself, both Belgrade and Zagreb, and a couple more should be here. However the image doesn't say that these are most populated, just that that's a list with 100 cities. I think you've put the wrong title and these wouldn't be the most populated cities in that time
Interesting how there's both Prussia and Germany on the list
Also, jesus christ did they butcher the spelling of Leipzig and Lübeck
Edit: Konigsberg, Gratz, Stuttgard, Wirtemberg...it gets worse the more I look at it.
Manchester’s population growth through the Industrial Revolution was extraordinary. It had fewer than 10,000 people at the beginning of the 18th Century, but had grown to nine times that by 1800 and reached over 700,000 by 1900.
Interesting to see Belfast and Cork in Ireland in the top 50 and Limerick in the top 100 largest cities. Dublin barely ranks these days, never mind the other three.
Funny considering how we (Graz) are now the second largest city in Austria, but back then Vienna was 5th in Europe and we were a measly 89th, while other Austrian (at the time) cities beat us out. Just Austrian Empire things
Warsaw, Russia *insert Vietnam flashbacks meme*
I'm looking only at the countries, searching for Poland "Oh right, we didn't exist then"
[Technically there was a Polish state at the time](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_Poland) even if it was just for show.
It did have some slight degree of autonomy in the beginning, similar to the Grand Duchy of Finland, but after the 1830 November Uprising, Russia de facto annexed it. e
thats insane I didnt know that Poland didnt exist 170 years ago, even worse part of Russia … crazy
It wasn't exactly a part of Russia. Poland was partitioned between Russia, Prussia and Austria in years 1772-1795, and we didn't regain independence until 1918. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partitions_of_Poland
Poland did not exist until little over 100years ago. After 150 years of attempting to erase Polish nationality, we had two wars and 50 years of communism just to be where we are.
>Poland did not exist until little over 100years ago. That's a wrong way to put it, sounds like Poland was founded little over 100 years ago.
Poland didn't exist for 123 years
Historic blackout from zubrowka
LOL I saw that too! There's also Budapest and Prague under Austria... I'm imagining angry Hungarian and Czech noises
>Budapest Pesth and Buda
So glad they went for a rebrand
Pest and Buda were originally two different cities on each side of the Danube. They united in 1873 under the name "Pest-Buda", later Budapest.
If anything Pest-Buda is even worse, so I'm even more happy for the rebrand
There's a famous anecdote of [Széchenyi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istv%C3%A1n_Sz%C3%A9chenyi) wanting to rename it because Pest sounded ugly to him in English but his suggested name **Honderű** (home bliss) had to be turned down by a French speaking friend of his for it sounding like "honte de rue" (street shame)
To be fair, it was the time before the Austro-Hungarian Empire with the Habsburgs. The 1848-49 Independence war with Austria didn't end well for us, so until 1867 we were not handled as equal parties by the Austrians.
*angry czech noises*
Fortunately, those don't carry very far thanks to a lack of vowels.
Kurva
Have you ever heard a Czech curse?
Lviv (or Lemberg) listed as Austria 😢
Bucharest, Turkey. Can I cry on your shoulder for a while?
75 Bucharest - Turkey 61.000
It's strange not to see Iaşi here, btw.
Bucharest was more than twice as big as Iași. That was one of the reasons it was chosen to be the capital.
FYI Chisinau was bigger than Iasi at that time. EDIT: Actually I was wrong, it only became bigger in 1865.
Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened:)
Not gonna lie, seeing that line felt like a little stab in the chest
Lviv and Gdansk are also there.💀😳😳😭
There's no Krakow though which I find odd [According to wikipedia](https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludno%C5%9B%C4%87_Krakowa) it should be there
And Breslau..
I did not write Wroclaw because in our country at that time it should not be there anyway.
Konigsberg, Prussia
Luckily no more. How about Moscow, Poland now?
Wrong year
You all already had a chance in XVII century
Sea of Irradiated Cobalt, Central Russia Exclusion Zone
And of course Kralovec, Czech Republic
Still Lviv and Gdansk💀💀
Athens leisurely growing 160614% 💀
That was the time when it was basically abandoned right?
Funnily enough, no. By 1854 Athens had already been the capital of the Kingdom of Greece for twenty years already (capital status transferred from Nafplion in 1834 during the reign of King Otto). At the time, the population of Athens was even less, around 7000 people.
Nafplion, a city every non-Greek should visit. Since it was our first capital after the liberation, we keep it in pristine condition.
Went there in 2005 and fell in love with the place! Truly beautiful town!
My guess is annexation. That’s how London hit 9,000,000 it doesn’t have its 1854 boundaries
Exactly. London has absorbed (fully or partially) many of its surrounding counties, like Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, Essex and Hertfordshire. If London was still just London, it would still be absolutely massive, but with a population closer to 5, maybe even 6 million.
I would bet it’s less than that by any old borders. “Inner London” established 1847 as a statistical area but a government in 1855 has a modern population of 3.4 million. I think that’s what this source would quote as London. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_London
Same with Northern cities like Manchester, If the survey covered all the parts of GM nowadays it would have been far more. Also when deindustrialization happened many left to go to London
The point is that London was the world’s first industrialized metropolis, so it was much larger than all the other cities.
Greece had only just become a state, and Athens was in the process of both rebuilding and becoming its new capital at this time.
Not really. Athens became the capital 20 years before (1834) and Greece was an independent state for 26 years(or 33 if you count from when the war of independence started) by that time...
I know, but 20 years is not a very long time to build and rebuild a new capital being a country recovering from a devasating war. Refugees, destruction, a new government had to be set up, not to mention certain parts that weren't exactly playing nice with this new government. The palace (the seat of government) was not finished until 1843. The new Academy only got started in I believe the 60s. The cathedral was done around that time as well, and many other hallmarks of a grand European capital would wait until the 80s to be built.
Athens was abandoned? I didn’t know that.
After the fall of Constantinople, we spread all over Europe & Russia. For instance, the last Greek Royal blood (Komninos) along with his guard and citizens, requested permission to land in Italy. Italy replied "Yes" but with one condition, the Greeks would disperse throughout Italy. We didn't accept; thus, we took permission by the Genovese only to land in Corsica. Another instance, the plans for the liberation were made in Russia by Greeks. During the Ottomans, only Greece had won her autonomously administrative area (Peloponnesus). Then liberation came, Greeks from all over Europe started coming back. That's a very short, without details description. If people think the Jews managed to remain as a coherent group, wait until you hear ours. Also, in contrast to the Jews, we remained mostly homogenous.
Some Greeks stayed in Constantinople, the wealthy and influential ones at least. they became the phanariots.
It wasn't abandoned. It was just a small regional town by the time of the Greek Revolution. The city gradually declined in importance during the Middle Ages. The centers of Greek culture/civilization in ERE/Byzantine, Latin States, Venetian, and Ottoman times were other cities.
hahaha paisley was more populous than Athens I’m actually dying of laughter
10971% according to my calculations, but still bananas :)
Yeah, but Salonica > Athens. Take that athenocentrics
Factos
Interesting how Prussia is a country, while other german states are not. Munich=Germany instead of Bavaria, Hamburg=Germany instead of, well, Hamburg. (Germany was only united in 1871)
There's also Stuttgard, Wirtemberg.
I actually own an old English map of swabia (17th century) that writes it the same. Neat how that is consistent.
That surprised me, too. Especially strange for Munich, the capital of Bavaria, IMHO.
Similarly, Rome wasn't part of Italy (the kingdom) in 1856
The countries in general are all messed up. Ireland didn't exist, neither did Italy, Turkey was the Ottoman Empire, and so on. I suspect this was made much, much later, possibly post-WW1.
Both Budapest and Prague are listed as Austria. If it was made post WWI, they should have been listed under Hungary and Czechia. Or it's just inconsistent. That's a possibility.
Given that this is written in English, it isn't strange that it separates UK entities like England and Ireland
Great points. Turkey has been called that colloquially from time to time while being ottoman, but I'd agree that this is probably a post 1923 piece. Not sure if this has any implication on the credibility.
To be fair the UK does seem to be split up into its constituent nations, as England and Scotland are also shown separately.
- Berlin, Prussia - Hamburg, Germany - Breslau, Prussia - Munich, Germany Why?
Came here for that. Seems like Prussia, Würtemberg (Stuttgart) and "Austria" (which includes the rest of the rest of the empire and is therefore not entirely german...) get called by name, Rest of the german Ex-HRE states just called Germany... Too much of a clusterfuck to bother the readers with details?
But what really confuses me is, that Württemberg is mentioned, while Bavaria is called Germany. I am kinda proud of it. But I thought Bavaria was more important back then. Especially because Baden and Württemberg were to separated countries.
You're right, it's strange, since Bavaria was a bigger kingdom than Württemberg, almost the size like today. Württemberg was even smaller, there also was the Kingdom Hohenzollern back then, which now is a part of it.
Just a guess, but it could be because the Holy Roman Empire was nearing its end at this time, with Prussia and Austria fighting for supremacy over the German world. Guessing that all those German states that belonged to neither were just classified under "Germany" even though the country did not yet exist officially.
Formal unification into "Germany" started in 1866, but that was under the Austrian Emperor's influence, so Prussia wouldn't initially have been part of that. It was a confederation of 39 states and they also created a customs union and a trade union, it was a mix of what is now Austria and Southern Germany. In contrast there was the North German Federation, which was mostly Prussia and the small city states and excluded Austria. So this list from 1877 makes perfect sense.
The only city on this list which lost population is Kronstadt - 44k now.
Despite the name sounding german/swedish the city was actually founded by Russia. By Peter the Great who worked very hard to westernize Russia and turn st petersburg into a "window to the west" (kronstadt is an island just outside st petersburg)
He only managed a surface level modernization. Russia was still Russia with a veneer of westernization. Case in point, St. Petersburg was built with hundreds of thousands of chained serfs under the whip of their masters.
That's extremely unfair, given that Peter I ended up transforming Muscovy from a backwards country into a great European power capable of defeating Sweden, which was quite an achievement and required significant reforms of basically every aspect of society (administration, navy, industry, education, sciences etc.) Also, yes Russia had serfdom under Peter, but this was also the case in Prussia and in Austria. And Western Europe had slaves and benefited massively from their trade.
>transforming Muscovy from a backwards country into a great European power capable of defeating Sweden Not only that, he also won major victories against the Ottomans
Interesting, apparently my sleepy little town/suburb would be in the top 100 largest cities in Europe back then.
UUUUUUU
Which one do you refer to?
Pesth and Buda, Austria...damn
Also Debretzin, Austria.
And Prague, Lwiw (Lemberg), Trieste. All Austria
Riga, Russia. Oof.
Putin just took a screenshot of that.
What’s strange there’s no Kyiv. I expected to see “Kyiv, Russia” in the list. According to wikipedia, it had a population of 29000 in 1835 and expanded to 70+ thousands in 1862
Same with Vilnius, Lithuania. Although, I didn't find what the population was then, but it was 56000 in 1836 and 82700 in 1875.
Notable mentions: - Warsaw, Russia - Bucharest, Turkey - Pesth and Buda, Austria
Lemberg, Austria Lemberg = Lviv
Odesa being in Russia and also with two S's. Rage inducing
Bucharest, Turkey is rage inducing too
Sofia, Turkey as well.
Warsaw, Russia
I’m really surprised Edinburgh didn’t make the list, but Dundee and Bath did
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Yes, you have to realize that only in 1861 were the Russian serfs formally freed. There is no use for large cities in a feudal, pre-industrial society.
Moscow was always huge, since the establishment of Tsardom at least. 100-200k inhabitants, when the second biggest cities in eastern Europe had like 40-50k.
Yes, but compared to the population of the Russian empire, it was small until Soviet times. Russia, like all of Eastern Europe was overwhelmingly rural until the 20th century.
Worth noting here that Moscow was not the capital of Russia at the time and had suffered a lot of destruction during Napoleon's invasion, further reducing it...
UK dominated this list, it's got a lot more cities in it than any other nation
It was the first industrialized society.
How is Edinburgh not there yet Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen and Paisley (!) are?!
I don't think it's actually a list of the top 100, just a selection of 100 cities. There are some just from the UK alone that had a higher population than the last 20 or so on this list. In fact, the title of the list doesn't say it's the top 100 most populous, just the populations of 100 of the principal cities, but it is still weird that Edinburgh is missing.
That’s what confused me the most. Triple-checked
I think Leith was probably formally separate from Edinburgh at this point, so perhaps this reduced its population.
I mean at this point Glasgow was growing to become by far the most important city in Scotland and the "second city of the empire". So Glasgow is no surprise as even to this day it's much bigger than Edinburgh but as for the others, I have no clue.
How England industrialized sooner than other countries, drawing people to its cities. France was around 36.5M at that time What would be UK was 27.5M population
It is _really_ hard to wrap my head around London not just being more populous than Constantinople, but actually having _triple_ the population. London truly is the sardine can of metropolises.
To put it into perspective - First cities to hit 1 million population: 1. Rome - ~100BC 2. Alexandria - ~30BC 3. Chang'an - ~700 4. Baghdad - ~910 5. Hangzhou - ~1200 6. Beijing - 1775 7. London - 1800 8. Paris - 1850 9. New York - 1872 10. Vienna - 1875 11. Berlin - 1877 12. Tokyo - 1886 13. St Petersburg - 1890 14. Moscow - 1897
Sauce?
That’s very interesting, do you have a link to a longer list maybe?
London was the most populous city of the world then – rivalled maybe by Tokyo. EDIT: No. I just looked it up – Tokyo had a population of only about 600,000 in 1870 (the oldest number I could find).
London was the first industrialized metropolis in the world. A large population was necessary for the industrial economy.
Funnier still, IIRC London had more people in the 1930s than it does today
[This web page](https://trustforlondon.org.uk/data/population-over-time/) claims the population for London had now exceeded the 1939 peak of 8.6 million - 2022 numbers are 8.9 m with a projected million more by 2035. source
Is that really true, or is this due to shenanigans around what exactly counts as London vs. 'Greater London'?
It's true. It's because the concept of commuter towns and suburbs began to become a thing with the rise of electric railways and motor cars, so people moved outwards. Living in the city was associated with poverty and slums. Then the bombing of the war, then even more car-based culture from the 50s. So the population of southern England was always increasing, it was just more distributed. London today is incredibly low-density by European standards.
Feels weird how there's all these like major cities with random English towns mixed in like Plymouth I guess industrial revolution go brrr
Plymouth was/is a fairly major city though. It was quite an important docklands /shipping yards
I don't know the details, but it could also be that England wad also earlier with integration of surrounding towns into their cities. For example, I know that Berlin in 1850 had different borders than Berlin today. Until 1920, Berlin had a size of roughly 65 km². At that point, the "Great Berlin Projekt" included many surrounding communities into Berlin, swelling it up to roughly 880 km². I think London expanded a lot earlier on, not having that large of a metropolitan area outside of the city.
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\+ Danzig Prussia 😭😭
Something is off, no Edinburgh and no Kyiv, both had around 250K and 70K at that time.
Plenty of cities that are missing. Vilnius had 65K at the time
Oslo had around 40k.
Kyiv had around [70k in the 1860s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Kyiv#CITEREFBritannica1910), probably would be around 40-50k at this time. Like many European cities, although it had a medieval core, it was very small until urbanization during the second half of the 19th century.
The heading in the image of the list is "100 principal cities", not 100 most populated as in the heading of this post.
Right but Edinburgh is more of a ‘principal’ city than Aberdeen, Dundee and Paisley. Bearing in mind it’s Scotland’s capital, had been for 400 years at this point, had only been overtaking by Glasgow as Scotland’s most populous city about 20-30 years prior and had a population of 200k at this stage.
I wonder if Kyiv wasn't considered a principal city.
Yes, curious. Kazan was principal but Kyiv/Kiev was not? Not something I’d expect.
I guess Krakow is also missing as it had about 40k population around that time.
Lviv was bigger
Lviv is in the list: under the German name of Lemberg.
Wiki says Kyiv had 70k in 1862, but still should be there.
Bucharest, Turkey Well, fuck you too 😄
Salonika agrees
"Italy" didn't Italy unite in 1861?
They apparently use the region for some cities and the country for others.
Yeah, same inconsistency with Germany (that was only united in 1871): Berlin is referred to as "Berlin, Prussia", while Munich is referred to "Munich, Germany" (Munich was the capital of the kingdom of Bavaria then).
It was also common with maps back then. Italy and Germany are shown as the same regions, with either the states shown in dotted lines or not at all. Only on more detailed/zoomed in maps are the internal states shown as separate. I guess regional names was also more common used for names back then, while states were coloured in borders; for example I have never seen a 19th century or early 20th century map use the term "United Kingdom", but instead use "British Isles".
Yeah, and Rome wouldn't even be within Italy until 1871
Guessing they’ve simplified it for the smaller states in mostly German confederation and Italy.
Salonica-Turkey 🚬
And Bucharest and Sofia
It would be great to compare with chinese cities on that year.
Wikipedia says: Beijing 1781: 2,956,242 1881: 3,226,111 I can't find numbers for Shanghai, which may have been bigger than Beijing in the late 1800s.
Liverpool had a long fall in the following century, from the New York of Europe to industrial decline
* Rank City Population * 1 London, England 2,363,141 * 2 Paris, France 1,053,262 * 3 Constantinople, Turkey 786,990 * 4 St. Petersburg, Russia 478,437 * 5 Vienna, Austria 477,846 * 6 Berlin, Prussia 441,981 * 7 Naples, Italy 416,675 * 8 Liverpool, England 384,268 * 9 Glasgow, Scotland 367,800 * 10 Moscow, Russia 350,000 * 11 Manchester, England 296,000 * 12 Madrid, Spain 260,000 * 13 Dublin, Ireland 254,850 * 14 Lyons, France 249,322 * 15 Birmingham, England 240,000 * 16 Lisbon, Portugal 241,600 * 17 Amsterdam, Netherlands 228,800 * 18 Marseilles, France 195,257 * 19 Palermo, Italy 180,000 * 20 Rome, Italy 172,382 * 21 Warsaw, Russia 162,597 * 22 Leeds, England 152,000 * 23 Milan, Italy 151,438 * 24 Hamburg, Germany 148,754 * 25 Brussels, Belgium 136,208 * 26 Turin, Italy 135,000 * 27 Copenhagen, Denmark 133,140 * 28 Venice, Italy 126,768 * 29 Pesth and Buda, Austria 125,000 * 30 Prague, Austria 124,181 * 31 Bordeaux, France 120,000 * 32 Barcelona, Spain 120,000 * 33 Genoa, Italy 120,000 * 34 Bristol, England 115,000 * 35 Ghent, Belgium 106,776 * 36 Munich, Germany 112,410 * 37 Breslau, Prussia 104,000 * 38 Sheffield, England 104,000 * 39 Florence, Italy 102,154 * 40 Plymouth, England 102,000 * 41 Rouen, France 100,265 * 42 Adrianople, Turkey 100,000 * 43 Belfast, Ireland 99,660 * 44 Cologne, Prussia 92,244 * 45 Dresden, Germany 91,277 * 46 Stockholm, Sweden 90,823 * 47 Rotterdam, Netherlands 90,000 * 48 Antwerp, Belgium 89,000 * 49 Newcastle, England 89,000 * 50 Cork, Ireland 88,000 * 51 Seville, Spain 85,000 * 52 Messina, Italy 84,000 * 53 Nantes, France 83,000 * 54 Oporto, Portugal 80,000 * 55 Leghorn, Italy 80,000 * 56 Dundee, Scotland 79,000 * 57 Odessa, Russia 78,000 * 58 Liege, Belgium 78,000 * 59 Lemberg, Austria 75,000 * 60 Bologna, Italy 75,000 * 61 Salonica, Turkey 75,000 * 62 Portsmouth, England 73,000 * 63 Aberdeen, Scotland 72,000 * 64 Toulouse, France 72,000 * 65 Riga, Russia 71,000 * 66 Valencia, Spain 71,000 * 67 Trieste, Austria 71,000 * 68 Granada, Spain 70,000 * 69 Konigsberg, Prussia 70,000 * 70 Lille, France 68,000 * 71 The Hague, Netherlands 66,000 * 72 Malaga, Spain 66,000 * 73 Leipzig, Germany 65,000 * 74 Debrecen, Austria 63,000 * 75 Bucharest, Turkey 62,000 * 76 Leicester, England 60,000 * 77 Padua, Italy 60,000 * 78 Bath, England 58,000 * 79 Danzig, Prussia 58,000 * 80 Frankfurt, Germany 58,000 * 81 Kazan, Russia 57,000 * 82 Magdeburg, Prussia 57,000 * 83 Limerick, Ireland 55,000 * 84 Cadiz, Spain 54,000 * 85 Catania, Italy 54,000 * 86 Cronstadt, Russia 53,000 * 87 Bremen, Germany 53,000 * 88 Strasbourg, France 52,000 * 89 Graz, Austria 50,000 * 90 Sophia, Turkey 50,000 * 91 Paisley, Scotland 48,000 * 92 Verona, Italy 48,000 * 93 Utrecht, Netherlands 45,000 * 94 Parma, Italy 41,000 * 95 Saragossa, Spain 40,000 * 96 Augsburg, Württemberg 29,000 * 97 Athens, Greece 28,000 * 98 Geneva, Switzerland 28,000 * 99 Basle, Switzerland 25,000 * 100 Lubeck, Germany 24,000
Wild to see, how Budapest grew twentyfold since this dataset was compiled.
Bucharest grew even more.
I am pretty sure, gaining independence from Turkey helped a lot.
Yes, the Ottoman Empire did not invest in literacy or societal modernization. Wallachia and Moldavia were used as piggy banks by the central Ottoman authorities. High taxes plus no investments or modernization = poverty.
That empire worked by conquering new territories and strip-mining them. Ultimately it spelled their downfall to empires that could better utilise acquired lands.
The poverty and neglect of the Ottoman Empire led to the national awakening movements of all the Balkan ethnicities (Greek, Romanian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Serbian…etc). Basically, why should the rules be made 2000 km away with no regard to the local inhabitants? This is what happened to the Austro-Hungarian empire as well, though later on. The Russian empire was different due to the sheer number of people and size of the empire. It was a constantly expanding feudal entity for basically almost 400 years until its collapse.
Wierd how Wrocław (Breslau) and Gdańsk (Danzig) made the list alongside Warsaw but Kraków didn't
Yeah according to https://www.jstor.org/stable/44816245 Kraków had around 40k people at the time so it should have made the list, though I'm surprised it was this small compared to Lviv (Lemberg on the list)
BREMEN MENTIONED!!!
Why was Naples the largest Italian city during this period? Was the shift towards Northern Italian just beginning or was the south more centralized during this period?
Italy still hadn't unified by then and Naples had been the biggest city in Italy for a LONG time already. As to why that was, I'm not entirely sure but, iirc, Naples was the most industrialized city in the peninsula up until unification, when the focus shifted drastically towards the north.
AFAIR Naples was bigger than Rome even in 20th century .
Napoli was the capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and infact Palermo was big too. This was the biggest kingdom in Italy since the fall of Rome. Napoli is one of the most important cultural cities of the time, between 1700 and 1860, until the conquest from Savoia and Garibaldi, when everything was brought in the north. After 1861, a lot of factories were delocalized in the north, so it started a mass migration. This contributed to the explosion of the actual problem of the city and of the south.
> a lot of fabric "fabric" significa "stoffa". Volevi dire "a lot of factories".
Naples was the capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the kingdom was extremely centralized, and rails extended for just a few km around Naples. Despite the North being split up in city-states, every major city in the North was connected by rail at the time of unification, allowing industry to flourish in multiple cities. Naples still has a ton of people compared to most Northern cities.
Back then it was the capital of the largest Italian state, so it’s not terribly surprising it was the largest city. I mean, it’s the third largest city now, arguably the second largest metropolitan area by population (including Caserta and other places). It’s just that Milan (and Rome) grew a lot by internal migration after unification and during the post-war economic boom.
Up cork 🇮🇪
Bucharest, Turkey. Interesting
Yea it's correct
Shouldn’t it be Ottoman Empire in that period?
Technically yes but apparently “Turkish Empire” and “Turkey” names were already in use in Europe before the modern day Turkey was founded.
italians called it turquie from the beginning. so it was turkey all along in europe, "ottoman" was being used to point out the dynasty-ruling elite
Frankfort, lol
Bloody Hell, Ireland had 3 cities in the top 50, thats a bit mad
Were Croatia and Serbia excluded from the list? Because I have a list here from 1857 and both a lot of cities from Serbia and Croatia should be on this list. Zagreb had 40k people in 1857, I doubt 3 years before that they had below 24k [CROATIA : urban population (populstat.info)](http://populstat.info/Europe/croatiat.htm) I've checked Serbia as well, you can check yourself, both Belgrade and Zagreb, and a couple more should be here. However the image doesn't say that these are most populated, just that that's a list with 100 cities. I think you've put the wrong title and these wouldn't be the most populated cities in that time
“Bucharest, Turkey”😭😭
Interesting how there's both Prussia and Germany on the list Also, jesus christ did they butcher the spelling of Leipzig and Lübeck Edit: Konigsberg, Gratz, Stuttgard, Wirtemberg...it gets worse the more I look at it.
And Dantzic
Leip[sic]
Or Basle, Switzerland...
"Germany" is used for all the tiny german statelets. Only the big german states are shown as separate.
Manchester’s population growth through the Industrial Revolution was extraordinary. It had fewer than 10,000 people at the beginning of the 18th Century, but had grown to nine times that by 1800 and reached over 700,000 by 1900.
"Riga, Russia" is a word combination that makes my stomach turn
Interesting to see Belfast and Cork in Ireland in the top 50 and Limerick in the top 100 largest cities. Dublin barely ranks these days, never mind the other three.
You can clearly see the early industrialization of Great Britain made it much more urbanized than the rest of Europe.
"Pesth and Buda, Austria" - thats currently Budapest capital of Hungary, i guess the cities were only formally unified later?
wait, Germany in 1854?
Small German States (everything but Prussia and Austria) was simply known as Germany
Warsaw, Russia - jestem triggered
Ah "Lyons"
“Warsaw, Russia" 💀
Funny considering how we (Graz) are now the second largest city in Austria, but back then Vienna was 5th in Europe and we were a measly 89th, while other Austrian (at the time) cities beat us out. Just Austrian Empire things
Warsaw, Russia rubs me the very wrong way
or Sofia, Turkey
Warsaw, Russia 😣😣