MOHEAU, JEAN-BAPTISTE

(1745–1794)

Jean-Baptiste Moheau was a French protodemographer. He was born in 1745, and died in 1794; he would not have been thirty years old at the writing of a treatise entitled Recherches et Considérations sur la population de la France, published in 1778 under his name. There remains some doubt about the authorship of the work, but it is now proven that Moheau was the personal secretary of Montyon, Intendant of the généralité of La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast of France, to whom the work was sometimes attributed. It appears that Moheau was substituting for Montyon, and took a special interest in the collection of population statistics that were requested by the royal administration. He made no other contribution to science. The book consists of two distinct parts, probably written by different persons. It is a remarkable achievement for its time, and deserves an important place in the history of demography. The title could be roughly translated, as "Empirical Studies on the Population of France, and their Interpretation." The work is characterized by a dual concern to present hard data and use them to make politically and socially relevant inferences. The first part ("State of the Population") is a demographic monograph, and contains chapters that are strikingly similar to those in any demographic description of a national population of the twenty-first century on the topics of data collection; an estimate of population size; the distribution by age, sex, and social characteristics; fertility; mortality; and migration. Especially noteworthy is the chapter on fertility. Moheau distinguishes fertility from what is now called the birth rate, and marital fertility from over-all fertility. He is interested in fertility's variability in space, national and international, urban and rural, and analyzes the seasonality of births.

The second part of the book examines the causes of the progress or decay of the population. This is the part described by the word considérations in the title of the book. It distinguishes between physical causes (e.g., climate, food, dangerous occupations) and political, social, or moral causes. The latter factors include the effects of law, government, religion, taxes, war, and the possession of colonies. The most noteworthy passage is the allusion to funestes secrets (fatal secrets), a phrase widely quoted by French demographers. It has been often interpreted as a reference to the spread of contraception in marriage. In context, however, it would appear that Moheau had in mind the growing impact of various types of extramarital behavior, both before marriage and in prostitution and adultery.

See also: Demography, History of.

bibliography

Moheau, Jean-Baptiste. 1994. Recherches et Considérations sur la population de la France (1778). Paris: Institut national d'études démographiques, Presses universitaires de France.

Etiennevan de Walle