NOTES
1 There were two main causes of a reduction in the urban proportion of actual population: the difference in mortality between town and country (the former had much higher mortality than the latter) and the comparatively slow migration of peasants to towns (Mironov with Ben Eklof 2000: Vol.
1, 464). In 18th century Europe, the percentage of the urban population was increasing. In 1800 agglomerations of 2000 inhabitants or more amounted to 37% in the Netherlands, 33.6 in United Kingdom, 23.3 in Germany, 19 in France, and 9.8 in Sweden. In most other European countries though, and elsewhere in the world, the urban population amounted to no more than 10%; in the USA 6.1% (de Vries 1984: 39, 50, 76; Bairoch 1989: 243—50; see also Steckel, Table 11.2, this volume).2' In western countries in the pre-industrial era, workers and peasants also spent more than half of their income on
the maintenance of the biological status (Braudel 1979: 144—50). In accordance with Engel's law, as a consumer's income decreases, the proportion of income spent on food increases. In 1986, the share of income spent on food and beverage was 55.7% in India, 38% in the Soviet Union, 27.7% in Spain, 20.5% in West Germany and 12.3% in the USA (US Bureau of Census 1990: 842).
3 Central State Archive of the Navy: f. 406, op. 8, d. 9, ll. 87—110; d. 14, ll. 25—50, 111—18; Archive of the Military- Historical Museum of the Artillery, the Corps of Engineers and the Intercommunication: f. 2, op. ShGF, d. 4943, ll. 132, 160.
4 About the influence of changing climate on height, see also Steckel's chapter in this volume.
5' This is not counting considerable state obligations in kind—recruitment, delivery of horses and carts for the
transportation of military cargoes, felling of trees for shipbuilding, building of roads, fortresses, towns etc., whose value it is difficult to estimate.