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At the turn of the 20th century, the global population included around 1.65 billion people, as compared to the nearly 8.5 billion people of today. Here’s a closer look at which countries had the largest populations back in 1900, as well as a few factors that influenced population distribution at the time.
In 1900, China was home to around 400 million people, making it by far the country with the largest population. Much of this population lived in China’s rural agricultural regions at the time. Food production, efficient distribution of resources, and similar problems were issues for China at the time due to its large population.
In 1900, India had a diverse population of around 287 million people living there, bringing it soundly into second place behind China. Like China and many other Asian countries at the time, India was heavily involved in agriculture.
In 1900, Russia was still part of the large, expansive Russian Empire, along with multiple other countries. The Russian Empire supported a population of over 147 million people and faced common challenges related to factors like social unrest and the advent of modernization.
In 1900, the United States population was just over 76 million people strong. The turn of the 20th century was also a time of major growth for the U.S. due to factors like industrialization and ongoing immigration from other countries.
The German population in 1900 was about 56 million people. Like the United States, Germany was evolving rapidly at this time, thanks to powerful forces like industrialization.
Additional countries that were quite populous in 1900 include but are not limited to Japan, the United Kingdom, Australia, and numerous countries across Africa and Latin America.
In 1900, agriculture and access to related technologies were huge contributing factors to world populations. The better the access to technology and modern techniques, the easier it was for a nation to yield enough food to support a large population. Additional examples include: