---

Only in France is demography essentially the population science: it is taught at school, newspapers feature the evolution of fertility rates in their headlines and the subject sparks ideological debates in the media. How did demography become a national identity issue?

The French exception is attributable to a political history that reached fulcrums during the Second World War under the racist Vichy regime and then after the Liberation, with the development of population policies and the creation of the French National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED). The book is the first to retrace its controversial genesis and analyze its ramifications for the following decades. It shows how theories, institutions and demographic policies developed simultaneously in France. Its reflection on the links between ideologies, science and the state offers a model that could be applied to the history of many other scientific disciplines.

Paul-André Rosental´s indispensable study examines the emergence of demography as an autonomous discipline and its association with the state in mid-twentieth-century France. Demography´s success in the immediate post-war years came in part from its dual concern with both "science" and "action," which allowed policy makers to claim both knowledge and expertise in addressing social problems. Rosental´s measured tone hides a provocative argument that should serve as both a model and a foil for others working in the history of the human sciences.

Joshua Cole, University of Michigan.

---

Preface by Philip Nord

Chapter 1: Glory or contingencies: the 1939 High Committee and the establishment of a body for population

Chapter 2: The "Phony War" and demographic police

Chapter 3: The Vichy regime, biology and moralism

Chapter 4: Population and political construction of a new society: the government of Algiers and Liberation

Chapter 5: Demographic pressure and institutional creations: The hunt for "good migrants"

Chapter 6: An Institute for Alfred Sauvy?

Chapter 7: The Creation of a National Institute of Demography

Chapter 8: The first research world

Chapter 9 The Second Birth of Demography. A Transatlantic History

Chapter 10: The Novelty of an Old Genre. Louis Henry and the Founding of Historical Demography

---

Paul-André Rosental is a full professor at Sciences Po, in Paris. He leads the research team ESOPP, devoted to the history of social, demographic and health policies. He recently authored Destins de l´eugénisme, Le Seuil, 2016, and edited Silicosis. A World History, Johns Hopkins UP, 2017.

He has just achieved a ERC Advanced Grant project at the corner between history, social sciences and medicine.

---