E.g. in total, how many people around the world spoke Spanish and French respectively in the 18th century?
Well, I know the data on most languages are scanty. So no, I'm focusing on major world languages like English, French or Spanish, whose data are supposed to be abundant.
And no, I don't need a precise number or a particular year. I'm only interested in the general trend. A rough estimate in units of century will do.
I've tried many times searching things like "English number of speakers in history", "Total population French over time" or "Portuguese users historical data" on Google. But I just can't find any statistics.
Some of the historical trends I'm interested in include:
1) how the total number of English speakers increased over the past 1500 years, from the tongue of a few Anglo-Saxon tribes to a global language.
2) how the total number of French speakers increased over the past 300 years, as more and more West Africans in the colonies adopts it.
It would be even greater if there are mini-trends, e.g. how the proportion of Spanish speakers in Mexico increased over the past 500 years.
From what I know, half a century after the conquest of the Aztec Empire, Central Mexico was still predominantly Nahuatl-speaking. Today, however, Spanish is the mother tongue of 97% of the population. How did this language shift take place over time?