Why has the human population increased so much in the last few centuries, although we actually invented effective birth control methods?
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The biggest limiting factor to human population is the availability of food. People have gotten much better at growing and distributing food in the past few centuries. This happened through the combined effect of a lot of smaller agricultural improvements. Things like new types of crop rotation, new ways of organizing fields, better sowing and harvesting equipment, fertilizers, canals and railroads to move food around, all have a cumulative effect.
These innovations come from a lot of places, but really coalesce in Britain starting in the 1600s. Britain has a population boom starting in the 1600s. The huge increase in food and population in Britain is part of why the industrial revolution begins there. More food, more people, less people involved in making food, more time to make other stuff. From Britain, the combination of techniques spreads and continue to be improved upon. Up until today where you have things like the Green Revolution, GMO crops, fully automated tractors, etc.
See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution
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