The writings of Thomas Robert Malthus continue to resonate today, particularly An Essay on the Principle of Population which was published more than two centuries ago. Malthus Across Nations creates a fascinating picture of the circulation of his economic and demographic ideas across different countries, highlighting the reception of his works in a variety of nations and cultures. This unique book offers not only a fascinating piece of comparative analysis in the history of economic thought but also places some of today’s most pressing debates into an accurate historical perspective, thereby improving our understanding of them.
Malthus has prepared in this work the general rules of political economy. He calls into question some of the reasonings of Ricardo and attempts to defend Adam Smith.
Malthus' life's work on human population and its dependency on food production and the environment was highly controversial on publication in 1798. He predicted what is known as the Malthusian catastrophe, in which humans would disregard the limits of natural resources and the world would be plagued by famine and disease. He significantly influenced the thinking of Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace and his theories continue to raise important questions today in the fields of social theory, economics and the environment. With an introduction by Robert Mayhew.
Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) was a pioneer in demography, economics and social science more generally whose ideas prompted a new 'Malthusian' way of thinking about population and the poor. On the occasion of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his birth, New Perspectives on Malthus offers an up-to-date collection of interdisciplinary essays from leading Malthus experts who reassess his work. Part one looks at Malthus's achievements in historical context, addressing not only perennial questions such as his attitude to the Poor Laws, but also new topics including his response to environmental themes and his use of information about the New World. Part two then looks at the complex reception of his ideas by writers, scientists, politicians and philanthropists from the period of his own lifetime to the present day, from Charles Darwin and H. G. Wells to David Attenborough, Al Gore and Amartya Sen.
The first major study of population size and its tremendous importance to the character and quality of society, this classic examines the tendency of human numbers to outstrip their resources.
Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), one of the most influential of modern thinkers, is also one of the most misunderstood. Malthus' Essay on Population is a work that everyone cites but typically without having read it. This book offers a comprehensive and accurate exposition of his thought, integrating his better-known theory on population with his somewhat neglected analysis of economic development and social structure. In Petersen's Malthus both the general reader and the social scientist are given a basis for contrasting Malthus with competing theories. As a background to his exposition, Petersen discusses the trends since Malthus' day in fertility, mortality, and population growth. The book also has an accessible comparison of Malthus' economics with that of his contemporary, David Ricardo, as well as the links to the Keynesian thought of recent time. Petersen also comments on Malthus' stand on birth control, as well as on the rise of the neo-Malthusian movement and its successor in today's less developed countries. The review of both population trends and demographic theory over the past century and a half gives the reader a base from which he can judge in what respects Malthus did, or did not, forecast the future accurately. As Petersen points out, Malthus also influenced the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin, as well as its offshoot, Social Darwinism. Malthus is an essential work not only for demographers and economists but for anyone interested in intellectual history. The late Robert Nisbet, in his review of the book for the New Republic, called it "the best exposition of Malthus to be found anywhere." William Petersen, Robert Lazarus Professor of Social Demography Emeritus at Ohio State University, is known throughout the profession as a leading demographer. He is also an elegant writer.
Historians of science have long noted the influence of the nineteenth-century political economist Thomas Robert Malthus on Charles Darwin. In a bold move, Piers J. Hale contends that this focus on Malthus and his effect on Darwin’s evolutionary thought neglects a strong anti-Malthusian tradition in English intellectual life, one that not only predated the 1859 publication of the Origin of Species but also persisted throughout the Victorian period until World War I. Political Descent reveals that two evolutionary and political traditions developed in England in the wake of the 1832 Reform Act: one Malthusian, the other decidedly anti-Malthusian and owing much to the ideas of the French naturalist Jean Baptiste Lamarck. These two traditions, Hale shows, developed in a context of mutual hostility, debate, and refutation. Participants disagreed not only about evolutionary processes but also on broader questions regarding the kind of creature our evolution had made us and in what kind of society we ought therefore to live. Significantly, and in spite of Darwin’s acknowledgement that natural selection was “the doctrine of Malthus, applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms,” both sides of the debate claimed to be the more correctly “Darwinian.” By exploring the full spectrum of scientific and political issues at stake, Political Descent offers a novel approach to the relationship between evolution and political thought in the Victorian and Edwardian eras.
Shows how Japanese anxiety about overpopulation was used to justify expansion, blurring lines between migration and settler colonialism. This title is also available as Open Access.
Though Robert Malthus has never disappeared, he has been perpetually misunderstood. Robert Mayhew offers at once a major reassessment of Malthus’s ideas and an intellectual history of the origins of modern debates about demography, resources, and the environment, giving historical depth to our current planetary concerns.
Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation is generally acclaimed as being among the most influential works of economic history in the twentieth century, and remains as vital in the current historical conjuncture as it was in his own. In its critique of nineteenth-century ‘market fundamentalism’ it reads as a warning to our own neoliberal age, and is widely touted as a prophetic guidebook for those who aspire to understand the causes and dynamics of global economic turbulence at the end of the 2000s. Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market is the first comprehensive introduction to Polanyi’s ideas and legacy. It assesses not only the texts for which he is famous – prepared during his spells in American academia – but also his journalistic articles written in his first exile in Vienna, and lectures and pamphlets from his second exile, in Britain. It provides a detailed critical analysis of The Great Transformation, but also surveys Polanyi’s seminal writings in economic anthropology, the economic history of ancient and archaic societies, and political and economic theory. Its primary source base includes interviews with Polanyi’s daughter, Kari Polanyi-Levitt, as well as the entire compass of his own published and unpublished writings in English and German. This engaging and accessible introduction to Polanyi’s thinking will appeal to students and scholars across the social sciences, providing a refreshing perspective on the roots of our current economic crisis.
