An Essay on the Principle of Population (Oxford Worlds Classics)
Third edition, the first edition to be published in two octavo volumes, the format which was to remain the standard in Malthus's lifetime. This third edition has important alterations and additions, particularly the appendix, in which Malthus replied to some of his many critics; it follows the first edition of 1798 in a single octavo volume, and the expanded second edition in quarto in 1803.
Malthus's treatise on population is one of the most important and influential works in the history of economic thought, and the foundation text of modern demography. "For today's readers, living in a post-Malthus era, the world's population problems are well known and serious, but no longer sensational. It is difficult therefore to appreciate the radical and controversial impact made by the Essay at the time of publication. It challenged the conventional notion that population growth is an unmixed blessing. It discussed prostitution, contraception, and other sexual matters. And it gave vivid descriptions of the horrendous consequences of overpopulation and of the brutal means by which populations are checked" (ODNB). Despite its unpopularity with liberal critics, Malthus's principle of population became accepted as a central tenet of classical political economy and Charles Darwin acknowledged Malthus's influence in the development of his theory of natural selection.
Writers who have presented ideas that have paralleled various of those of Malthus include: who has written several books predicting famine as a result of population increase: (1968); (1970, with Anne Ehrlich); (1974, with Anne Ehrlich); (1990, with Anne Ehrlich). In the late 1960s Ehrlich predicted that hundreds of millions would die from a coming overpopulation-crisis in the 1970s. Other examples of work that has been accused of "Malthusianism" include the 1972 book (published by the ) and the report to the then . also produced many essays on topics related to overpopulation.
and "'the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man".
Written in 1798 the book is, by today's standards, flowery and wordy, but uses exceptionally robust prose, logic and analogies to promote his Principle of Population as he skillfully disassembles conjectures by Godwin and Mr.
Thomas Robert Malthuss Essay on the Principle of Population
In addition, many Russian philosophers could not easily apply Malthus' population theory to Russian society in the 1840s. In England, where Malthus lived, population was rapidly increasing but suitable agricultural land was limited. Russia, on the other hand, had extensive land with agricultural potential yet a relatively sparse population. It is possible that this discrepancy between Russian and English realities contributed to the rejection of Malthus' by key Russian thinkers.Another difference which contributed to the confusion and ultimately the rejection of Malthus's argument in Russia was its cultural basis in English capitalism. This political contrast helps explain why it took Russia twenty years to publish a review of the work and fifty years to translate Malthus's Essay.
In France, ideas concerning overpopulation had been prevalent some time before Malthus published his Essay, "Pre-Malthusian French writers had developed an unorganized set of observations more in accord with fact and probability than Malthus' well-integrated doctrine". By 1798 two broad bodies of thought had already begun to form in the country, those who like Malthus, saw a danger in overpopulation and the stressing of productive limits, and the "pro-populationists" who argued that population growth would lead to productivity growth, and thus should be encouraged.
Another American, stated in his (1820) "Although his theory is founded upon the principles of nature, and although it is impossible to discover any flaw in his reasoning, yet the mind instinctively revolts at the conclusions to which he conducts it, and we are disposed to reject the theory, even though we could give no good reason." This rejection of conclusions, coincides with Malthus's own observation that "America had not reached the stage where the difficulties in increasing production were great enough appreciably to check population".
In 1798 Malthus published An Essay on the Principle of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society, with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers. This hastily written pamphlet had as its principal object the refutation of the views of the utopians.…
An Essay on the Principle of Population: The 1803 Edition on JSTOR
reading the economist Thomas Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population in September 1838. That was a seminal moment—even if Malthusian ideas had long permeated his Whig circle. Darwin was living through a workhouse revolution. Malthus had said that there would always be too many mouths to feed—population increases geometrically,…
An Essay on the Principle of Population, 2 vols. [1826, 6th ed.]
In 1798 Thomas Malthus wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population. It posed the conundrum of geometrical population growth’s outstripping arithmetic expansion in resources. Malthus, who was an Anglican clergyman, recommended late marriage and sexual abstinence as methods of birth control. A small group of early 19th-century freethinkers, including…
An Essay on the Principle of Population: Malthus, T
…anonymously the first edition of An Essay on the Principle of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society, with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers. The work received wide notice. Briefly, crudely, yet strikingly, Malthus argued that infinite human hopes for social…
An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Robert Malthus
This and nothing more, is Malthus’s “Principle of Population.” Over the course of sociocultural evolution, however, the long-term tendency has been for both productivity and population to intensify.
An Essay on the Principle of Population | Thomas Malthus
In Ireland, where (writing to in 1817) Malthus proposed that "to give full effect to the natural resources of the country a great part of the population should be swept from the soil", an early "refutation" of the Essay on Population was offered by . In his (1818), he professed "astonishment" at Malthus's "general indemnity" of the rich and powerful: