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Marking the 250th anniversary of his birth, this wide-ranging, interdisciplinary study reassesses Thomas Malthus's contested achievements and legacies.
List of contents
List of contributors; Acknowledgements; Introduction: 'Alps on Alps arise': revisiting Malthus Robert J. Mayhew; Part I. Malthus in Historical Context: 1. Who were the pre-Malthusians? Ted McCormick; 2. Malthus and Godwin: rights, utility and productivity Gregory Claeys; 3. Malthus and the 'end of poverty' Niall O'Flaherty; 4. Malthus and the New World Alison Bashford and Joyce E. Chaplin; 5. Island, nation, planet: Malthus in the Enlightenment Fredrik Albritton Jonsson; Part II. The Reception of Malthus: 6. Malthus, women and fiction Ella Dzelzainis; 7. The anti-Malthusian tradition in the Victorian evolution debates Piers J. Hale; 8. Imagine all the people: fear, philanthropy and the 'peasant problem' in Asia David Nally; 9. The publication bomb: the birth of modern environmentalism and the editing of Malthus's Essay Robert J. Mayhew; 10. Malthus today Derek S. Hoff and Thomas Robertson; Afterword Karen O'Brien; Bibliography; Index.
About the author
Robert J. Mayhew is Professor of Historical Geography and Intellectual History in the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol. He is the author of highly acclaimed Malthus: The Life and Legacies of an Untimely Prophet (2014) and of a new edition of Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population and other Selected Writings for Penguin Classics (2015). He was a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize for his contributions to historical geography. He has also held awards from the British Academy and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
Summary
Thomas Malthus was a pioneer in demography, economics and social science more generally. This wide-ranging and interdisciplinary collection of essays by leading Malthus scholars reassesses his achievements in historical context and then looks at the complex reception of his ideas up to the present day.
