The new worlds of Thomas Robert Malthus : rereading the principle of population / Joyce E. Chaplin, Alison Bashford.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bashford, Alison, author.

Chaplin, Joyce E., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Malthus, T. R. (Thomas Robert), 1766-1834. Essay on the principle of population.

Population.

Malthusianism.

North America.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (363 pages)

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2016]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

The New Worlds of Thomas Robert Malthus is a sweeping global and intellectual history that radically recasts our understanding of Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population, the most famous book on population ever written or ever likely to be. Malthus's Essay is also persistently misunderstood. First published anonymously in 1798, the Essay systematically argues that population growth tends to outpace its means of subsistence unless kept in check by factors such as disease, famine, or war, or else by lowering the birth rate through such means as sexual abstinence.Challenging the widely held notion that Malthus's Essay was a product of the British and European context in which it was written, Alison Bashford and Joyce Chaplin demonstrate that it was the new world, as well as the old, that fundamentally shaped Malthus's ideas. They explore what the Atlantic and Pacific new worlds-from the Americas and the Caribbean to New Zealand and Tahiti-meant to Malthus, and how he treated them in his Essay. Bashford and Chaplin reveal how Malthus, long vilified as the scourge of the English poor, drew from his principle of population to conclude that the extermination of native populations by European settlers was unjust.Elegantly written and forcefully argued, The New Worlds of Thomas Robert Malthus relocates Malthus's Essay from the British economic and social context that has dominated its reputation to the colonial and global history that inspired its genesis.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Illustrations

Introduction

Part I: Population and the New World

Chapter 1. Population, Empire, and America

Chapter 2. Writing the Essay

Part II: New Worlds in the Essay, c. 1803

Chapter 3. New Holland

Chapter 4. The Americas

Chapter 5. The South Sea

Part III: Malthus and the New World, 1803-1834

Chapter 6. Slavery and Abolition

Chapter 7. Colonization and Emigration

Chapter 8. The Essay in New Worlds

Coda

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 317-344) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

ISBN:

9781400880959

1400880955

OCLC:

1017610417