Malthus, Utopians, and Economists

J. Daniel Hammond

A chapter in A Research Annual, 2015, vol. 33, pp 179-207 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: This paper compares the contexts of the writing of T. R. Malthus’s first edition ofAn Essay on the Principle of Population(1798); its reception by William Godwin, to whom theEssaywas addressed; its interpretation by naturalists Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace; and its interpretation by modern commentators Kenneth Boulding and A. M. C. Waterman. The analysis helps explain how an essay that was written to defend social and economic institutions from critiques in utopian visions associated with the French Revolution came to be regarded as a model predicting overpopulation and exhaustion of natural resources.

Keywords: Malthus; Malthusianism; institutions; utopianism; B; B3; Q (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:rhetzz:s0743-415420150000033015

DOI: 10.1108/S0743-415420150000033015

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