Malthus Before Malthus
[This is part of my series on Thomas Malthus’ “Essay on the Principle of Population,” first published in 1798. You can find an overview of all my posts here that I will keep updated: “Synopsis: What’s Wrong with the Malthusian Argument?”]
In this and further posts, I would like to look into the background of Thomas Malthus’ “Essay on the Principle of Population.” Much of the historical context is lost by now, and so the book seems to appear out of nowhere. That then leads to some rather common misconceptions. For example, modern readers might mistake Malthus’ contribution as groundbreaking. Noone had ever looked at reality until the genius did. Or so is the impression. But then many of his central ideas had been around for a long time.
Another frequent claim is that Malthus was somehow the founder of demographics, which is completely false. People had thought about population since antiquity and all through the Middle Ages. Actuaries had studied life tables at least since the 17th century. And Sweden already conducted a census in 1749, almost half a century before Malthus became interested in population dynamics. It is also not by accident that Malthus relied on tables computed by Leonhard Euler who had died in 1783. All this belonged to on ongoing debate that Thomas Malthus entered as a late-mover. When I discuss his contemporary critics in a later post, it becomes clear that many of them understood demographics far better than he did.
What was new, though, was how Malthus shaped existing ideas into a gripping worldview that resonated with the pessimistic mood of the times, especially among his target audience: the educated and well-to-do classes. What helped even more was that he connected his theories with political issues that seemed urgent. The first edition of the essay is mostly an attack on Enlightenment thinkers like the Marquis de Condorcet and before all William Godwin. It must be read in the context of the French Revolution that had turned sour. The demographic arguments serve only as a springboard and take up a comparatively small part of the whole work. Already in the first edition, but even more so in the later editions, Malthus tied his arguments also in with a critique of the Poor Laws, a hot issue at the time.
It is easy to miss this background and concentrate only on what has become known as Malthus’ theory because much of the preceding literature has disappeared into libraries that hardly anyone had access to until they were digitized over the past few years. And Malthus was by no means diligent in tracing his arguments back to his forerunners. He mentions a few, but not exactly what he learned from them. But then to be fair, Malthus himself was often not aware of where his thinking came from. Many points had been around for decades, quite a few for centuries, and some even since antiquity. However, that also made them look like conventional wisdom and not the astonishing revelation that modern readers might think they were.
The achievement is even less remarkable if you consider that many conclusions were natural given the knowledge of the time. You only had to ask the right questions, and many had done that before Malthus. Since most of this is long forgotten, “An Essay on the Principle of Population” appears to spring forth from Malthus’ head as a whole. But it didn’t. Which is not to say that he was a plagiarist who did not add anything of his own. However, what was original was often rather ephemeral and plainly wrong like his unfounded claim about linear growth for the food supply.
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In this post, I would like to review two of Thomas Malthus’ very early precursors. This is not to say they were the only ones or even exterted an influence that was particularly strong. A whole literature had built up over the preceding centuries that turned around demographics. My understanding is that Malthus was mostly not aware of this when he wrote the first edition of his essay. He apparently only delved into the literature more deeply when he reworked his book in the later editions, but also that was limited.
The first exhibit is very old. I don’t think it played a direct or indirect role for Malthus. But it is a good demonstration how certain ideas arise quite naturally when someone starts to think about demographic topics. In a nutshell, you can find already quite a few elements of Malthus’ thought here. The author is the Church father Tertullian [1]. In his treatise “De Anima” (On the Soul), written in the early third century, he tackles the theory that the living are actually the dead who have returned from their “millennial exile.” If that were true, Tertullian argues, the number of human beings would have to be the same at all times which he thinks cannot be so [2]:
We find, however, in the records of the Antiquities of Man, that the human race has progressed with a gradual growth of population, either occupying different portions of the earth as aborigines, or as nomad tribes, or as exiles, or as conquerors […]; or by the more ordinary methods of migration, which they call άποικίαι or colonies, for the purpose of throwing off redundant population, disgorging into other abodes their overcrowded masses. The aborigines remain still in their old settlements, and have also enriched other districts with loans of even larger populations.
Tertullian argues that the world at the time had more food and also population than in the past:
Surely it is obvious enough, if one looks at the whole world, that it is becoming daily better cultivated and more fully peopled than anciently. All places are now accessible, all are well known, all open to commerce; most pleasant farms have obliterated all traces of what were once dreary and dangerous wastes; cultivated fields have subdued forests; flocks and herds have expelled wild beasts; sandy deserts are sown; rocks are planted; marshes are drained; and where once were hardly solitary cottages, there are now large cities. No longer are (savage) islands dreaded, nor their rocky shores feared; everywhere are houses, and inhabitants, and settled government, and civilized life.
At its peak in the second century, the population of the Roman Empire stood at about 60 million people [3]. That was much less than the population at Malthus’ time on the same territory [4]. Still Tertullian already worried about overpopulation:
What most frequently meets our view (and occasions complaint), is our teeming population: our numbers are burdensome to the world, which can hardly supply us from its natural elements; our wants grow more and more keen, and our complaints more bitter in all mouths, whilst Nature fails in affording us her usual sustenance. In very deed, pestilence, and famine, and wars, and earthquakes have to be regarded as a remedy for nations, as the means of pruning the luxuriance of the human race; […].
This Malthusian Argument in nuce is only there to support Tertullian’s theological conclusions. It is not central to his thinking, and he does not pursue it any further.
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That’s not so in the next exhibit of “Malthus before Malthus”: Giovanni Botero’s “Delle cause della grandezza delle città” (On the Causes of the Greatness of Cities) which was published in 1588 [5]. The book was later incorporated into the larger work “Della ragion di Stato” (On the Reason of State) as an appendix, which appeared in Venice in 1589.
To understand the background, a few words about the author are in order and where he came from: Giovanni Botero was born in 1544 in the municipality of Bene Vagienna in Piedmont (now in North-Western Italy). He was educated by Jesuits in Palermo, Sicily. Later he joint their order, but was thrown out in 1580 when he dared to question the temporal power of the Pope. He then went on to work as a personal assistant to Bishop Carlo Borromeo of Milan and, after the death of the latter, for Borromeo’s nephew. He died in 1617 in Turin, the capital of Piedmont.
Giovanni Botero’s main concern is a critique of Niccolò Machiavelli’s “Il Principe” (The Prince), originally published in 1532. He objects to pure power politics and reaffirms the role of morals and religion. Botero also views it as necessary that a ruler treats the population with justice and moderation. As he argues that’s also in the interest of the ruler himself because the population is his greatest asset. He should strive to make it as large as possible, and to this end develop agriculture, industry, and commerce. All this leads Botero to an investigation into how these goals can be achieved, and that’s the starting-point for the following quotes from “On the Causes of the Greatness of Cities” [6]:
Why cities don‘t keep growing in proportion. [7]
No one should believe that the above-mentioned means [developing agriculture, industry, and commerce] or others in store can cause a city to keep growing without end. It is indeed worth considering what the causes are that cities which have reached a certain level of greatness or power do not pass beyond it, but either stop at that level, or turn back. [… examples of population growth for ancient Rome and contemporary Italian cities …] This leads to the question why growth does not go forward? Some respond that the reasons for this are epidemic disease [peste], wars, famines, and other similar causes. But that is not satisfactory because epidemic diseases were always, and also wars, much more frequent and bloody in past centuries than in our times, […] The world has never been without the vicissitudes of plenty, famine, health, and epidemic disease. […] Now with all these accidents, cities that started out with few people have arrived at a great number of inhabitants. Where does it come from that they don‘t keep growing proportionally? […] Now, to answer the proposed question, we say that the same question can be asked for the whole human species; for because it has already been growing for three thousand years from one man and one woman so that the provinces of the mainland and the islands of the sea are full with it, the question follows: Why has it not gone further from three thousand years ago until today?“
Giovanni Botero answers his question with arguments quite familiar to any reader of “An Essay on the Principle of Population”:
But let’s resolve the doubt regarding the cities because it will also resolve that for the universe. We say hence that the increase of the cities results in part from the generative virtue of human beings, in part from the nutritive virtue of those cities: the generative one, without doubt, has always been the same, at least from three thousand years ago until now; for human beings are today as apt to procreate as they were at the times of David and Moses. From which follows that, if there were no other impediment, the propagation of human beings would go on without end, and the increase of the cities without limit. And if it does not go further, it has to be said that that results from the shortfall of food and of sustenance.
He continues:
It is to be added to the things mentioned above that the great cities are subject to a much higher degree than the small cities to famines because they need more provisions, and also to epidemic diseases because the contagion attaches itself more easily and with more devastation […] Hence although human beings were as apt to procreate at the peak of Roman greatness as at its beginning, nonetheless the population did not grow in proportion because the nutritive virtue of the city did not have the force to go further; […] For the same reason, the human species which had grown to a certain size has not gone further; and for three thousand years or more the world has been as full with human beings as at present because the fruits of the earth and the abundance of food does not allow for greater numbers of people.
Botero then enumerates “checks” to population as Thomas Malthus would later call them:
And what will I say about arms of so many kinds and that are so cruel? What about perpetual wars, be it on sea, be it on land? […] There have to be added then to the above-mentioned causes: barrenness, famines, the evil influences [of the air], the contagious diseases, epidemics, earthquakes, floods of the sea and of rivers, and other accidents that are of a kind that they destruct now one city, now a kingdom, now a people, now another. They impede that the number of human beings grows immoderately.
Even one of Malthus’ favorite historical examples is there: The Barbarians in Northern Europe suffered from lack of food, and that’s why they invaded the Roman Empire and brought it down. There is also a cursory discussion of various countries and their policies. Botero pursued this then further in his magnum opus “Relazioni Universali” (Universal Relations) that appeared in four volumes from 1591 to 1598.
But there are also some differences. Giovanni Botero is optimistic that there is still potential for economic growth that will support more population. Whether the standard of living rises for the general population is only of secondary concern for him. Yet, he implicitly assumes that improvements and population growth do not exclude each other when he discusses how the wealth of a city attracts immigrants. This is important for him because it means more power for the ruler and also vis-à-vis other countries. To this end, the economy has to grow. In his view “[a]griculture is the foundation of propagation […]“ [8] But it is comparably inefficient: industry and commerce can create more wealth.
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Giovanni Botero was by no means the only one who thought along these lines, but he was rather original. Over time, more and more people looked into these questions and referred to each other. It is no exaggeration to say that by the time Thomas Malthus became interested in the topic already a whole literature existed that he could draw upon. In my next posts on the background, I will look at later developments from the 17th century on. Sometimes it is surprising to read arguments that foreshadow Malthus so faithfully that it is hard to see what was original about his essay.
Yet, there are also major differences. Many authors in the 17th century were more concerned with repopulating devastated lands, for example after the Thirty Years’ War. Their outlook is optimistic, population will feed for itself. Only sometimes they ask themselves whether there could not be too much of a good thing. Over the 18th century the tone gets gloomier. And then precursors begin to sound remarkably like Thomas Malthus.
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Notes
1) Full name: Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus
2) I am quoting from the English translation by Peter Holmes in “A Treatise on the Soul,” Chapter XXX, 1870.
3) Numbers are very uncertain, and there are also higher estimates, but not beyond 100 million inhabitants.
4) A rough estimate would be 110 million people: the French Republic alone had about 37 million inhabitants in Europe (including the Netherlands. Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, parts of Germany and Italy), the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire had each another 20 million on the territory of the former Roman Empire. And then one would have to add another 10 million for Austria and the rest of Germany on former Roman territory, 10 million for Spain, and more than 10 million or so for Portugal, the Roman part of Great Britain, and the remainder of Italy combined.
5) An English translation by Robert Peterson appeared in 1606 as: “A Treatise Concerning The Causes of the Magnificency and Greatness of Cities.”
6) I translate from the edition of “Della Ragione di Stato” published in 1598, pages 368–374. The title varies between “Ragion di Stato” and “Ragione di Stato” where the former is antiquated, and the latter modern Italian. But also in modern Italian “ragion di stato” can be the fixed term corresponding to the English “reason of state” in the sense of: national interest.
7) “In proportion” probably is supposed to mean that the population grows with a fixed rate, i.e. geometrically as a series, or exponentially as a continuous function.
8) Cf. “Della Ragione di Stato,” page 207.
