The Long Shadow of Malthus

The economist and minister Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) had a profound impact on how later thinkers understood the environment, the laws that govern evolution, and the relationship between society and natural law. In arguing that there were natural laws that governed the growth of animal and human populations alike, Malthus tied understandings of nature to humanity’s future. Malthusianism formed the basis of nineteenth-century political economy, informing ideas of heredity, race, nature’s economy, and also the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin. Later in the nineteenth-century, eugenic approaches appealed to men and women from a number of different nationalities and political positions, virtually all of whom used these theories to show why people like themselves were intellectually and racially superior to others. Early proponents of the birth control movement were known as neo-Malthusians. In the twentieth century, the recognition that expanding human populations pose a potential threat to the environment brought many of these ideas into new roles. As the conservation movement emerged, the ideas of Malthus pervaded debates over the value of preserving wild habitats and questions over what use or purpose natural landscapes ought serve.