The most influential thinker on population was Thomas Malthus, a clergyman who was born in Westcott, near Dorking in Surrey, in 1766. Malthus challenged the prevailing view that society was constantly improving, and suggested that the development of civilisation would always tend to misery.
He published his key work An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society in 1798, and expanded it in subsequent editions.
Essentially, he claimed that population had been growing geometrically (2, 4, 6, 8) while agricultural production grew according to an arithmetical progression (1, 2, 3, 4,). With this in mind, population growth would lead to a semi-starving underclass.
The “positive checks” to population disaster were starvation, disease and war to increase the death rate. The “preventive checks” were…
