Thomas Malthus and the Making of the Modern World (Major Thinkers)

Thomas Malthus was one of the three founders of moderneconomics, alongside Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Hewas also the founder of modern demography (populationstudies). In his Essay on the Principle of Population (1798),turned into a greatly expanded and in many ways differentbook in the second edition of 1803, Malthus laid out hisfamous laws of population, later amended to tendencies.The influence of this book has been immense, not merelyon theoretical discussions in economics and the socialsciences, but also in the practical legislation of the earlynineteenth century and the policies of those who ruled theBritish Empire. His theories also provided the key to theidea of natural selection for both Alfred Russell Wallaceand Charles Darwin.Alan Macfarlane, F.B.A., is an Emeritus Professor ofAnthropology at Cambridge University and a Life Fellowof King’s College. His website is alanmacfarlane.com.

Alan Macfarlane was born in Shillong, India, in 1941 and educated at the Dragon School, Sedbergh School, Oxford and London Universities. He is the author of over twenty books, including The Origins of English Individualism (1978) and Letters to Lily: On How the World Works (2005). He has worked in England, Nepal, Japan and China as both an historian and anthropologist. He was elected to the British Academy in 1986 and is now Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cambridge and a Life Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge.