Duncan Kelly is co-author of Malthusian Moments: Introduction the introduction to the Historical Journal special issue

Whose ideas seem most relevant to this time of ecological crisis and the threat of an uninhabitable earth? Faced with demographic turbulence, global inequality and human insecurity, massive corporate power and wealth seems to have stretched modern forms of politics close to breaking point. Amidst the various insecurities that affect us all, from the fractured contours of human identities to the provision of basic human needs, it is all too easy to feel the pull of a sort of fatalism.

At such a time, the resonance of Thomas Malthus’s ideas about the connection between population growth, and the finitude of resources to provide for it, seems all too obvious right across the political spectrum. But what did Malthus really say? And how do his ideas track into our present, as opposed to the ways in which they tracked across previous generations, from the Napoleonic wars to the resource-driven concerns around the ‘limits to growth’ epoch of the 1960s and 1970s? What indeed of the pre-history of those ideas, around the capacity of natural resources and fossil fuels to meet the demands of an expanding population into an indeterminate future?

All these sorts of questions have arisen anew, from the evolution of historical work on Malthus’s original context; new research into his biography and his teaching; or around his global impact and global interests. His appropriation and re-appropriation at various points over the last two hundred or so years, is a particular sort of barometer of various responses to particular crises and catastrophes.

Based on the results first of an international conference at Malthus’s alma mater in Jesus College, Cambridge, as well as the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), this special issue offers a series of essays focused on variously pivotal Malthusian ‘moments’. Taking account of the latest scholarship, the essays in the journal show the extent to which Malthus remains a living presence in debates about demography and the industrial revolution, as well as the history and reception of political theory, particularly radical forms of egalitarianism.

We also show Malthus’s importance to the evolution of modern political economy in Europe and in South Asia simultaneously, the crucial role of China in his thinking, and his centrality to the discussion of resources, fisheries and growth in the post-war world. But we begin by introducing readers to the ‘new worlds’ of this globalized Malthus, bringing out in a bit more detail the ways in which the power of his ideas continue to reverberate into our present.

Read all articles in the Malthusian Moment Special Issue for free including the Introduction by Alison Bashford, Duncan Kelly and Shailaja Fennell here.

Main image: Thomas Robert Malthus. Mezzotint by John Linnell, 1834. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY