ABSTRACT

This essay locates Thomas Robert Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) in the historiography of his time. It does so by clarifying the manner in which Malthus used his account of population-food dynamics to retell the grand narrative of Roman decline leading to barbarism, feudalism, and then commerce. The result of Malthus’s intervention was to demote in importance both the actions of the usual historical actors – legislators, princes, and parties – and the historical contexts in which they were portrayed as acting. Such contexts were typically rendered in terms of laws, customs, and political interests, but, on Malthus’s account, these are merely contingent factors compared with the eternal laws that underlie human history. Malthus’s Essay thus represents an example of a more general phenomenon detectable in the late eighteenth century: the demotion of erudition and source criticism by those pursuing theological and philosophical understanding.

摘要

本文是在托马斯·罗伯特·马尔萨斯（Thomas Robert Malthus ）当时的史学中找到的关于人口原理的论文（1798）。通过阐明马尔萨斯使用人口-食物动力学的方式来重述罗马衰落的宏大叙事，导致野蛮，封建主义和商业的叙述，从而做到这一点。马尔萨斯进行干预的结果是，将通常的历史行为者（立法者，王子和政党）的行动以及被刻画为行为者的历史背景的重要性都降低了。通常以法律，习俗和政治利益的角度来描绘这样的背景，但是从马尔萨斯的角度来看，与构成人类历史的永恒法律相比，这些只是偶然因素。马尔萨斯的随笔 因此，它代表了一种在18世纪末可以发现的更普遍现象的例子：追求神学和哲学理解的人对博学的贬低和来源的批评。