Donald Winch (1935–2017)

I love these 'A Very Short Introduction' books! For those of you who have yet to come across the series, there are now three hundred and fifty titles, all around one hundred pages long, covering a multitude of topics and acting in much the same way as a primer. The books assume no previous knowledge of their subject and, in every one that I have read, walk the line between simplicity of delivery and patronising the reader, with an excellent skill.

This Short Introduction concerns Robert Malthus; a philosopher most famous for his writings about population. His reputation has taken a beating, due as much to the people who took up his work, as to anything he himself said. The basic tenet of his case was that population could not expand faster than the requirements for its subsistence and that the greater the access to such necessities, the faster population would grow. Add to this a moral code which states that contraception is a great evil, and one begins to see where dangerous theories can be evinced. Malthus never mentions genocide but, to a strange moral compass, killing the poor is morally preferable to birth control and his writings were used as an excuse.

This book may be small, but it sets out, with inestimable fairness, both sides of the argument as to whether Malthus should be considered a progenitor of population science and a serious economic scientist, or a dangerous backwater. For the interested bystander, such as myself, this is as far as I need, or wish, to partake of the views of Rev. Malthus but, if one wishes to delve further, the book ends with an excellent series of reference works so that one may explore the topic to one's heart's content.

Once more, a marvellous addition to my library!… (more)