“Neo-Malthusians are adamant that the escape from hunger can’t last for ever…What if all of this is Malthus’s fault? In the early 19thC the quest to turn the world into a permanent field displaced Fenland commoners & Bengali peasants, who then needed to be fed, which justified more enclosures”
In the guise of natural theology, Malthusian political economy soon became the common sense of a middle class brought up...
An excellent read, will look for the book. I’d argue that enclosure and commodification are behind destruction in the Amazon, and only well populated sites can be conserved, upending the neo Malthusian narrative.
Thank you, Rebecca. Really interesting! "Malthus may well have helped build the infrastructure of this empire, but he would have been horrified by the way it enabled Britain to live beyond its means and to ignore a natural law designed to stimulate not gluttony, but self-reliance and restraint"