Population Intensification Theory

Abstract

“Population intensification” means increasing the density of population on a fixed area of land, and is restricted in this paper to natural increase, thus excluding migration or conquest. There has been a recent tendency to treat the topic as if there were on offer only two theories of intensification, those of Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834), especially as set out initially in 1798 in An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society, with Remarks of the Speculations of Mr Godwin, M. Condorcet, and other Writers (henceforth The First Essay), and Ester Boserup (1910–1999), as set out in 1965 in The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian Change Under Population Pressure and amplified in later works (1970, 1975, 1976, 1981, 1985, 1999). This paper examines the cases put forward by these two writers, and then argues that their theories do not exhaust the possible explanations for population intensification. Malthus is briefly summarized, because, although most social scientists are well aware of his postulates (cf. Dupâquier, Fauve-Chamoux and Grebenik 1983; Wrigley 1986) certain points will be taken up later in the paper, and additionally his writings were the model against which Boserup reacted.