Secrets of the Modern World: Thomas Malthus

The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus was born in 1766 and died in 1834. He was the son of a clergyman and one of eight children. He was educated at Jesus College, Cambridge and later became Professor of History and Political Economy at the East India Company’s College at Haileybury in Hertfordshire. His most famous work, the Essay on the Principles of Population, was published in 1798 when he was 32. It has been seen partly as a reaction to the Utopian thought of William Godwin and others, as...