Cultural History, Science Studies, and Global Economy: New and Future Approaches

We can now see with sufficient distinctiveness the two great facts which afford a complete refutation of Malthusianism. The first is, that the limit of Population, in any country whatever, is not the number of people which the soil of that country alone will supply with food, but the number which the surface of the whole earth is capable of feeding; and it is a matter of demonstration, that this limit cannot even be approached for many centuries. The inability of England alone, or of Ireland alone, to supply her teeming population with food, is a fact of no more importance in the world’s economy , than the inability of the city of London alone to supply her two millions of people with farm-produce from her own soil. London taxes all the counties of England for her sustenance; England taxes all the countries of the world for her sustenance; – I cannot see any difference between the two cases. (Bowen 1870, 140, emphasis mine, italics in the original)