Confounding Malthus
Roy Porter, 21 December 1989
Health and the Rise of Civilisation
by Mark Nathan Cohen.
Yale, 285 pp., £22.50, October 1989,0 300 04006 7 Show More
by Mark Nathan Cohen.
Yale, 285 pp., £22.50, October 1989,
Nutrition and Economic Development in the 18th-Century Habsburg Monarchy: An Anthropomorphic History
by John Komlos.
Princeton, 325 pp., $45, November 1989,0 691 04257 8 Show More
by John Komlos.
Princeton, 325 pp., $45, November 1989,
“... demands, each subject to the law of diminishing returns. ‘Progress’ has its costs. Yet, as John Komlos argues in his subtle ‘anthropometric’ account of economic development in the 18th-century Habsburg Empire, the real point about the history of the West over the last couple of centuries is that Malthusian crises have been held at bay, perhaps ... ”
