History
Plague, Famine and Numbers
Malthus, epidemics and the transition that ended the ceiling
Malthus · the parish registers · the demographers · 3 chapters · 8 min read
How many people there were, and why that decided most of the rest.
Free to read: every chapter below is open
The Ceiling and Its Removal
- 01The Trap, and How It BrokeOn a book that described ten thousand years correctly and was obsolete within a lifetime.
- 02What an Epidemic Does to a SocietyOn why the death toll is the least interesting number.
- 03The Demographic TransitionOn the sequence every industrialising society has run, and the part everybody panicked about.