Alice Reid & Romola Davenport
The world’s population has exploded since the 18th century, from perhaps 1 billion in 1800 to over 8 billion today. The usual story is that this extraordinary growth was caused by dramatic falls in mortality. But research at Campop has shown that, at least in England, fertility has actually played a larger role than mortality in regulating population growth.
Romola Davenport
‘Malthusianism’ is widely used to describe the belief that (1) human populations grow faster than the resources on which they depend, and (2) that the main way in which population is prevented from outstripping resources is by the ‘positive check’ of mortality, resulting in the most extreme circumstances in ‘Malthusian crises’ (famine and war).
Romola Davenport
When the covid-19 pandemic struck in 2020 there was no stockpile of coronavirus vaccines, and no cure. Instead, governments were forced to fall back on a repertoire of very traditional measures to control epidemics: surveillance, lockdowns, quarantines, and cordons sanitaire. To many people’s surprise, these measures were quite effective in the early stages of the pandemic. Countries that implemented strict quarantines, such as Australia and New Zealand, avoided large outbreaks. In countries with high levels of infection, lockdowns were followed by falling case numbers and deaths.
Did similar strategies help to control other infectious diseases in the past, before vaccines and antibiotics?
Romola Davenport
In 2007 the United Nations announced an historic milestone: the world had become decisively urban, with half the global population living in towns and cities. This represented a dramatic reversal of historic norms, when 80-90 percent of people worked and lived in the countryside. And this unprecedented shift from rural to urban areas shows no sign of abating – indeed, the UN predicts that all future population growth will be urban.
Romola Davenport
Berhardina Midderigh-Bokhorst and Smith’s Fine Arts Publishing N.V. – The Hague. Hansel and Gretel (1937). Image credit: Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum.
In the story of Hansel and Gretel, a famine drives a father to abandon his children in the woods, where they discover a house made of gingerbread and a cannibal witch. In the Magic Porridge Pot tale, a young girl forced by poverty to search for food in the woods and hedgerows is given a magic pot that produces abundant staple food on command.
These types of stories about hunger and famine abound in the folklore of most European societies, and embody folk memories of food scarcity. However, as the historian John Walter noted, these tropes are curiously absent from English fairy tales. Why?
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