Political Arithmetic in Circulation

McCormick, Ted

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199547890.003.0008

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Petty and adopted by later political arithmeticians had the effect of making population 'not just a number, but a dynamic entity'; and the natural theologians gave its movement a direction and purpose. 30 If the population of England was not growing in the later seventeenth century, they might have said, it ought to have been, and growth would assuredly soon resume.…”

Section: As Professor Mccormick Has Pointed Out the Doubling Methodol...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Until then the myth of the multiplication of mankind and the uses which political arithmeticians had made of it nonetheless continued to influence natural theologians. 98 They sometimes appealed to social reformers and projectors who also drew on Petty for inspiration, like Laurence Braddon whose scheme for the poor in 1717 involved a series of collegiate cities, each planted on 10,000 acres of waste, with two or three people per acre, and housing a total population of 1.5 million. It promised to 'double the wealth and strength of Great Britain', and at the same time accord with the requirements of 'sacred history'.…”

Section: VImentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

William Petty, the Multiplication of Mankind, and Demographic Discourse in Seventeenth-Century England

Slack¹

2017

Hist. J.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the 1650s, after a century of increase, the population of England stopped growing. It was not to increase substantially again before 1750. Over the same interval, and not wholly coincidentally, scholars and theologians were trying to defend the orthodox account of how global population had increased since the Creation and must continue to do so, and the first political arithmeticians were trying to measure and analyse demographic change. This article seeks to throw fresh light on this many-sided discourse by examining William Petty's attempt to write an account of the multiplication of mankind, and the reasons why he failed to complete it. It focuses particularly on Petty's part in developing methods of measuring population density which highlighted the potential for future growth, and on the equally important demonstration by John Graunt that high and rising mortality in cities was hindering population growth in reality. As Petty's cousin Robert Southwell pointed out, Graunt's ‘rule of mortality’ was wholly incompatible with any coherent account of the future multiplication of mankind. At the end of this particular discourse, newly discovered facts about demography triumphed over the presuppositions of divinity.

show abstract

Section: As Professor Mccormick Has Pointed Out the Doubling Methodol...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: VImentioning

confidence: 99%