Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Guglielmo Ferrero: An Historian's View of Population

1994; Wiley; Volume: 20; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/2137668

1728-4457

Income, Poverty, and Inequality

Guglielmo Ferreros article An Historians View of Population appeared in the August 17 1922 issue of the Manchester Guardian Commercial. Demographic modernity is often described in terms of the substitution of quality of human capital for quantity; in the perception of Ferrero the distinctive trend has rather been from qualitative to quantitative civilization a degradation attributable to increased demographic scale and the gross ideology of traders. It is only within the last 2 centuries that Europe has become thickly populated. Population was always very sparse and decreased more easily than it increased as confirmed by the actual method of growth and decay of the ancient civilizations. The Middle Ages were more fecund than antiquity; Christianity made a sacrament of matrimony forbidding infanticide and proscribing prostitution. It is certain that the tendency to increase has gained strength since the French Revolution and in the 19th century. The civilizations that existed before the French Revolution were qualitative. But in the 19th century partly in consequence of the increase of population European civilization becomes quantitative. People compete in the frenzied manufacture of things at the lowest price indifferent to their poor quality. The quality of goods is sacrificed to quantity. Consumption increases with production. In contrast to the civilization that preceded it modern civilization has need of large numbers of men. The increase of population is the necessary condition for all other growth: in industry in trade in savings in the revenue and expenditure of the state and in the army. A great political anarchy is raging in the midst of a still ruling political order. So the intellectual and moral disorder of the times if they continue to increase with the increase of population and of wealth might in the end generate political anarchy and industrial disorganization.