To inherit the Earth. Imagining world population, from the yellow peril to the population bomb

Journal of Global History

Volumn 1, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 299-319

  Connelly, Matthew ^a  

^a Och Spine at New York Presbyterian Hospitals   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34347380418     PISSN: 17400228     EISSN: 17400236     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S1740022806003019     Document Type: Review

References (115)

1. See, respectively, Peter Novick, That noble dream: the 'objectivity question' and the American historical profession, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988;
2. Gilbert Allardyce, 'The rise and fall of the western civilization course', American Historical Review 87, 3, 1982, pp. 695-725;
3. Martin W. Lewis and Kären E. Wigen, The myth of continents: a critique of metageography, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997.
4. 'Essays on mankind and political arithmetic', 1682, http://www.gutenberg. org/dirs/etext04/mkpa10.txt (consulted 8 March 2006);
5. and see also Paul Demeny, 'Demography and the limits to growth', in Michael S. Teitelbaum and Jay M. Winter, eds., Population and resources in western intellectual traditions, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 213-44.
6. 'Observations concerning the increase of mankind, peopling of countries, etc.', in Frank Luther Mott and Chester E. Jorgenson, eds., Benjamin Franklin: representative selections, with introduction, bibliography, and notes, New York: American Book Company, 1936, pp. 221-3.
7. An essay on the principle of population, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 249.
8. On the principles of political economy and taxation, 1821, http://www.econlib.org/library/Ricardo/ricP.html (consulted 2 May 2006). I am grateful to Ken Pomeranz for this reference.
9. Gertrude Himmelfarb, Darwin and the Darwinian revolution, New York: Norton, 1959, 1968, pp. 159-61.
10. Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American thought, rev. ed., Boston: Beacon, 1955, pp. 38-9;
11. Mike Hawkins, Social Darwinism in European and American thought 1860-1945: Nature as model and nature as threat, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 85-6.
12. Report of the Special Joint Committee to investigate Chinese, Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1877, p.v.;
13. M. J. Dee, 'Chinese immigration', North American Review, 126, 1878, pp. 510, 513-14, 523-6.
14. William Ian Miller, The anatomy of disgust, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997, pp. 9, 26, 251.
15. See also Francis Walker, Discussions in economics and statistics, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1899, pp. 420-2, 424-5, 438-9, 447.
16. William F. Wu, The yellow peril: Chinese Americans in American fiction, 1850-1940, Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1982, pp. 30-46;
17. Heinz Gollwitzer, Die gelbe Gefahr. Geschichte eines Schlagworts. Studien zum imperialistischen Denken, Goettingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1962, pp. 29-30, 50ff., 87-91, 131ff., 175-83;
18. and see also Arthur Herman, The idea of decline in Western history, New York: Free Press, 1997, pp. 173-4.
19. Bernard Gainer, The alien invasion: the origins of the Aliens Act of 1905, London: Heinemann, 1972, pp. 97-9, 112;
20. Donna Gabaccia, 'The "yellow peril" and the "Chinese of Europe": global perspectives on race and labor, 1815-1930', in Jan Lucassen and Leo Lucassen, eds., Migration, migration history, history, 2nd rev. ed., Bern: Peter Lang, 1999, p. 178.
21. Daniel Kevles, In the name of eugenics: genetics and the uses of human heredity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985, p. 33;
22. Dennis Hodgson, 'The ideological origins of the Population Association of America', Population and Development Review, 17, 1, 1991, pp. 4-5.
23. Margaret Sanger, ed., Proceedings of the World Population Conference, London: Edward Arnold & Co., 1927, pp. 333-4.
24. Prescott Hall, 'Immigration restriction and world eugenics', Journal of Heredity 10, 3, 1919, p. 126.
25. Lothrop Stoddard, The rising tide of color against white world-supremacy, New York: Scribner, 1920;
26. Bertrand Russell, Marriage and morals, New York: H. Liveright, 1929;
27. Oswald Spengler, The hour of decision, part 1: Germany and world-historical evolution, Charles Francis Atkinson, trans., New York: Knopf, 1934;
28. Paul Valéry, 'The crisis of the mind', in The collected works of Paul Valéry, Denise Folliot and Jackson Mathews, trans., vol. 10, History and politics, New York: Pantheon, 1962, p. 3.
29. For a contemporary survey of this literature see A. B. Wolfe, 'The population problem since the World War: a survey of literature and research', Journal of Political Economy, 36, 5, 1928, pp. 529-59,
30. and, more generally, Michael S. Teitelbaum and Jay M. Winter, Fear of population decline, Orlando, FL: Academic Press, 1985.
31. Pearl, The biology of population growth, New York: Knopf, 1925, p. 171.
32. Pearl was merely being politic in his assertion that population pressures, not biological inferiority, required reducing fertility. In his private correspondence he worried that Jews would inherit the world and argued in print that blacks had smaller brains, Elazar Barkan, The retreat of scientific racism: changing concepts of race in Britain and the United States between the World Wars, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 210-20.
33. Edward M. East, Mankind at the crossroads, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923, pp. 96, 111-12.
34. Hodgson, 'The ideological origins of the Population Association of America', pp. 1-3.
35. East, Mankind at the crossroads, pp. 111-12,
36. and, for Ross's endorsement, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Edward A. Ross Papers, microfilm edition, 1982, reel 13, frame 855, Stoddard to Ross, 5 July 1920, along with press release, June 1920, frame 843;
37. Etienne Dennery, Foules d'Asie, Paris: A. Colin, 1930;
38. Gaston Bouthoul, La population dans le monde, Paris: Payot, 1935, pp. 70-1, 87-8.
39. Notestein, 'Memories of the early years of the Association', Population Index, 47, 3, 1981, p. 486.
40. Philip M. Hauser, 'World population: retrospect and prospect', Rapid population growth: consequences and policy implications, vol. 2, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971, p. 106.
41. Wright, Population, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923, p. 66;
42. and see also Stoddard, The rising tide of color; East, Mankind at the crossroads, pp. 88-90;
43. Ross, Standing room only?, New York: Century, 1927, pp. 295-6.
44. Kingsley Davis, The population of India and Pakistan, New York: Russell & Russell, 1951, 1968, pp. 35-6.
45. The tone of official reports on public health in this period is apologetic rather than celebratory, see, for instance, British Library, London, India Office Records, V/24/3659, 'Annual Report of the Public Health Commissioner with the Government of India' for the years 1921, pp. 61-5, 1924, pp. 1-3, and 1926, pp. 207-11.
46. Das, 'The population problem in India', in Margaret Sanger, ed., Religious and ethical aspects of birth control, New York: American Birth Control League, 1926, pp. 195-8.
47. Harold Cox, The problem of population, New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1923, p. 85;
48. Ross, Standing room only?, pp. 93-8, 341.
49. Warren S. Thompson, Danger spots in world population, New York: Knopf, 1929, p. 6 and passim.
50. The world's population problems and a White Australia, London: P.S. King & Son, 1930, pp. 316-17.
51. 'The world's future population', in Corrado Gini, et al., eds., Population (Lectures on the Harris Foundation), Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1930, pp. 286-8;
52. Richard A. Soloway, Demography and degeneration: eugenics and the declining birthrate in twentieth-century Britain, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1990, p. 234.
53. Bouthoul, La population, pp. 81, 249-52.
54. Fairchild, Immigration: a world movement and its American significance, New York: Macmillan, 1926, p. 500.
55. Thomas, 'International migration and its control', in Margaret Sanger, ed., Proceedings of the World Population Conference, London: Edward Arnold & Co., 1927, pp. 257-65.
56. For an exception that proved the rule - in which League guidelines on maternal health were withdrawn because they mentioned birth control - see World Health Organization Archives, Geneva, League Archives, 1928-1932, section 8A, 5638, and League Archives, 1933-1946, section 8f, 2363/895.
57. Amy Staples, 'Constructing international identity: the World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization, and World Health Organization, 1945-1965', PhD thesis, Ohio State University, 1998, pp. 168-9, 176-8;
58. Food and Agriculture Organization Archives, Rome, RG 3.1, Series D1, 'Notes and comments by Mr. F. L. McDougall', 'The agricultural and the health problems', 1934.
59. A. M. Carr-Saunders, World population: past growth and present trends, London: Frank Cass, 1936.
60. Milan Hauner, 'Did Hitler want a world dominion?', Journal of Contemporary History, 13, 1, 1978, p. 25.
61. Gary R. Hess, Vietnam and the United States: origins and legacy of a war, Boston: Twayne, 1990, p. 29.
62. See also Christopher Thorne, Allies of a kind: the United States, Britain and the war against Japan, 1941-1945, New York: Oxford University Press, 1978, pp. 7-9, 191.
63. Dower, War without mercy, p. 160.
64. Aldous Huxley, 'The double crisis: part I', World Review, November 1948, p. 14.
65. Dudley Kirk, 'Population changes and the postwar world', American Sociological Review, 9, 1, 1944, p. 35.
66. Davis 'The world demographic transition', Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 237, January 1945, pp. 1, 7-8, (emphasis in original);
67. Susan Greenhalgh, 'The social construction of population science: an intellectual, institutional, and political history of twentieth-century demography', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 38, 1, 1996, pp. 37-8.
68. Simon Szreter stresses - more than this author - the importance of the Cold War in this intellectual history, see ' The idea of demographic transition and the study of fertility change: a critical intellectual history', Population and Development Review, 19, 4, 1993, pp. 670-4.
69. Rockefeller Archive Center, Tarrytown, NY (henceforth RAC), RG 5, John D. Rockefeller 3rd Papers, Series 1, Sub-series 5, box 85, folders 720-3, 'National Academy of Sciences: Conference on Population Problems', 20-22 June 1952.
70. Stephen G. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988, p. 139.
71. See also John Lewis Gaddis, We now know: rethinking Cold War history, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997, pp. 152-3.
72. Buton I. Kaufman, Trade and aid: Eisenhower's foreign economic policy 1953-1961, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982, p. 169.
73. 'Remarks to American and Korean servicemen at Camp Stanley', 1 November 1966, Public papers of the presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966, book 2, p. 1287.
74. Charles de Gaulle, Discours et messages: Avec le renouveau, Mai 1958-Juillet 1962, Paris: Plon, 1970, p. 130.
75. John Cleland, 'Demographic data collection in less developed countries', Population Studies, 50, 3, 1996, pp. 433-6.
76. Frank W. Notestein, 'Demography in the United States: a partial account of the development of the field', Population and Development Review, 8, 4, 1982, p. 668.
77. World Health Organization, Official Records, no. 42, Geneva, World Health Organization, 1952, pp. 232-40.
78. Yankel Fijalkow, 'Hygiene, population sciences and population policy: a totalitarian menace?', Contemporary European History, 8, 3, 1999, pp. 451-72.
79. Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic groups in conflict, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985, pp. 83-7, 326-30;
80. Benedict Anderson, Imagined communities: reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism, rev. ed., London: Verso, 1991, pp. 164-70.
81. William Kruskal quoted in Nathan Keyfitz, 'The social and political context of population forecasting', in William Alonso and Paul Starr, eds., The politics of numbers, New York: William Sage Foundation, 1987, pp. 238-9.
82. Katherine Butler, 'Bosnian hailed as the six billionth person in world', The Independent, 13 October 1999.
83. It was later revealed that the family was squatting in an apartment from which a Bosnian Serb had been forced to flee, and were threatened with eviction, Paul Watson, '6 billionth baby virtually homeless', The Toronto Star, 2 August 2000.
84. Sauvy, 'Le "faux problème" de la population mondiale', originally published in Population, 4, 3, 1949, pp. 447-62,
85. reprinted in Population and Development Review, 16, 4, 1990, pp. 759-74.
86. See also Paul Demeny, 'Demography and the limits to growth', p. 225.
87. 'Can we survive technology?', Fortune, June 1955,
88. Paul Boyer, By the bomb's early light: American thought and culture at the dawn of the atomic age, New York: Pantheon, 1985, pp. 33-45.
89. Herz, 'Rise and demise of the territorial state', World Politics, 9, 4, 1957, pp. 492-3.
90. Sauvy, 'Le "faux problème"', p. 765;
91. 'Trois mondes, une planète', L'Observateur, p. 118, 14 August 1952, reprinted in Michel Louis Lévy, Alfred Sauvy: compagnon du siècle, Paris: La Manufacture, 1990, p. 181.
92. Kingsley Davis, 'The political impact of new population trends', Foreign Affairs, 36, 2, 1958, p. 296.
93. National Archives, Kew, UK, FO 953/2496, William Clark to John Nicholls, 21 February 1966.
94. William Vogt, People! Challenge to survival, New York: William Sloan Associates, 1960, pp. 50-1.
95. Donald T. Critchlow, Intended consequences: birth control, abortion, and the federal government in modern America, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 151-2.
96. The population bomb, New York: Ballantine Books, 1968.
97. The population bomb, pp. 15-16 (emphasis in original).
98. Lévi-Strauss, Tristes tropiques, John and Doreen Weightman, trans., New York: Modern Library, 1955, 1997, pp. 146-7;
99. Julian Huxley, 'World population', Scientific American, March 1956, pp. 68-9.
100. The layout of Indian cities, with narrow paths following irregular patterns, had long made them appear overcrowded - British visitors had the same impression more than a century earlier, Bernard S. Cohn, An anthropologist among historians and other essays, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 234-5.
101. The myth of population control: family, caste, and class in an Indian village, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972, pp. 1-2.
102. Population bomb, pp. 22-3, 37, 40.
103. Thomas Robertson, 'This is the American Earth: American empire and American environmentalism', unpublished paper for Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis seminar, New Brunswick, NJ, 15 November 2005, pp. 1, 22;
104. Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall, This is the American Earth, San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1960.
105. Alexander DeConde, Ethnicity, race, and American foreign policy: a history, Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1992, pp. 141-2, 157-9.
106. Michael Flamm, Law and order: street crime, civil unrest, and the crisis of liberalism in the 1960s, New York: Columbia University Press, 2005, pp. 105-15.
107. Critchlow, Intended consequences;
108. Peter J. Donaldson, Nature against us: the United States and the world population crisis, 1965-1980, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990;
109. John Sharpless, 'Population science, private foundations, and development aid: the transformation of demographic knowledge in the United States, 1945-1965', in Frederick Cooper and Randall Packard, eds., International development and the social sciences, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997, pp. 176-200,
110. and 'World population growth, family planning, and American foreign policy', Journal of Policy History, 7, 1, 1995, pp. 72-102.
111. RAC, RG IV3B4.2, Population Council, Acc. II, George Zeidenstein, box 3, 'Personal and confidential' file on trip to Pakistan and Bangladesh, Dunlop to John D. Rockefeller 3rd, 7 April 1976.
112. Paul and Anne Ehrlich, 'Population control and genocide', in John P. Holdren and Paul R. Ehrlich, eds., Global ecology: readings toward a rational strategy for Man, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971, pp. 157-8.
113. Huntington, The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996, pp. 307, 316;
114. Kaplan, 'The coming anarchy', Atlantic Monthly, February 1994, p. 48;
115. Ferguson, 'Eurabia?', New York Times, 4 April 2004.