现代史学方法论视角下的人口循环理论

马尔萨斯理论在史学上被广泛应用。马尔萨斯认为人口的增长导致饥饿和社会危机,随之而来的是人口数量的减少、消费增加,随后人口数量又开始增加。人口数量的稳定波动就是人口循环周期。20世纪30年代俄国经济学家雅什诺夫在史学研究中第一次揭示了马尔萨斯人口循环理论。随后W.阿贝尔和M.波斯坦在欧洲史研究方面运用了该理论。20世纪下半叶人口循环理论得到了深入的研究,尤其受到法国年鉴派史学家布罗代尔等人的重视。随后,J.戈尔斯通的人口结构理论为人口循环理论的发展注入了新的活力。近几年以J.卡姆罗斯、P.图尔钦为代表的学者广泛采用数学模拟方法研究人口循环理论,运用这一方法可将人口循环周期分为增长阶段、紧缩阶段和生态危机阶段。此外,运用人口循环理论取得的研究成果有助于对社会和经济发展做出预测。

The Concept of Demographic Cycles under the Perspective of Modern Historical Methodology

This paper is devoted to the history of diffusion of Thomas Malthus’s ideas and their embodiment in the modern historical theories.Malthus’s central idea is that the population upsurge leads to widespread famine and social crises;consequently,the population decreases in size,the consumption level increases and the population begins to grow again.Therefore,continuous population fluctuations or so-called demographic cycles have taken place throughout the history.The Malthusian cycles were first discovered in Chinese history by E.Yashnov,a Russian economist who worked in Harbin in 1930s.Later,W.Abel and M.Postan revealed the demographic cycles in the history of Europe.The theory of demographic cycles gained great popularity in the second half of 20th century and was developed,in particular,by historians of French Annales school(C.-E.Labrousse,F.Braudel,E.Le Roy Ladurie et al.).Another great stride forward in the development of the concept of demographic cycles was the demographic-structural theory by J.Goldstone.Recently,the demographic cycles have been extensively studied using economic and mathematical models.Among other works,this new line of research is presented in the papers by J.Komlos and Р.Turchin.The modeling outcomes show essentially different demographic dynamics during the various periods and help to distinguish the demographic cycle phases.