Delle cause della grandezza e magnificenza delle città. Giovanni Botero e la nascita del pensiero demografico moderno

In 1588 Giovanni Botero published The Causes of the Greatness of Cities. The third book of this short treatise, proposed in the appendix of this brief note, contains the first nucleus of a Malthusian population theory. Although he did not fully anticipate all the ideas that Thomas Malthus exposed over two hundred years later, Botero can be considered the most conscious initiator of modern demographic thinking.