The International Population Problem

Abstract

The entire problem of raw materials and colonies cannot be fully understood, if it is not set in relation to the population problem. In this way however there arises for us in a quite general sense the question of the relationships between the population problem and the peace problem. That under primitive social and economic conditions the overpopulation of an area can turn into a real cause of warlike expansion, is really not seriously doubted either by historians or by ethnologists. It is however true for this stage that one should not conceive the relationship between cause and effect as a particularly simple one. The over-population of a tribal area is indeed no coincidence, but the result of a conscious renunciation of all those manifold means of population-control, which exist at all times and among all peoples. Behind such a renunciation stand possibly the same motives for developing a domineering force which then lead to warlike expansion. In contrast, we come across examples indicating that a strict policy of population-control constitutes the essence of a policy directed towards the seclusion of the country and the warding-off of all external enlargements. (Japan up to the end of the Tokugawa-Period in the year 1868.)