Abstract

I examine the question of whether there was a positive check of Malthusianism in historical China. By constructing a prefecture-level panel data during Ming and Qing dynasty, I show that population growth does raise civil conflict incidence. The instrument result, which I rely on the exogenous shock of agricultural technology change on population represents that one million growth in population is associated with 0.183 civil conflict increases. The robustness checks indicate that the result is not driven by the special periods and measurement of civil conflict. This study provides rich empirical supports to claim that the positive check of Malthusianism was popular in China from the sixteenth century to the early twenty century.