8 - Population, resources and homeostatic regulation

Summary

The changing balance of population and resource

The discussion of Alpine migration patterns contained in the last two chapters has shown that many widespread notions concerning both emigration and immigration are in need of major modification, and that a number of important problems must be considered more carefully than has been the case so far. One such problem is whether permanent emigration actually played a more decisive role than other coping devices used by Alpine populations to strike a viable balance with their resources. The best way of tackling this problem is to verify whether upland communities could approach a homeostatic condition in which mechanisms lowering fertility kept natural increase within tolerable limits, thereby reducing the significance of permanent emigration as a safety valve. Some evidence has already been presented in Chapter 6. But it is now time to examine in a more comprehensive manner both this question and, more generally, the Malthusian model outlined in Chapter 2.

As we have seen, the foundation of Malthus's argument is that in mountain areas the ceiling of resources is easily reached, all the more quickly when for some reason mortality sharply declines, as had apparently been the case in the Swiss Alps in the course of the eighteenth century. It is therefore in the mountains that the check o Indeed, the figures collected by Muret on Leysin and other mountainous parishes of Canton Vaud offered an impressive example of how effective the check of nuptiality could be as a homeostatic mechanism. f nuptiality should be expected ‘to prevail to an unusual extent’. Indeed, the figures collected by Muret on Leysin and other mountainous parishes of Canton Vaud offered an impressive example of how effective the check of nuptiality could be as a homeostatic mechanism.