Population was a socially significant yet politically precarious concept in nineteenth-century Britain. In order to highlight the affective implications of “population,” this essay examines Harriet Martineau's fiction in the context of early Victorian concerns over population growth and contemporary thoughts of political economy. As an avid supporter of Thomas Malthus, Martineau maintains that “proportionate labor” is the determining factor in national stability, but her use of sentimental fiction in Illustrations of Political Economy (1832–34) reveals aspects of the population crisis that are not accounted for by the classic political economists. Martineau's fiction presents population as a phenomenon collectively felt among Victorians rather than as an objective number that represents sociological truth. In her modification of the Malthusian principles to encompass affective negotiations that extend beyond individual morals, Martineau emphasizes the importance of somatic experience in shaping the nineteenth-century understanding of population. Furthermore, as Martineau's narrative resolution to the population crisis comes from well-managed emigration, her works demonstrate that geographical colonial expansion operated as an essential condition in establishing a nationally sustainable idea of population. Reassessing Martineau's literary and historical significance as an innovative successor of Malthus unveils a sophisticated Victorian nexus of population theory and the collective feelings of empire.

中文翻译：

---

感受马尔萨斯帝国：马蒂诺政治经济学插图中的人口重构

在十九世纪的英国，人口是一个具有社会意义但政治不稳定的概念。为了强调“人口”的情感含义，本文在维多利亚时代早期对人口增长的关注和当代政治经济学思想的背景下审视了哈丽特·马蒂诺的小说。作为托马斯·马尔萨斯的狂热支持者，马蒂诺认为“比例劳动”是国家稳定的决定性因素，但她在小说中对感伤小说的运用政治经济学插图（1832-34）揭示了经典政治经济学家没有解释的人口危机的各个方面。马蒂诺的小说将人口描述为维多利亚时代人们集体感受到的现象，而不是代表社会学真理的客观数字。马蒂诺对马尔萨斯原则进行了修改，以涵盖超越个人道德的情感谈判，她强调了躯体经验在塑造十九世纪对人口的理解中的重要性。此外，由于马蒂诺对人口危机的叙事解决方案来自于管理良好的移民，她的作品表明，地理殖民扩张是建立全国可持续人口观念的基本条件。重新评估马蒂诺作为马尔萨斯的创新继承者的文学和历史意义，揭示了人口理论和帝国集体情感之间复杂的维多利亚时代联系。