MALTHUS, Thomas (inscrib.); TURNER, Sharon.

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The History of the Anglo-Saxons. Second edition, presented and inscribed by Thomas Malthus: "East India College, Awarded to, Mr John Trotter, at the Public Examination of December 1817, as the first of his Class in, Political Economy, T. Rob. Malthus". Malthus taught as professor of history and political economy at the East India Company College at Haileybury from 1805 to his death in 1834, training generations of EIC management. Writing many years later, a former student recalled "We called him Pop; not in derision, for we had a great but rather distant respect for him. Though his theories were so cruel, his heart and manners were most kindly and courteous" (quoted in Maureen Alexander Turner, p. 54). John Trotter (1800-1825) entered the college in 1816 and subsequently joined the EIC; he died seven years later aboard the Royal George, just off Penang in Malaya, which was then an EIC port. Trotter was the son of Alexander Trotter (d. 1842), the financially imaginative paymaster of the Royal Navy. His engraved armorial bookplate is in both volumes; Malthus's ink inscription is on the front free endpaper verso.The History of the Anglo-Saxons by Sharon Turner (1768-1847) was originally published from 1799 to 1805. It quickly became "a powerful influence on historical thought for the succeeding half-century" (ODNB), and remains acknowledged as a turning point in Anglo-Saxon studies and a benchmark in historiography. Writing with a clear eye on the British Empire of his own day -

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