Project MUSE®: Journal of Interdisciplinary History - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/94
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Journal of Interdisciplinary History.daily12026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 30 (1999/00) through current issueLatest Articles: Journal of Interdisciplinary HistoryTWOProject MUSE®Journal of Interdisciplinary History1530-91690022-1953Latest articles in Journal of Interdisciplinary History. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Marital Fertility Decline in Italy
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979601
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The historical decline in fertility in Europe is one of the most intensely debated topics in modern demography. This transformative phenomenon lies at the heart of the demographic transition, a process that redefined family structures and reproductive decisions in industrialized Western countries. Over recent decades, various theories have been developed to explain this shift. The debate has produced a rich and diverse body of literature that provides insight into how societies have adopted new reproductive behaviors in response to profound changes in their environments.Building on that body of literature, this empirical study draws on a comprehensive database containing demographical and socioeconomic data for
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/94/image/coversmallMarital Fertility Decline in Italy2026-01-11text/htmlen-USMarital Fertility Decline in Italy2026-01-112026TWOProject MUSE®1278182026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-01-11The Consumer Revolution Comes Home: Material Inequalities in London’s Eighteenth-Century Polite Society
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979600
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The great degree of luxury to which this country has arrived within a few years … [is] not only astonishing, but almost dreadful to think of. Time was, when those articles of indulgence, which now every mechanic aims a possession of, were enjoyed only by the Baron or Lord of a district.When McKendrick first proposed that a “consumer revolution” accompanied or even preceded the British Industrial Revolution, he attached a vital role to the dynamics of social distinction and emulation as propelling mechanisms in the eighteenth-century expansion of consumption. “The rich, of course, led the way,” McKendrick wrote. “In imitation of the rich the middle ranks spent more frenziedly than ever before, and in imitation of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/94/image/coversmallThe Consumer Revolution Comes Home: Material Inequalities in London’s Eighteenth-Century Polite Society2026-01-11text/htmlen-USThe Consumer Revolution Comes Home: Material Inequalities in London’s Eighteenth-Century Polite Society2026-01-112026TWOProject MUSE®2020302026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-01-11Entrepreneurs, Speculators, or Silent Heroes? Body Size of Food Smugglers
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979602
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War is associated with famine, fear, a high risk of loss of life, and unimaginable material losses. Material damage and human loss during World War II have been well documented in the historical literature. Recently, however, increasing attention has been paid to the shortand long-term effects of war on human biology, health, and demography. The short-term effects are immediately observable: high death rates, decreased fertility, low birth weight, high incidence of infectious diseases, and more.1The long-term effects become apparent only later in life. Perhaps the best-documented example of the impact of long-term food shortage on human populations is the Dutch famine, which started in December 1944 and lasted
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/94/image/coversmallEntrepreneurs, Speculators, or Silent Heroes? Body Size of Food Smugglers2026-01-11text/htmlen-USEntrepreneurs, Speculators, or Silent Heroes? Body Size of Food Smugglers2026-01-112026TWOProject MUSE®1243142026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-01-11Welfare or War in the Early Modern State
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979603
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How has the distribution of state power, institutional resilience, and economic wealth so evident in the contemporary world come to pass, and what is the causal nature (if any) of the obviously correlative relationship between these three things? There are perhaps no other broad questions in the historical social sciences that elicit more scholarly interest. Indeed, the 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to two economists, Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, and a political scientist, James Robinson, for their body of work on precisely these questions. In their reading of the evidence, it is essentially political institutions that lead the causal chain, primarily via the protection of private property, the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/94/image/coversmallWelfare or War in the Early Modern State2026-01-11text/htmlen-USWelfare or War in the Early Modern State2026-01-112026TWOProject MUSE®388152026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-01-11