Today, economic sanctions are generally regarded as an alternative to war. But for most people in the interwar period, the economic weapon was the very essence of total war. The initial intention behind creating the economic weapon was not to use it–economic sanctions were intended to be a form of
Nina Rattner Gelbart— Biography is a curious genre, morphing over time, and writing about the lives of other individuals goes back to antiquity. Plutarch and Suetonius, both working from the first into the second centuries of the common era, were masters of the form. Plutarch wrote parallel studies of pairs,
Henry Kamen— Among the most serious environmental issues in preindustrial Europe was that of the disappearance of forests, which had at one time covered the greater part of the land surface. Already in medieval times there were protests against the destruction of forest land in order to create more arable
Nicholas Orme— This is a scene from a fifteenth-century stained-glass window at Doddiscombsleigh: a country church in Devon, in the south-west of England. It shows what would have been a familiar event. A baby is brought to church to be baptized. The ceremony takes place at a font: a stone
Kevin Madigan— Around 1870, evangelical Christians, as their Catholic adversaries would put it, “invaded” Italy in large numbers. Before unification and the inception of a new liberal order, the extension of rights of toleration to Jews and non-Catholic Christians, and the dispossession of the papal states, Protestant missionaries, by and
Ashley L. Cohen— On a winter evening a man sits by his fireside, waiting for the serene quiet of his country retirement to be interrupted by the delivery of a London newspaper. So opens “The Winter Evening,” Book 4 of William Cowper’s long poem, The Task (1785). The set piece is, without
Jonathan Rose— Hanoverian Britain had its counterpart of the Bibliothèque bleue—chapbooks offering romances, fairy tales, and other fantastic stories. And a few of their readers, in memoirs, helpfully explained how they read them. As a boy, the poet John Clare (b. 1793) consumed 6d. (sixpence) romances of Cinderella and Jack and
Margarette Lincoln— So wrote John Donne, poet and priest, who described London in the 1600s as “a place full of danger and vanity and vice,” neatly encapsulating its horror and allure. The contradictions of London life, its mansions and hovels, its opportunities and epidemics, and the annual influx of migrant
Emily Cockayne— Marginal foodstuffs were eaten in dearth years when regular supplies dwindled. There were fewer opportunities for hedgerow foraging, mushroom picking and rabbiting in the cities than there were in the countryside. Proverbs hint at the desperation of the hungry: Hunger makes hard bones sweet beans. All’s good in
Lee Jackson— The emergence of the ‘gin palace’ in the 1830s, on the cusp of the Victorian era, seems a good place to start. These alluring drinking establishments, adorned with gaslight and gilding, were highly attractive public houses, catering to the common man. Their elaborate decor, however, provoked much earnest