Nutrition, Population Growth, and the Industrial Revolution in England

1990 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Komlos
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Nutritional Status ◽  
Population Growth ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Urban Sector ◽  
Recent Memory ◽  
The Middle Ages

This study proposes a conceptualization of the industrial revolution in England in terms of the interaction of demographic and economic processes linked by the nutritional status of the population. By the eighteenth century the English economy had reached an important conjuncture. It had a larger accumulation of capital, and a larger urban sector capable of expanding commerce and production, than ever before. In addition, the population was well nourished by preindustrial standards and was about to benefit from the propitious harvest conditions of the 1730s and to procreate at a rate unsurpassed within recent memory (Wrigley and Schofield 1981). Population growth accelerated and had a market-expanding effect in a Boserupian fashion, triggering the industrial revolution; the roots of this transformation, however, extended back into the Middle Ages (Jones 1981; Boserup 1981). Thus the factors that have been regarded as crucial in unleashing the industrial revolution, such as the rise in the rate of saving, are less important within the framework presented here than the acceleration in the growth of a well-nourished population in a relatively developed economy.

scholarly journals VALENTINES AND THE VICTORIAN IMAGINATION:MARY BARTONANDFAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-412
Author(s):  
Karin Koehler
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Written Communication ◽  
Valentine's Day ◽  
Epistolary Exchange ◽  
Obscure Origin ◽  
The Middle Ages

The custom of celebrating Valentine'sDay dates back to the Middle Ages. The emergence of Valentine's Day as a commercial holiday, exploited above all by the greeting card industry, is more recent. In Britain, Valentine's Day cards emerged in the eighteenth century. As David Vincent writes,The observance of 14 February underwent a metamorphosis during the eighteenth century which was later to befall many other customs. What had begun as an exchange of gifts, with many local variations of obscure origin, was gradually transformed into an exchange of tokens and letters, which in turn began to be replaced by printed messages from the end of the century. (44)Early examples of pre-printed Valentine's Day stationery and manuals for the composition of the perfect valentine reveal that existing folk customs were swiftly adapted by modern print culture and an increasingly literate population. However, it was the 1840 introduction of Rowland Hill's penny post in Britain, alongside concomitant advances in American and European postal infrastructure, which led to a veritable explosion in the exchange of valentines, moulding the practice into a shape still recognisable today (see Golden 222). Hill not only democratised access to written communication by lowering prices, he also anonymised epistolary exchange. Prepaid stamps and pillar post boxes made it possible to correspond with anyone, anywhere, without giving away one's identity. And while sending an anonymous letter would have been perceived as a violation of epistolary decorum during the remainder of the year, on Valentine's Day it was not only acceptable but, as Farmer Boldwood hints in Thomas Hardy'sFar from the Madding Crowd(1874), expected. The opportunity for anonymous correspondence generated an enthusiastic response.

The Marais

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Reader
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
Andre Malraux ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City ◽  
The Middle Ages

This book explores the history and the vicissitudes of one of Paris’s most extraordinary areas, the Marais. Centrally located on the Right Bank, this neighbourhood was from the Middle Ages through to the eighteenth century the most fashionable in the city, headquarters of the nobility who endowed it with resplendent architecture. The Court’s move to Versailles and the Revolution of 1789 led to the quartier’s decline, so that in the nineteenth century and the earlier part of the twentieth it was in parlous shape, its fine buildings run down and often severely overcrowded. It escaped wholesale destruction in the post-War frenzy of modernization largely thanks to André Malraux, who as Culture Minister fostered the restoration of the area. Malraux’s efforts were, however, not immune from criticism, sometimes seen as a form of socio-economic cleansing with concomitant fossilization, and thus emblematic of the problems faced by a city which has always been torn between the preservation of its past and the need to adapt to social and historical change. The book focuses particularly on literary, cinematic and other artistic reproductions of the quartier, of which it attempts to provide a comprehensive overview, and foregrounds particularly its importance as home to and base of two highly significant minorities – the Jewish and the gay communities.

The Enlightenment’s Paradigm Shift and the Three Impostors

2021 ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Guy G. Stroumsa
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Family Relationship ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Different Shapes ◽  
Close Family ◽  
The Middle Ages

The preceding chapter dealt with the legend of the three rings, which highlighted the close family relationship between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This relationship, which had been an obvious one up through the Middle Ages, began to be seen as less evident in the eighteenth century. The Enlightenment (or perhaps, rather, the Enlightenments) took many different shapes across Europe. The present chapter is devoted to a paradigm shift, one which reflects a new historicization of European cultural life, at least in the approach to religious phenomena. In France, on which this chapter focuses, the historical transformation started earlier than elsewhere, at the very beginning of the eighteenth century.

A New Eyewitness Account of the Fourth Lateran Council

Traditio ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 115-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Kuttner ◽  
Antonio García Y García
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
History Of ◽  
Eyewitness Account ◽  
Fourth Lateran Council ◽  
Vivid Description ◽  
The Middle Ages

Two years ago we briefly announced the discovery of a new document of great interest for the history of the Fourth Lateran Council. Written in Spring 1216 as a letter from Rome, presumably by a German, it was copied by a thirteenth-century scribe into a manuscript now at the Universitäts-bibliothek of Giessen, where it follows directly after the constitutiones of the council. With its detailed and vivid description of the three plenary sessions and of many events that took place in between, the anonymous report adds considerably to the information we possess from other sources. But although other portions of the Giessen codex have been known and used by many scholars ever since the eighteenth century, this text has been overlooked to the present day. It is a happy coincidence that we are able to present this eyewitness account of the greatest of the ecumenical councils of the Middle Ages while the Second Vatican Council is in session.

Victorian Medievalism: Revival or Masquerade?

1980 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 11-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helene E. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Architectural Research ◽  
The Middle Ages

In seeking to revive the spirit, culture, and appearances of medieval times the Victorians used many stratagems. Among them, and often overlooked, was their antiquarian study of medieval dress and their wearing of costumes that represented medieval clothing. Whereas the eighteenth century had expressed their interest in the Middle Ages largely through Gothick novels and through architectural research and reconstructions, the nineteenth century, although continuing to look to a medieval inspiration in architecture, enveloped themselves in the more intimate clasp of medieval apparel and, thus accoutered, sought to enact the pageantry and pastimes of the medieval ages.

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