The Wedding Ritual Where Brides Wept in Song
In southern China, weddings once began with a ritual that let brides speak the unspeakable.
When Profit Met Protest in Colonial New York
Economic self-interest shaped how New Yorkers responded to British taxes and imperial crackdowns.
How Gender Discrimination Works at Work
A study of employment discrimination cases reveals how bias operates through workplace rules.
Drought and Indigenous Migration in the American Midwest
In the seventeenth century, life at the prairie–forest edge was dynamic, unstable, and deeply shaped by climate.
![A Chelsea Pensioner, wearing a sprig of orange blossom [?] in his buttonhole, sipping a dish of tea. Engraving by J. Jenkins after M. W. Sharp, 1840](https://daily.jstor.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/consuming_the_empire_alt_1050x700-600x400.jpg)
Consuming the Empire
Sugar, tea, and tobacco tied British daily life to empire, turning global exploitation into ordinary habits of consumption.
How Cold War “Orphans” Sang Their Way into American Hearts
Touring choirs helped cast Korean children as ideal adoptees—and Americans as benevolent saviors.
The Nineteenth-Century Science of Fashion
Victorian-era color theory moved from labs and studios into women’s magazines—and into everyday decisions about dress.
When Mao’s Mango Mania Took Over China
A fleeting cult built around a mango exposes the logic, and illogic, of Mao’s personality cult.
Celebrating Black History Month
JSTOR Daily editors pick their favorite stories for Black History Month.
The Congo Crisis and the Rise of a Pan-African Musical Politics
How Patrice Lumumba’s assassination reshaped Black internationalism—and pushed musicians toward a new kind of activism.