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.
What Was Behind Jonathan Swift’s Modest Proposal?
Swift’s savage animosity towards the Irish Protestant elites is front and center in his biting (perhaps literally) critique of the landlord class.
Tavolette: Paintings to Comfort the Condemned
Charged with saving the immortal souls of the condemned, comforters held tavolette showing the Crucifixion in front of the eyes of those facing execution.
Marseille: Independent, Industrial, and Mediterranean
From Caesar’s Commentaries to the modernism of Le Corbusier, the port city of Marseille has preserved a sense of individuality and industry.
Cerbera odollam: “The Suicide Tree” That Harms and Heals
Even before The White Lotus, people feared the poisonous pong-pong tree, Cerbera odollam. But there's another way to look at the plant and its effects.
Terroir Terror: The 1911 Champagne Riots
An environmental crisis and a dispute over regional boundaries sent both rioters and rivers of champagne pouring into the streets of Aube.
Annotations: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Scrooge became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.
The Treaty of Paris 1783: Annotated
The Treaty of Paris marked the end of the Revolutionary War and the hostilities between Great Britain and the newly independent United States—at least temporarily.
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Lust
The turn from punishing sexual activity outside of marriage toward the idea of personal sexual freedom began in the West between 1600 and 1800.