China has had very active markets for both the sale and the rental of land since Song times (960–1279), if not longer. By the sixteenth century, most of the institutional arrangements that would characterize these markets until 1949 were in place. These institutions differed sharply from those of emerging land markets in early modern Western Europe: in particular, government played a lesser role in adjudicating disputes over land contracts, and customary arrangements included features that (a) gave some sellers of land claims on purchasers that could last for many years and (b) gave some tenants, especially in South and East China, very strong usufruct rights, which themselves became a form of tradable property. However, despite these and other differences from Western models, Chinese land markets were quite efficient, and provided the incentives needed for a very productive agriculture; secure tenants, for instance, responded to their strong position by behaving like owners and investing heavily in improving the land.

This article studies the effects of marriage partner choice on occupational attainment and mobility in five rural parishes in southern Sweden between about 1815 and 1894. It uses an individual-level database containing information on a large number of marriages and the occupational origin of the marrying couple, regardless of whether they were born in the parish or not. Occupations are coded in HISCO and classified using HISCLASS. The results indicate the presence of occupational homogamy in this rural society. The social origin of the partner also mattered a great deal for subsequent occupational attainment and mobility, both upwards and downwards.

In this article the ages at marriage and remarriage of Tansoˇng men and women are examined through an analysis of census registers (hojoˇk) from between 1678 and 1789. It was discovered that the average age of Tansoˇng women at first marriage was 17.5, and that most women married between the ages of 15 and 20, much earlier than women in Europe in this period and slightly earlier than those in Japan, but at similar ages to Chinese women. Husbands were on average around 18 when they married. Roughly half of widowers remarried, with remarriage more likely for those of lower and middle status than for upper-status widowers. Many middle- and low-status widowers had probably also married widows despite the fact that there was a legal prohibition on the remarriage of widows.

Recent research on both contemporary and historical societies argues for the importance of women's independent access to credit as a positive force for empowerment of the women concerned and for wider economic development. This article investigates this issue for rural England between c.1290 and c.1380 using debt litigation records from two well-documented manor courts. The article concludes that involvement in credit networks brought little female empowerment in medieval English villages because relatively few women acted as independent lenders and borrowers. However, local credit networks featured women more prominently in some places than others, and reasons for this are advanced.

The infants left at the London Foundling Hospital in the first twenty years of its operation have generally been classed as illegitimate. This study examines some of the characteristics of the children who entered the hospital between 1741 and 1760, and points to a far larger component of legitimate infants than has previously been suspected, up to a third being born in wedlock. The backgrounds of the children varied considerably, as did the reasons for their abandonment, with a stress on personal and economic misfortune for both married and single parents. The higher level of legitimacy among the foundlings than has been thought has implications for the illegitimacy ratio of London, pointing to relatively low levels, in common with those found for the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.

PROBLEM NUMBER 1: THE SHIFTING ECOLOGY OF DISEASE

We all know that human disease is a constant and natural expression of conflicting forces and agents. As biological phenomena, diseases are never static. Influenced by physical and social agents, sickness shifts constantly in specific ecological settings. In infectious diseases, for example, constant readjustments within changing physical environments occur between pathogenic agents such as micro-organisms and viruses and their human hosts. As do other complex organisms, humans display a series of adaptive mechanisms which can both prevent or create illness; a lifetime of such encounters categorized as ‘wear and tear’ phenomena leads to distinctions between chronological and physiological age that are useful in assessing susceptibility to disease and life expectancy.

To understand the broad contours of human disease and periodic epidemiological changes in various parts of the globe – what physicians have called the ‘ebb and flow’ of disease – many historians therefore subscribe to the idea of a shifting ecology of disease. This dynamic concept presupposes complex interactions between both biological and non-biological factors which are ultimately responsible for different and changing patterns of sickness in time and space, exemplified, at least superficially, by McNeill's popular book Plagues and peoples. By highlighting the interconnectedness of various possible factors, including those which could ultimately cause death, the ecological model is quite useful to both historians and demographers.

In this article, data for the serf estate of Voshchazhnikovo, in Yaroslavl' province, is used to test existing theories about peasant household size and structure in imperial Russia. Empirical evidence from soul revisions, household listings, and estate regulations is brought to bear on the view that large, complex households were predominant throughout Russia in the pre-emancipation period, and that landlords' policies had little effect on the demographic behaviour of serfs. Household size and structure in Voshchazhnikovo, which was located in the Central Industrial region, differed significantly from that found for the estates in the Central Black Earth region studied by P. Czap and S. Hoch. Mean household size in Voshchazhnikovo ranged from 4.5 to 5.2, and roughly half of all households were of the simple-family sort. Age at first marriage was later than in the Central Black Earth region, and a greater proportion of females remained unmarried. There were also substantially more female-headed households on this estate than on the estates studied by Czap and Hoch. Finally, estate records suggest that the landlord at Voshchazhnikovo attempted to influence demographic behaviour through the use of fines and taxes. These attempts were successful, though their effects were unevenly distributed across the Voshchazhnikovo serf population.

Fashion, like luxury, has been largely conceived in terms of the elite experience. Indeed, the European fashion cycle was noted first among the aristocracy where the fashion system celebrated novelty over tradition, highlighting the individual aesthetic even as it consolidated the group identity of exquisitely garbed nobles. The counterpoints to the mutability of style were the legal constraints designed to curb the fashion impulse, bridling the sartorial ambitions of non-elites. Sumptuary legislation aimed to enforce luxury codes. The right to extravagant inessentials, which distinguished those of noble blood, was forbidden to lesser beings; however, fashion was a contested concept whose influence permeated first the middling and then even the labouring ranks. In this article I will examine the competing forces at work within England as the dress of the common people was transformed over the long eighteenth century. Although sumptuary legislation came to an end in England in 1604, government and moralists continued to claim the right to restrain material expression within the lower ranks, but without success. I will assess the challenge to a unitary hegemonic elite fashion, and explore the creation and significance of the multiple expressions in dress within the varied social ranks of England.

Large, concentrated settlements known as ‘agro-towns’ abound across Southern Italy and other parts of the Mediterranean. The prevalence and persistence of these settlements are very curious but not yet well understood. Initially, scholars interpreted their development as stemming from Southern Italy's economic and social ‘backwardness’ and inequality. This view has now been challenged by scholarship which emphasises that the pre-industrial Mezzogiorno supported not only a dynamic economy but also a diverse array of institutional structures. By recourse to a comparative study within Apulia, this paper suggests that both interpretations are equally correct. ‘Agro-towns’ in Southern Italy were linked to the inequitable distribution of land, perpetuated over the long term, but the institutional origins of this inequality were both diverse and dynamic.

This article evaluates the extent of economic support provided by the family in English society. The first issue addressed is the importance given to relationships between family members both by contemporaries and by historians when attempting to distinguish different types of household. Following sections of the article discuss the role of households in redistributing income from the better-paid to the less well-paid or non-earners and the significance of economic support received from members of the family living elsewhere relative to that provided from within the household and from other outside sources, such as the community, employers and neighbours. A further section then assesses the impact of demographic change on the size and composition of the kin group and the extent to which population mobility made regular contact with close kin more difficult.

Population developments in the western European countryside not only show strong fluctuations during the later Middle Ages, but they also exhibit sharp regional differences. By investigating and comparing developments in three parts of the Low Countries this study tries to shed more light on the causes underlying these regional diversities. In this connection, particular attention will be paid to differences in the social distribution of landownership. Examination of the data at regional level indicates that property structures were indeed an important factor in late-medieval population trends. Later sections of the article investigate the various factors which shaped the interrelationships between population growth, density and property structures, thus contributing to a clearer comprehension of the different demographic histories of the three regions and a better understanding of regional diversities in late-medieval population developments in general.

Over half of all victims of the Great Irish Famine (1845–1852) were children. Many of these deaths took place in the union workhouses: institutions of government poor relief which for many were the last resort in a desperate struggle to survive famine-induced conditions such as starvation and infectious disease. Archaeological excavations of a mass burial ground dating to 1847–1851 at the former workhouse in Kilkenny City have provided the opportunity to undertake a detailed interdisciplinary exploration of non-adult mortality in an Irish workhouse during the height of the Famine.