"'Big data' is now readily available to economic historians, thanks to the digitisation of primary sources, collaborative research linking different data sets, and the publication of databases on the internet. Key economic indicators, such as the consumer price index, can be tracked over long...

"Food consumption and nutrition are historically among the most characteristic features of inequality in living standards driven by socio-economic, gender, generational and geographical reasons. Nutrition directly impacts mortality, life expectancy, height and illness, and thus becomes a good...

Acknowledgements -- Foreword -- Introduction -- Changing strategies and global power in the long eighteenth century -- Eighteenth-century realities and historiographical approaches -- Administering the fiscal-military state : ordinary revenues : trusting in a consumers world -- Increasing...