The height of the French male population of the Ancien Régime is estimated, on the basis of military records, to have been about 162 cm in the 17th century. This extremely short stature implies that "the crisis of the 17th century" had an immense impact on the human organism itself. The...

Our purpose here is to challenge the "big-bang" approach to economic history in which some alleged institutional imposition - a deus machine - is claimed to launch a series of new economic behaviors. This so-called prime mover is then carried forward by the inexorable forces of path dependency...