Energy in the Early Modern Home: Material Cultures of Domestic Energy Consumption in Europe, 1450?1850 (Themes in Environmental History)

Uncovering, for the first time, the role played by home users in fostering energy changes, this book explores the effects of energy transitions between the medieval and industrial era on the everyday life of Europeans and considers how cultural, social and material changes in the home facilitated the transition towards a more energy-demanding world.

This book delves deeper into the interactions between early modern consumers and the ecological constraints of the world surrounding them. Experts on specific aspects of domestic energy use departing from different case studies in early modern Europe confront these central issues. This book therefore offers a wide range of approaches within a long-term and comparative perspective. Different ‘material cultures of energy’ across time and space and across different climates in Europe are explored.

Ultimately, this book aims to consider how the early modern home not just adapted to energy changes, but perhaps even prepared the way for our modern addiction to fossil energy. Energy in the Early Modern Home is the perfect resource for students and scholars of early modern Europe, premodern environmental history, the history of consumption and material culture, and the history of science and technology.

Wout Saelens (1993) is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He has a broad interest in the urban history of social inequality, material culture and ecological development from the late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century.

Bruno Blondé (1964) is a full professor of the history department at the University of Antwerp. His major research interests include the history of economic growth and social inequality, urbanisation, and material culture and consumption in the early modern Low Countries.

Wouter Ryckbosch (1984) is associate professor in urban history at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where he is also the director of the research group HOST (Historical Research into Urban Transformation Processes). His primary research interests are the history of inequality and social relations and the application of techniques from digital humanities to history.