Energy in the Early Modern Home: Material Cultures of Domestic Energy Consumption in Europe, 1450–1850

Description

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. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Contents Contributors Energy in the early modern home Notes References Part I: The materiality of energy: Fuels, technologies and practices 1. Continuity and change in the search for domestic warmth: Material culture, fuels and practices (France, sixteenth-nineteenth centuries) 1.1 Introduction 1.2 The use of the fireplace: aspects and problems 1.3 'Search for warmth' rather than 'home heating' 1.4 The fundamental problem of access to energy 1.5 The subtle hierarchy of fuels 1.6 The mechanics of change 1.7 Conclusion Notes References 2. A Warm Renaissance: Material culture and heating techniques in Venetian artisans' homes (sixteenth-seventeenth centuries) 2.1 Introduction 2.1.1 Sources 2.2 Living with limited resources: society, economy and architecture 2.2.1 Social status and economic means 2.2.2 Popular housing 2.3 Producing and preserving heat 2.3.1 Producing energy 2.3.2 Producing and using heat 2.4 Energy-saving techniques and tricks 2.4.1 Maintaining warmth 2.4.2 Preserving body warmth: layering clothing 2.4.3 Recipes for keeping warm: the books of secrets 2.5 Conclusions Notes References 3. Between home and manufacturing. The use of wood and charcoal in early modern Northern Italy: Two case studies 3.1 Introduction: aims, topic and methodology 3.2 Notes on wood consumption in Bologna and Milan during the eighteenth century: the context 3.3 What affected wood prices? 3.4 Notes about wood and charcoal consumption in the valleys of Eastern Lombardy Notes References Appendix Part II: The cultural life of energy: Comfort, consumer culture and domesticity 4. Fireplaces and stoves as icons of comfort References 5. Material cultures of warmth in England and Sweden during the long eighteenth century 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Creating warmth: technologies and fuels 5.3 Heating spaces: public and private rooms 5.4 Material cultures of warmth 5.5 Conclusion Notes References Printed sources Literature Part III: The spaces of energy: Room uses and their functional specialisation 6. The kitchen: An early modern power house? Antwerp, sixteenth-eighteenth centuries 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Functional specialisation 6.3 Sleeping in the kitchen? 6.4 Conviviality 6.5 Beyond cooking 6.6 Conclusion Notes References 7. Warmth for men: Kitchens and stables in peasant houses in Italy (seventeenth-eighteenth centuries) 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Peasant houses in agronomic literature 7.3 Kitchens and stables in the peasant houses of central Italy 7.4 Heating with animals: a controversial debate 7.5 Conclusions References Literature 8. Energy usage in the kitchen: Heat and material culture in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Dutch cookbooks 8.1 Introduction 8.2 Material culture, food and fuel in archaeology and history 8.3 Culinary texts and cookbooks as a primary source 8.4 The early modern Dutch domestic kitchen 8.5 Cookbooks and fuel use 8.6 Fuel use in the Dutch domestic kitchen 8.7 Fuel types mentioned in cookbooks 8.8 Culinary material culture mentioned in cookbooks 8.9 Conclusion Notes References 9. Energy and the functional specialisation of domestic space in eighteenth-century Ghent and Leiden: The early modern home as an 'energyscape' 9.1 Introduction 9.2 The early modern domestic power grid 9.3 The kitchen as the power house of the home 9.4 The spatial hybridity of domestic energy transitions 9.5 Flexible energy systems at home 9.6 Conclusion Notes Primary sources Unpublished sources References Part IV: The social life of energy: Inequalities in material culture 10. 'Those closest to the fire enjoy the most of its glow': Inequality and energy in eighteenth-century Flanders 10.1 Introduction 10.2 Domestic energy in Flanders 10.3 Reconstructing early modern domestic comfort 10.4 The social differentiation of comfort 10.5 The rise of unsustainable comforts 10.6 Comfort and social change: some conclusions Notes References Index