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612-822-4611
Fossil Consumerism: Energy, Ecology and Everyday Life in the Early Modern Low Countries

Fossil Consumerism: Energy, Ecology and Everyday Life in the Early Modern Low Countries

Paperback

Business GeneralTechnology & Engineering

ISBN10: 9462705062
ISBN13: 9789462705067
Publisher: Leuven University Press
Published: Feb 15 2026
Pages: 268
Weight: 0.86
Height: 0.58 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

A groundbreaking perspective on energy history that reveals the early modern home, and not industry, as the first major driver of fossil-fuel adoption.

This book explores how the homes of ordinary city dwellers sparked our modern dependence on fossil fuels. Drawing on a rich variety of sources, including probate inventories, household manuals, personal journals, medical treatises and contemporary artwork, it reveals how households in the early modern Low Countries embraced peat and coal to fuel new standards of warmth, light and domesticity. Yet, with these new home comforts came rising indoor pollution, intensified and gendered housework and, ultimately, a quiet shift in humanity's relationship with nature.

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Technology & Engineering