Publication - Fossil consumerism. Energy, ecology and everyday life in the early modern low countries, by Wout Saelens

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 f...