The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City

ISBN-13: 9781107073005 / Angielski / Twarda / 2016 / 296 str.

William M. Cavert

Opis

The Smoke of London uncovers the origins of urban air pollution, two centuries before the industrial revolution. By 1600, London was a fossil-fuelled city, its high-sulfur coal a basic necessity for the poor and a source of cheap energy for its growing manufacturing sector. The resulting smoke was found ugly and dangerous throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, leading to challenges in court, suppression by the crown, doctors' attempts to understand the nature of good air, increasing suburbanization, and changing representations of urban life in poetry and on the London stage. Neither a celebratory account of proto-environmentalism nor a declensionist narrative of degradation, The Smoke of London recovers the seriousness of pre-modern environmental concerns even as it explains their limits and failures. Ultimately, Londoners learned to live with their dirty air, an accommodation that reframes the modern process of urbanization and industrial pollution, both in Britain and beyond.

Recenzje

'Until recently, environmental history has remained something of a curiosity in early modern British history. With The Smoke of London, Cavert has done both fields a great service in showing the importance of each to the other. This is a book that should be read by anyone interested in urban, environmental, British, or early modern history.' John Emrys Morgan, Canadian Journal of History

Spis treści

Prologue: the smoke of London; Part I. Transformations: 1. The early modernity of London; 2. Fires: London's turn to coal, 1575–1775; 3. Airs: smoke and pollution, 1600–1775; Part II. Contestations: 4. Royal spaces: palaces and brewhouses, 1575–1640; 5. Nuisance and neighbours; 6. Smoke in the scientific revolution; Part III. Fueling Leviathan: 7. The moral economy of fuel: coal, poverty, and necessity; 8. Fueling improvement: development, navigation, and revenue; 9. Regulations: policing markets and suppliers; 10. Protections: the wartime coal trade; Part IV. Accommodations: 11. Evelyn's place: fumifugium and the royal retreat from urban smoke; 12. Representations: coal smoke as urban life; 13. Movements: avoiding the smoky city; Epilogue; Bibliography; Index.