Research Catalog

Title

The smoke of London : energy and environment in the early modern city / William M. Cavert.

Author

Cavert, William M.,

Publication

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Supplementary Content

Cover image

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xix, 274 pages; 24 cm.

Summary

"The Smoke of London uncovers the origins of urban air pollution, two centuries before the industrial revolution. By 1600, London was a fossil-fueled 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"--

Series Statement

Cambridge studies in early modern British history

Uniform Title

Cambridge studies in early modern British history.

Subject

• Air > History. > London
• Air > Pollution
• Air > Social aspects
• Air Pollutants > history
• Air Pollution > history
• Coal > Environmental aspects > United States
• Coal > Environmental aspects
• Coal Ash > history
• Energieerzeugung
• England > London
• Fossiler Brennstoff
• History, 17th Century
• History, 18th Century
• London
• London
• Luftverschmutzung
• Smoke > Environmental aspects
• Smoke > History. > London
• Smoke > adverse effects
• Umweltverschmutzung
• United States
• Urbanization > history

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Prologue: the smoke of London -- Part I. Transformations -- The early modernity of London -- Fires: London's turn to coal, 1575-1775 -- Airs: smoke and pollution, 1600-1775 -- Part II. Contestations -- Royal spaces: palaces and brewhouses, 1575-1640 -- Nuisance and neighbours -- Smoke in the scientific revolution -- Part III. Fueling Leviathan -- The moral economy of fuel: coal, poverty, and necessity -- Fueling improvement: development, navigation, and revenue -- Regulations: policing markets and suppliers -- Protections: the wartime coal trade -- Part IV. Accommodations -- Evelyn's place: fumifugium and the royal retreat from urban smoke -- Representations: coal smoke as urban life -- Movements: avoiding the smoky city.

ISBN

• 9781107073005
• 1107073006
• 9781107421318
• 1107421314

LCCN

• 2016004339
• 40026189398

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library