Research Catalog

Details

Description

1. xix, 274 pages; 24 cm.

Summary

1. "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

1. Cambridge studies in early modern British history

Uniform title

1. Cambridge studies in early modern British history

Subject

1. Smoke > Environmental aspects > History. > England > London
2. Air > Pollution > History. > England > London
3. Air > Pollution > Social aspects > History. > England > London
4. Coal > Environmental aspects > United States
5. Air > Pollution
6. Air > Pollution > Social aspects
7. Coal > Environmental aspects
8. Smoke > Environmental aspects
9. Energieerzeugung
10. Fossiler Brennstoff
11. Umweltverschmutzung
12. Luftverschmutzung
13. Air Pollution > history
14. Smoke > adverse effects
15. Coal Ash > history
16. Air Pollutants > history
17. Urbanization > history
18. History, 17th Century
19. History, 18th Century
20. England > London
21. United States
22. London
23. London

Genre/Form

1. History.

Contents

1. 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.

Owning institution

1. Princeton University Library

Bibliography (note)

1. Includes bibliographical references and index.