The Smoke of London - Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City (Hardcover)

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.

General

Imprint:	Cambridge UniversityPress
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History
Release date:	April 2016
Authors:	William M. Cavert
Dimensions:	235 x 163 x 20mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	296
ISBN-13:	978-1-107-07300-5
Categories:	Books > Humanities > History > British & Irish history > General Books > Earth & environment > The environment > Pollution & threats to the environment > General Books > History > British & Irish history > General
LSN:	1-107-07300-6
Barcode:	9781107073005

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