← New Books Network
New Books Network
Wout Saelens, "Fossil Consumerism: Energy, Ecology and Everyday Life in the Early Modern Low Countries" (Leuven UP, 2026)
01:17:36
Loading summary
Transcript39 lines
- [00:00]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Ugh.
- [00:01]
Depop Advertiser
You said you were over him, but his hoodie's still in your rotation. It's time. Grab your phone, snap a few pics and sell it on Depop. Listed in minutes with no selling fees. And just like that, a guy 500 miles away just paid full price for your closure. And right on cue.
- [00:18]
Podcast Sponsor Announcer
Hey, still got my hoodie?
- [00:19]
Depop Advertiser
Nope. But I've got tonight's dinner paid for. Start selling on Depop, where taste recognizes taste list. Now with no selling fees, payment processing fees and boosting fees still apply. See website for details.
- [00:32]
Podcast Sponsor Announcer
This episode is brought to you by State Farm. You know those friends who support your preference for podcasts over music on road trips? That's the energy State Farm brings to insurance. With over 19,000 local agents, they help you find the coverage that fits your needs so you can spend less time worrying about insurance and more time enjoying the ride. Download the State Farm app or go online@statefarm.com like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Morning decisions. How about a creamy mocha Frappuccino drink? Or sweet vanilla smooth caramel maybe? Or white chocolate mocha? Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits. Find Starbucks Frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries.
- [01:13]
New Books Network Announcer
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:17]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Wout salons about his book titled Fossil Energy Ecology and Everyday Life in the Early Modern Low Countries, published by Leuven University Press in 2026. Now, this book takes us into the heart of a whole bunch of things, right? We're going to be talking, as the title suggests, about fossil fuels, about the really significant increase in use in fossil fuels around the sort of industrial revolution ish. That's part of what we're going to about because quite often that's a story when we're talking about the use of fossil fuels that focuses on factories. And yes, okay, obviously that is part of what is happening, but this book, as the title suggests, takes us more into the everyday life. Whether or not you work in a factory, whether you know no matter what your job is, you still have to heat your house, you still have to cook food, you still have to kind of have a way of getting around when it's dark. And those are questions that concern everyone. And really, as this book makes, the argument, should concern some historical investigation too, in looking at this increased use of fossil fuels. So we have a whole bunch of things to discuss. Wout thank you so much for joining me on the podcast to tell us about your research.
- [02:41]
Dr. Wout Salons
Yeah, you're very welcome. Thanks for having me, Miranda. I'm very, very appreciate this invitation.
- [02:47]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, well, I'm very pleased that you said yes. Could you start us off by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us what you why you decided to write this book? What kinds of questions did you want to investigate? How did this whole thing develop?
- [03:00]
Dr. Wout Salons
Yeah, so I'm currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp and University of Brussels, both in Belgium, where I have a project now working mainly on the history of smoke pollution and how people perceived that as a problem or not and what they did about it and so on. This book is the product of a previous project of my PhD, which I began in or started doing in 2016, so almost 10 years ago now. And yeah, how that got into being, it was actually a project by my supervisors, Bruno Blondet and Walter. So a project for which I applied and eventually I got hired to do. And for me it was a novel, a new topic. So I just graduated as a medieval historian, actually working on guilds in late medieval Flanders. And then suddenly I saw this vacancy for a PhD on the 18th century, mainly early modern period, not about guilds or production, but consumption and about energy. And so it was very novel. But it also struck me immediately as novel at large, because I had never really thought about energy as a historian, at least I obviously had thought about it as an energy consumer myself, as somebody thinking about energy within the context of climate change, of course, and the energy transition that we hopefully sooner rather than later will have in the future of the transition away from fossil fuels and so on. But I never really was taught when I studied history about energy, and I never really had come across historians talking or writing about energy. And so I thought this was really clever and a very clever thing to do and novel thing to do. So I'm greatly indebted to my supervisors, Bruno and Wouter. And so in 2016, I started that PhD and four years and a half later, I defended it in May 2021. So almost five years ago. And then I didn't touch it for a while, started another project, and eventually the project I'm on now. And then about a year and a half later, I decided, well, let's, let's, let's get onto it again or let's pick it up again. And I thought, well, a couple of months reworking it and the job will be done, be sent to a publisher and it'll be hopefully be published. But eventually, obviously it took more than a couple of months. I think I reworked it for like two, three years almost. And it has been reworked quite a lot, especially looking, getting back to it and looking at it from my new project, which was much more an environmental history project with the issue of smoke, pollution and so on. I looked back at my PhD and I thought, well, where is the smoke? Where is the pollution? There is hardly any ecology. And so the PhD itself was what's much more concerned about. So, okay, you have in the early modern period this switch that households make from firewood to either coal or, and, or peat. And so I, the question was, how did they make that switch? So I tried to explain that through concepts like the consumer revolution, which a lot of consumption historians, historians of material culture have written about. And in the early modern periods, people somehow invented comfort. And so I had taken coal and peats somehow for granted, you could say, in the sense that, yeah, obviously when these fuels become cheaper, people started to burn them and because it brings them more comfortable. So it was an obvious choice. And if this is indeed the period of a consumer revolution, people wanting more comfort, they found it in coal and beads. But then moving more into environmental history during my postdoc project, the question really became instead of how did they switch to, to new fuels, why they did so in the first place, despite not because of, of, of Cole and Pete being comfortable, but despite of them being actually pretty dirty and very polluting and very smoky and very smelly as well. And so it then appeared to me that it wasn't obvious at all that people would ever throw coal or beads in their fireplaces or in their stoves. And it turned out because I also included a lot of new sources because I wanted to broaden it up a little at first. And for the PhD, I only used inventories which gave me, which allowed me to look at, okay, what kind of technology, what's the materiality of these fuels that people have, and so on. I also included narrative sources which allowed me to look at, okay, what did they think about it? How did they perceive these fuels? And it turned out that they were actually quite negative about it at first. So that came a bit as a surprise that these fuels weren't obvious at all. So eventually this is now the book that is before us. I try to marry that, say three sub disciplines within historiography, and the first being energy history. And energy historians, as you pointed out, usually look at like link the energy revolution, that is this transition from wood to coal to fossil fuels to the industrial revolution. There, I want to say, well, no, it's a bit earlier. And it's not only industrialization, it's not only factories, it's also indeed households needing warmth, needing energy. So that brings in the second sub discipline, which is consumer history, the history of consumption, of material culture. And those historians usually don't look at banal or trivial types of consumer behavior, and they usually look at luxuries like coffee and tea. That's the big two early modern novelties. They look at silverware, they look at fashionable tables and furniture and so on, but never really look at very seemingly trivial kinds of consumption like cooking or heating or lighting. And so in my PhD, I wanted to mix the energy revolution with the consumer revolution. And then a third discipline eventually got mingled as well, which is a more environmental historical point of view. And where environmental historians as well, like energy historians, they look at chimneys, but rather these are factory chimneys. And they look at pollution, but rather this is outdoor pollution. And so I wondered, yeah, but what about indoor pollution? So if you indeed decide, if you're in an 18th century householder and you suddenly decide to burn coal instead of firewood, what does this mean in terms of indoor air quality and how do you deal with that? Because a lot of the smoke simply didn't go through the chimney, but was being blown back into the house. And so you have all kinds of problems of ash of suit piling up inside of the household. And this is a period where, as we can believe, the consumer historians, so to say, a period where households are actually more and more aware of the cleanliness of their environment, or their household environment at least, and put increasing emphasis on hygiene and on cleaning. And so this seemed to me that this all sort of clashed with one another. And so that's how I tried, eventually in this book, tried to combine these three subdisciplines. So energy history, consumption history and environmental history, and sort of marry those into the early modern Low Countries households.
- [12:59]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
That's a really helpful foundation because the book is, as you said, really drawing together kind of multiple sets of questions, right. And kind of going, well, hang on, the answer to that question might be over here. So it's very useful to have that foundation in terms of the historiography. I do think it's worth spending a moment on AM1. Why you focus on the Low Countries to answer these questions.
- [13:23]
Dr. Wout Salons
Yeah, well, why the Low Countries? It's a region that is one of the first to switch to fossil fuels. Either coal or peat might be even earlier than what is often called coal countries par excellence. Which is Britain, England, Wales in particular. So the Low Countries is one of the earliest. And it's of course not a sort of a competition of who was the earliest. And it's not because I'm from the Low Countries myself and living in present day Belgium. And so it's not a sort of patriotic kind of thing like the Low Countries were the first, but going back to one of these early pioneers, it could be Britain, it could be the Low Countries, could be even another region or country allows the historian to sort of pinpoint what the true prime movers were of this transition, so to say, to pinpoint the causal mechanisms that sort of put everything in motion. And so the Low Countries is an interesting laboratory, you could say, to delve into the root causes of this shift to fossil fuels. And also a shift, I would say it's not only a qualitative shift from one fuel to another, from wood to fossil fuels, but also a quantitative shift from say a less energy intensive consumption regime to one that is more energy intensive. So a regime that, or a regime in which people consume more energy than they used to. So I think Low Countries is an interesting laboratory in the sense that they are one of the first or one of the pioneering regions in that regard. But it's also interesting because there's, it's a small region, so it allows you to go in depth. But it's also different enough in the sense that the Low Countries are divided. You have the northern and the southern Low Countries, so more or less what is today the Netherlands and Belgium. And this is a region that is politically divided since 1585 with the Dutch revolt, it's politically divided in a Protestant north and a Catholic south. But it's also social, socially, economically divided in the sense that the Dutch Republic, so the present day Netherlands, this, this Protestant north experiences in the 17th century, its golden Age is, is one of the wealthiest regions in the whole of Europe. And that's also the reason why a lot of historians of the consumer revolution say, well, 17th century Netherlands, Northern Low Countries is the cradle of this consumer revolution because it is so wealthy, because it's so prosperous. And some have argued that this golden age was born out of beet. These Dutch consumers people in the 17th century in the Netherlands, the Dutch Republic, they consumed huge volumes of beet in the meantime in the south, this is a period, economically speaking, a period of decline. So you have the Middle Ages where the county of Flanders, the Duchy of Brabant and present day Flanders in the Dutch speaking part of Belgium experience its golden age and Then it declines. And then Suddenly in the 18th century, you have a switch from north to south, or vice versa, and the north starts to stagnate economically, even goes into decline, and the Golden Age is clearly over. And then suddenly this southern part of the Low Countries starts to boom and starts to industrialize pretty quickly. And quickly switches from firewood, which it still burned after having a small episode in the Middle Ages, burning mostly peat, switches then in the 18th century to coal. And this doesn't happen in the Netherlands. So there you have this first modern economy, as it has been called before the Dutch Republic, that somehow fails to industrialize in the 18th, 19th centuries, unlike Britain and unlike Belgium or the south and Low Countries, which after centuries of decline, now suddenly sort of crawls back on its feet. And so it's this comparative background that makes it so interesting to see how these economic shifts that seem to collide with energy shifts, whether these translated also into different household behavior or not. So this comparative framework allows you. And these internal differences within the Low Countries allows the historian to sort of tests some explanatory variables. And one of them is then economic growth versus economic decline. That's one explanatory variable. Does this explain why in the 18th century or in the early Modern period more broadly, people in the northern Low Countries or people in the Southern Low Countries were living more comfortable lives, or vice versa? Another explanatory variable is the differences in fuels. So they're both. They both become fossil fueled, but they still burn different fuels. In the south, you have this shift from woods to coal. And in the northern Low Countries, it's much more a story of continuity, where you basically, since the late Middle Ages, actually have a regime or an economy of peat economy that relies on peat until the late 19th century, even early 20th century, really. So it's very much a story of continuity in the north, especially compared to what is happening in the South. So this gives an interesting framework to sort of pinpoint, okay, what variables play a role here. And it eventually turns out, I would argue that this framework doesn't play a role at all. That what historians have usually said, this is what is important. Consumer evolution happens in the Dutch Republic in the 17th century because it's the wealthiest, because it's the most prosperous region in Europe. And on the other hand, then with regards to the south and Low Countries, this later Belgium is the country that industrializes because it had a lot of coal. I would say eventually this doesn't really matter, because if you look at where I end, and that is the early 19th century or the long 18th century and the end of the early modern period. Households both in the northern Low countries and in the south in low countries invested more in energy comfort, started burning more fuel, having warmer homes, literally. And indoor temperatures were rising. And so that's what I sort of contextualize in my first chapter when I look at these, let's say, obvious variables or at least the variables that previous historians or historians until now have looked at. It's energy that explains it, it's economy that expl things, it's prices, price shifts that explains things there. I contextualize this in the, in the first chapter and sort of conclude that, well, no, these, all these things don't really matter. I would say so. And that's what in the next chapters that I discuss. So it must either be something must have a material technological cause, so new households, technology being invented, so new fireplaces, cast iron stoves, footstoves and so on, or it must be something more cultural. People just wanting to burn more and wanting more comfort and having their priorities shift around. Instead of emphasizing the importance of ventilation of fresh air and actually promoting rather chilly homes. Now they certainly in the 18th century, both in the northern and in southern low countries, they emphasize warmth as a feature of health, as a feature of comfort. So yeah, that's basically sort of where what the book tries to do and how it uses the low countries as this framework tool to explain. Yeah. Explanatory and to be explained variables. Yeah.
- [23:24]
New Books Network Announcer
Go further with the American Express Business Gold Card. Earn 3 times Membership Rewards points on flights and prepaid hotels when you book through amextravel.com whether your destination is a business conference or a client meeting, your purchases will help you earn more points for future trips. Experience more on your travels with Amex Business Gold. Terms apply. Learn more@americanexpress.com Business Gold AmEx Business Gold Card built for business by American Express.
- [23:54]
Dr. Wout Salons
Want to make the most of your tax refund file with TurboTax on intuit credit Karma. They help you get your biggest refund and then we help you do more with it with a personalized plan designed to help you hit your money goals. Start filing today in the Credit Karma app. Hablas to droids.
- [24:14]
Babbel Advertiser
If you used Babbel you would. Babbel's conversation based techniques teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers. Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55% off your Babbel subscription right now at Babbel.com Spotify spelled B A B-B-E-L.com Spotify rules and restrictions may apply.
- [24:41]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, those are some really interesting reasons to focus on the low countries sort of in it as a region and then the comparisons within them. So thank you for explaining that. I want to talk a little bit more about what you were mentioning towards the end of that answer in terms of the changes within in the households. You've given a few examples sort of scattered throughout. But can we talk kind of in more detail, like practically, what did this shift in energy use mean inside the household? Like, what did this change for kind of a random person's house? Like, what sort of items were different, what behaviors were different? What did this mean for heating, cooking, lighting?
- [25:21]
Dr. Wout Salons
Yeah, so that's what I'm saying sort of doing in the second chapter where I've looked mainly at like the materiality of burning this type of fuel or the other. And so burning peats or burning firewood or burning coal is very different. So you can't just throw coal in a. A traditional open fireplace which used to burn firewood. These chimneyed fireplaces are around already from the 3rd 14th century, 12th century, even already. But they change a lot in the course of the early modern period when they used to have were very big fireplaces with the overhanging hoods. Now in the early modern periods, they become much more compact because peat or coal, these fuels need to be burned in a compact, confined, stoking area. And so you see that these fireplaces become more compact. The hood is lowered, becomes smaller, the flue, the chimney flue is narrowed. The fireplace gets. There are side walls that are introduced. People start having grates which hold coal and peat embers. They don't. They start not to have or less and less start to own andirons where you would have logs of wood sitting on top. So you see that this is a material change, a practical change, that you don't switch from one field to the other overnight. This requires new technology, a new kind of materiality. And you can see that these differences between the northern Low Countries, where, as I said, you have a continued use of peat versus this shift in the south and low countries from wood to coal, that this translates into different technologies, household technologies being used in the southern Low Countries. You can see, for instance, that this rise of coal is very much linked to the rise of the stove. So we're talking about a cast iron stove here. So that really starts to replace the old open fireplace. So a stove cages the fire entirely, it closes off the fire entirely. And this has to do with. If you burn coal, it gives off a very nasty smoke, a very nasty sulfurous smell. So you rather contain it in this iron box. And not only that, if you would burn it in an open fireplace, it probably would just get extinct, extinguished soon after you kindled it, because it needs this compact area. And so you can see in the Southern Netherlands, Southern Low Countries, that this shift from wood to coal is accompanied quite closely with a shift from the fireplace to a stove, which is less true in the Northern Low Countries, where you can see that peat wasn't as problematic to be burned in an open fireplace. You can see that fireplaces are surely modified, are adapted, they become more compact as well, also because it's more efficient, more energy efficient. But there you can see that peat, mainly stoves are around or become getting around as well. But there you can see that most of the peat is still burned in fireplaces. And the biggest shift in terms of household technology in the Northern Low Countries is the rise of the foot stove. And this is a very inconspicuous kind of object. It's just a wooden box, basically, where you would put a brazier in with burning enders and place this under your skirt, as many women did, for instance, or many men also put under their clothing, put under a coat, or just put nearby at home, just as you would perhaps do today with an electric heater, for instance, very mobile, small devices. And the fact. And these food stoves, you don't find them at all in the Southern Low Countries. And probably this has to do with the fact that coal just burns too intensively, that it burns too hot, and that your feet would sort of scorch using them. Whereas in the Northern Low Countries, peat burns just at the right temperature to have these foot stoves. And there you can see that footstoves basically kind of take the place that cast iron stoves, fixed stoves, and that you wouldn't move around in the Southern Low Countries, that these foot stoves take the place of cast iron stoves in the Northern Low Countries. And so. So you can see these different materialities and that how these different fuels had very different outcomes in terms of materiality, in terms of practicalities. But here again, in the end, it seems both in their own way, households in the Northern Low Countries and households in the Southern Low Countries ended up with the same. At the same, ended up at the same situation, in the sense that they had more heating appliances, started to own more of them, started to use them more, started to have more rooms that could be heated. Traditionally, households just had have one room heated. So usually that was the kitchen where everything happens. Kitchens were the living rooms that weren't just used for cooking, but people also ate there, they warmed themselves there, they socialized there, they talked with one another there, they relaxed there, read books or whatever. They slept in kitchens. Why? Because these were concentrations of energy, literally and figuratively. So people would sleep in the room that was the warmest, that were close to the fire, where you had light, where you had warmth, where you had a fire at your disposal. And so in the course of the 17th, 18th centuries, people start to live in other rooms more and more as well. So they start eating outside of the kitchen in a separate. Living in a separate dining room, for instance, and they start sleeping in separate bedrooms where they would now have a foot stove warming their bedding, for instance, or a fixed stove warming the room. And this is very similar eventually in both the north and the South. It also has other practical effects on cooking. So people start to eat different in the sense that you see a shift from. You can see this in the shift from cooking utensils that people owned. So they start to have less cauldrons and big pots that you would hang above a fire in an open fireplace to have to cook stews, and that would simmer for hours and hours. Now they will start to cook on braziers, on cooking stoves, on footstoves also, which act as a sort of kitchen ranges, you could say, and where you cook your meals in saucepans and in frying pans, basically. So you see a shift from stewing and boiling food to more and more frying and baking foods. And again, this happens both in northern and the south, in Low countries. So here, and this is where I sort of then conclude the second chapter, where I delve into the materiality, practicality of things and the technology behind household energy consumption. In the end, is these different materialities of peat, of coal or firewood didn't really matter either. In the end, households ended up doing the same in their own way and within, let's say, the energy economy they lived in. But they did more or less the same things. And so that's then where the third chapter takes off, which is more of the cultural chapter, where I discuss that this must be a cultural behavioral thing. Change.
- [35:20]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, I want to talk about kind of people's thoughts about all of this especially the point, picking up the point you made briefly earlier around the fact you were sort of surprised to find that not everyone was happy about this. These changes weren't necessarily perceived positively. So can you tell us about the sort of discussions and debates about all these changes?
- [35:40]
Dr. Wout Salons
Yeah, of course. So I think this is quite new in the book in comparison to the PhD dissertation. For the PhD, I mainly only used probate inventories as sources. And these are lists of household movable household items that were drawn up when a parent, usually a parent died, leaving behind a minor child. And so because the minor child legally could not own their share of the inheritance, an inventory was made so that his or her share was guaranteed. And so you had the list. And so if there were discussions with other siblings, for instance, then you had the list. Okay, these were all the household items that my father or my mother left behind. So I should have, this is my share. And so this is an excellent source for looking in what people own. It basically allows you a glimpse as a historian, a present day contemporary historian, a glimpse into how people in the 18th century and the 17th century, how they lived and what they owned, and brings you from one room to the other. And within, within each room it lists what people, what people had. And so it brings you to a coal cellar, for instance, which tells you, okay, these people must have, have, have, have been using coal instead of wood. Or it rather brings you to wood sheds or to a peat attic, or you can find some coal scuttles or peat baskets or wood baskets, whatever, or you can find a stove in a bedroom, or you can find some food stoves stored in a cupboard in the kitchen. And in the kitchen you find the cooking hearth and all the cooking utensils with it. But the problem with those probate inventories is you know what people owned, but you don't know how often they used what they owned and in what ways or how they perceived or how they talked about how you should use your fire or should you use it moderately, or should you be aware of the smoke. And if it smokes, how can you, how can you, what are the, what are some sort of household tricks to, to, to, to prevent the smoking and so on. And so that's when I, when I reworked my PhD, I thought, well, I should introduce or gather some extra sources. And that's where I, I got into the narrative sources which, which can be personal documents like journals, personal journals which can be scientific treaties about how to run a healthy and clean household, giving advice on what fuels to use and how to use them, how warm a home should be, how well ventilated it should be, and so on. And so, using these narrative sources, I indeed discovered that a lot of people are actually talking about the pollution and the indoor pollution that coal and peat generated. And so the perception of these new fuels, which coal and peat were, and also the new technology that came with it, especially cast iron stoves, were perceived very negatively until, until, until far into the 18th century, actually. And so Cole and Pete were treated as something for the poor at best. If you can't afford good old firewood, then it means you must be poor. And this is a sort of last resort. And if you can afford it, go for firewoods. This is the best you, you can have. But it also went beyond to the fuels. You had coal, peat, regarded as very foul, inferior fuels. But this also went beyond those regarding warmth as such. And this for a long time. And again, as I said in the Beginning, during my PhD, I was perhaps a bit naive still. I sort of very. And in hindsight I would say kind of anachronistically looked at and that like, yeah, obviously people wanted more warmth and when it became available, available to them, they just switched to more warmth. Well, it turns out it wasn't for a long time not necessarily desired warmth as such, as it was considered unhealthy. And you have to consider also, of course, burning more fuel, having more fire, fires at home for warmth, for cooking. This inevitably meant more smoke and more ash and more soot. So also more time to clean it up, more effort to clean it up. So it was actually considered quite a burden and quite troublesome and quite unhealthy indeed. And with regards to stoves, these were treated very suspicious when they first came on the market, so to say, because they burned or they made the home environment very damp and that would risk the creation of molds and bad smells, as they didn't because they were closed off. In contrast to an open fireplace, they didn't bring any fresh air, they just gave off heat. And so they would make a room very damp and potentially very moldy. And so they were treated very suspiciously. And so a lot of these scientific treaties, for instance, or like household manuals, they actually advised to stick to your, to your old fireplace because a fireplace wasn't just a technology of warmth of heating, it was also a kind of ventilator. It brought in new fresh air, it brought in drought. So it was important to keep a room airy and to ventilate and to bring airiness into a room. So it was this constant sort of battle, you could say, between warmth on the one hand and on the other hand, a clean house supplied with sufficient fresh air. And within that dilemma. So you say, you could say for a long time people preferred the latter rather than the former. So they would rather have a well ventilated but chilly, rather chilly room rather than one that was warm but smoky, unhealthy, sooty and so on. And so in the 18th century, people suddenly between quotation marks and of course, this doesn't happen overnight, but still this happens quite abrupt. You could say in the 18th century, people suddenly become much more positive about it. And now warmth, for instance, is seen as healthy rather than coldness. Now people start to promote. Yeah, yeah. Indoor temperatures should be high enough, especially for children. So you can see that children are now being swaddled in before an open fire or even above a burning fire. You have this thing, what was called in Dutch a wurmande, which you can translate like a fire bassinet. So where you would. Where children can be swaddled in, can be put into to sleep. And these were. Underneath there was a brazier with burning embers. And then you have physicians warning about mothers nodding off besides these swaddled children in these fire bassinets and then talking about instances of fire hazards, a house catches fire, or also suffocation and cases, that is what we would now probably call cases of carbon monoxide poisoning. So people, because they started burning more fuel and keeping their, their windows closed and to not allow droughts and so on, or drafts, suffocate or die from the probably carbon monoxide that builds up. So it has all kinds of negative effects. And physicians sort of warns about that, yeah, don't do it. But you can tell from their evidence or their anecdotes that people increasingly started doing it in spite of their warnings. So it's interesting to see that in the 18th century you have this shift that where warmth, and especially fueled by beat or coal at first was very negatively treated, now becomes a sign of health, of comfort, that it becomes much more positively perceived. And this also has social causes. People start to. When it's cold. Now we have the reflex. If it's winter, we stay at home. We don't go out, or as little as possible, but because it's too cold and at home it's nice and warm. This is something that goes back to the 18th century, before people went out and they searched their warmth among others, in an inn or in a pub where they searched warmth, both social warmth and physical Warmth and where you had a roaring fire available at the price of a drink. Now, people in the 18th century, and I'm talking about middle classes, upper classes mainly, they start to stay at home. And of course if you stay at home, that means more private energy expenditure. And you can see these social rituals going on. So rituals of inviting people over to have tea, to have coffee, or having, inviting people over to have dinner together. Yeah. Then it becomes important that your, your house is quite warm as well. So you see that's also a social thing. That's warmth, a nice and cozy fire. That this becomes a source of status, a source of, a sign of wealth, of respectability. So that people are coming over, that they are not that they don't just enjoy some good tea, a good dinner, but that they are also at ease, that they can sit cozy in comfort at the tea or dinner table, for instance. And of course also these tea and coffee, these need energy as well. They're hot drinks, so you need to heat them to make them. So it's much more, I would say then in the end, a social, cultural change rather than one that's economic or technological. And where you really see the shift from a very negative perception towards these new fuels, new technologies, towards a much more positive one.
- [49:02]
Podcast Sponsor Announcer
This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed sponsored jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate. C. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs have four times more applicants than non sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com podcast podcast. Terms and conditions apply.
- [49:29]
Home Depot Advertiser
Spring is starting at the Home Depot and we're bringing you low prices guaranteed so you can wake up your yard this season. Shape up your lawn with top brand outdoor power tools like this Ryobi 40 volt mower with up to 50 minutes of runtime. Bring in a splash of color with spring blooms and fresh plants from the Home Depot Garden Center. Then refresh your garden beds and keep them clear of weeds with vigoro mulch. Three bags for $10. Start your spring with low prices guaranteed only at the Home Depot. Exclusion supplies to homedepot.com Pricematch for details.
- [50:00]
Podcast Sponsor Announcer
K Pop Demon Hunters, Saja Boys Breakfast meal and Hunt Trick's meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you say to that, Rumi?
- [50:09]
Dr. Wout Salons
It's not a battle.
- [50:10]
Podcast Sponsor Announcer
So glad the Saja boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.
- [50:14]
New Books Network Announcer
It is an honor to share.
- [50:16]
Podcast Sponsor Announcer
No, it's our honor.
- [50:17]
New Books Network Announcer
It is our honor. Larger honor.
- [50:19]
Podcast Sponsor Announcer
No, really, stop. You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side
- [50:28]
New Books Network Announcer
and participate in McDonald's while supplies last.
- [50:30]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, no, those are a ton of changes and obviously with consequences if you can't do them right. So you mentioned sort of wealth and status as being part of it. So there's kind of a socioeconomic inequality question there. And also when you were talking about things like cleanliness or child care things, there's obviously also some ways in which gender is probably involved. So can we talk about some of the socioeconomic or gender inequalities that come out from these changes?
- [50:59]
Dr. Wout Salons
Yeah, well, so it's a shift to comfort, you could say, and these people are getting more comfortable, but the question is, comfortable to whom? And so there's indeed, first of all, a big social inequality in the sense that this shifts happens among the middle classes, upper classes. And I'm going to talk about, I would like to discuss that further next. But you can see that for the lower classes, there's hardly an improvement at all. And in fact, fuel poverty probably increases. But I'd like to discuss that more first with the gender part there as well. So this shift to, let's say, energy comfort, you could say, and, and increasingly fossil fueled energy comfort is also unequally comfortable for those living within one household. And then in terms of gender inequality, because indeed you might shift from firewood to coal, from firewood to peat, from a fireplace to a more efficient stove or a more efficient foot stove perhaps. But there's a paradox also, of course. The more efficient it becomes, the more time saving it becomes, the more time and energy you eventually spend up, or end up spending doing that thing, but just in greater quantity. So you can see that these stoves, coal fuel stoves, peat fuel food stoves, and these modified fireplaces are probably more efficient, probably time saving, but people simply start having more of them. So they, instead of one room, they will have on average two or three rooms, maybe even four rooms being heated. So this means more work to monitor all these fires. And also considering that peat and coal are fuels that aren't easily kindled, that aren't easily ignited, especially compared to firewood. People would often kindle a fire in the morning and then sort of have it burning or, you know, having the embers sort of glowing throughout the entire day just to have it ready when needed. So you have to monitor this this whole day around, and not just one fire, but increasingly two, three or four fires. So you have to monitor if it doesn't smoke too much, if there is no risk for fire hazard, because it's. This is. You burn your fire in the house. And this is different to today, where you might have a gas boiler which still has a flame, but it's hidden away in the boiler, in the attic or whatever it is here. The fire is really in the room, or usually it is. So you have to monitor it. And if you have small children, you have to be careful that these children don't burn themselves and so on. And these burdens, this laborsome work, this is mostly put on the shoulders of women, of course, or of housewives and of maidservants, if the household was wealthy enough. In 1980, a book appeared by Ruth Schwartz Cohen, historian of technology from North America, from the United States. And the book is called More Work for Mother. And she deals mainly with 19 20th century house technology, from stoves to microwaves, and how this seemingly more efficient technology eventually actually ended up with, or put more work on the shoulders of Mother. I think she's right in many parts. And that's the fourth chapter. That's a chapter on gender inequalities within the household. And who was considered to be responsible of tending a fire, taking care of a fire, using the household energy, working with it, and so on. I think she's right, sort of take her thesis and move this towards the early modern period. And that's to argue that this shift to coal, to Pete, to stoves, footstoves, compact fireplaces, that these had a similar effect on housework and on gender inequalities. And I link this also to what is often called the ideology of separate spheres. So the idea that there's a public sphere and a private sphere and that the public sphere is more for this fear of men, the sphere of the economy, the sphere of public discussion, of politics and so on. At the other hand of that is, on the other side of that is the private sphere, which is the sphere of the home, of the household, of consumption and reproduction. And that's mainly the sphere or the realm of women. So this is an ideology. Of course, in practice, it's always much more. It's not as black and white, but this is an ideology that in the early modern period intensifies. And it's very much linked with what consumer historians then have called the cult of domesticity, the idea that. That you should stay at home or that social life Sociability is getting privatized. So instead again of going to an inn, to a pub, you would have your coffee and your tea, you would have your social gatherings, your sociability, you will have it more and more at home. So again, this demands for more energy consumption, private energy consumption, which again means more work for mother. But there's also other side effects that have a more indirect consequence. And so it's not just people having more fires, having more heating technologies that are used more frequently. It's also now that having more fire available, household starts to have more hot water available. You can indeed see that people are doing the laundry more often. And instead of taking your laundry into public washing houses, people, and again, this is middle classes, upper classes people start doing their laundry at home. And again, this is work that is mainly done by women. You also have the shift that I mentioned already in terms of cooking, from boiling and stewing food to more frying and baking of meals. Now this is also perhaps time saving in the sense that these stews, these are on for hours, but mainly unattentive. You just put them in the pot and you let them simmer. Cooking on a kitchen range or on a brazier or on a stove goes faster, but it requires more skill and you have to be around the fire at all times. And you can see that the households start to cook multiple pots, dishes, a pan for, I don't know, for meats, one for vegetables, one for breads or potatoes in the later 18th century, early 19th century. So you have to. This also have its effects. The 18th century cook needs more skill. And in terms of cleaning, of course, you have this indoor pollution that I've talked about. The more you burn the energy at home, the more smoke you will have. And this is the COVID of my book, which is a, a painting from the early 19th century and it's called the smoking fireplace. Often a chimney wouldn't draw very well and so the smoke would be blown back and depending also with the wind direction and so on, smoke would be blown back into the room. And so in this picture, you can see two women rushing towards the fire. I expect this to be the housewife and her maidservant rushing towards the smoking fire, the fireplace, as to. Stop the smoking. And you can stop it with throwing salt, for instance, on. That was one remedy, throwing salt on burning embers on, on the fire, that would prevent it from smoking too excessively. But so in terms of indoor pollution, you have probably this shift in the 18th century, not just towards fossil fuels, but also towards a regime of more and more and more, you could say, probably also meant more cleaning and hence, again, more work for mother. I would say. So this, this, this has major consequences in terms of gender inequality. And what is more, it's. It's also. So the more work women have for, you know, keeping the house warm and clean, the more and more it also gets hidden. And this, you can see, for instance, a good example or sort of a nice symptom of this process, I would say, is the rise of the separate kitchen. So, as I said earlier, kitchens used to be the living rooms of the house where everything happens, which were both spaces of toil, but also spaces of relaxing, of rest, of sleep, of sociability. Now, in the 18th century, you can see that the kitchen increasingly becomes only a room of toil of housework. And that is kind of women only, rooms that are women or become women only. And that eating itself, sociability, rituals of sociability, that these are being transported towards other rooms where none of this toil is allowed. And you could imagine a maid servant, for instance, in this period being omnipresent, being always available and around because her work is always needed and she always have to serve her master and the heads of the household to serve the guests, to make sure that a burning fire is refueled, is being refeeded with extra fuel, that the ashes are at once cleaned, and if it's indeed smoking too much, that this is controlled, that this is monitored, but always in the background, sort of noiselessly moving within the household kind of invisibly. And so, interestingly, you can see that there's this paradox of housework, for tending fires is becoming more and more important. But at the same time, the more it becomes present, the more it becomes important, the less it becomes visible. And there's a similar analogy, or the same thing happens, I think, with the fire or the energy that is the physical energy that is actually burns itself.
- [64:52]
Podcast Sponsor Announcer
That.
- [64:52]
Dr. Wout Salons
That is true as well, that you can see more and more rooms being heated, that the fire itself gets more and more invisible, literally disappearing in closed stoves, in separate kitchens where you would have the central fire and where braziers or footstoves are being fueled and then carried around the house. But where all the trouble of that, of the comforts that is produced, the production of that private comfort, that energy, comforts, that that trouble is sort of confined, is sort of hidden away into these rooms of toil, which are very much the most feminine spaces of the house. Yeah, so, yeah, I think this is an important aspect of this Gender inequality having major consequences and at the same time sort of getting hidden away, disappearing behind the scenes, you could say, in the backstages of the household.
- [66:12]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, that's definitely a pretty significant transformation. Now, we don't want to take too much of your time, but I meant you mentioned you briefly wanted to talk a bit about lower on the income scale as well.
- [66:23]
Dr. Wout Salons
Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, yeah, that's also another. And that's actually the fifth and last chapter where I, where I end then like the social context of where this household energy revolution, if you will, or what I then eventually call this invention of fossil consumerism, if you will, as I titled my book, in what social contexts did this arise? And it did arise, as I said already within like let's say the middle class, especially upper middle class home, a very like the new kind of bourgeois. Not, not, not, not the nobility, not, not, not, not, not, not, not the first estate, but like, let's say the wealthier, the wealthiest part of the third estate, you know, rather wealthy urban bourgeoisie. This is typically also the social groups that are in earlier research have been linked to this consumer revolution, to this invention of comfort, to that ideology of separate spheres, to the cult of domesticity and so on. And so in that fifth chapter I sort of want to pinpoint the social context, but also in relation to other social groups. And then that's another kind of, well, myth, if you want, or whatever or assumption that historians often have that coal, peat and other fuels, modern fuels, if you will, these may have, of course, as we know now, very bad effects for the environment and eventually for climate change and so on. But in the 1819 centuries when they were first introduced a, well, they brought industrialization and on the household level they brought more comforts also for the lower classes, because they were cheap, they were abundant. And it turns out, or as far as I'm concerned, this isn't true. In fact, I would argue that this energy luxury, you could say that you can see among the middle and upper classes who indeed start to have more rooms being heated, who, where you can see the indoor temperature rising like from on average 15 degrees to 18 degrees Celsius and more, there's literally domestic warming before there is global warming, you could say, at least within those more wealthy households. Whereas in the lower class households, I would argue there's a growing fuel poverty in the sense that if you look at prices, for instance, these have their effects in the sense that firewood becomes more expensive. And so the price shift in the long term explains the shifts from wood to Coal. But in the end, in the 18th century, the price of coal isn't cheaper than firewood used to be in the 17th century, for instance, or that's used that half a century or a century before. So if you look at these energy prices, these fuel prices, they're actually quite stable. So there are relative shifts, wood becoming more expensive relative to coal in the southern Low Countries. In the northern Low Countries, it's peat is the cheapest throughout from late medieval periods until the late 19th century, and a very stable price. And the same is actually true in the south and low countries, where coal is being sold at a very stable price, initially a higher price than firewood, but eventually it stays the same, more or less. So you don't really have a price shift in that terms. So for lower class people, the shift from wood to coal doesn't necessarily mean cheaper fuel, it's just that firewood becomes more expensive than, than, than coal. It's not that coal in terms of the joules, so the amount of energy. That you buy per penny spend, it's not that coal provides cheaper energy. And what is more, this is also a period, 18th, 19th century, where you can see that, well, the shift of coal and the shift to coal and the shift to peat also means a growing dependence on the market. So before, firewoods was of course also bought on the market. But often, and this is not only in the countryside where peasants or farmers would grow their own trees or hedgerows to produce their own fuel. Also in the city or in villages, people had the rights to gather that brushwood, so they could just gather it in common forests or common groves or whatever, or copses like small woodlands. And this is a ritual or common right that is increasingly also being criminalized, which isn't allowed anymore. And especially if you then switch from wood to coal, you become more dependent on the market. So in the end, in the longer term, I would argue that, that the lower classes probably were experiencing growing fuel poverty rather than growing fuel comfort, and that this fuel luxury among the rich, to put it very black and white now, of course, but it's kind of true that this energy luxury really was like the other side of the same coin, you know, and at the other side being fewer poverty. And so that these two went hand in hand. And that's on the side of, let's say the, the wealthier people, the energy luxury there you can see that a lot of energy is also wasted. That's that people, wealthier people, households, they switch to stoves, for instance, cast iron stoves, which were more energy efficient. But at the same time they also like their old fireplace which is less energy efficient, but they like it because it's more fashionable, it's more status oriented. So they kind of waste a lot of energy for the sake of status. And I calculated, try to calculate how much these, the wealthier people in my like let's say population of inventories, how much they must have consumed. And they probably consume more energy than we do in Belgium or the Netherlands today on average. Now that is excluding. So that's purely like household heating. Now we spend a lot of energy on cars and on transport, which they didn't in the 18th century obviously. But in terms of household energy consumption, these richest people, they probably consume more energy in terms of giga joules in terms of energy units than we do today per capita, of course, because technology is today much more efficient. But in the 18th century it was really about the comfort, the status, not really the efficiency. And the reverse is true for the poor, which often couldn't burn any energy. And there are cases, maybe, yeah, maybe one example of inventories where I see that poor inventories, they list, they register some coal, but there isn't a stove or a fireplace or a brazier around. And I can only assume that they used the coal that they had, that they just simply burned it in a hole in the ground. So these are often houses without floors, without tiled or wooden floors. And so they just dig a hole in the ground and burnt their fuel in there. And that's already assuming that they, or if they already had fuel and probably a lot of them even didn't, didn't have that. And there are also descriptions of people describing how an in severe winters a lot of people had died from hypothermia of the cold, for instance, because they couldn't afford to buy fuel.
- [76:50]
Dr. Miranda Melcher
Yeah, that's some very striking findings indeed. To contextualize a lot of this and not just assume, oh yay, everything's warm now. That's great, right? The picture is much more complicated than that and something it sounds like you're continuing to kind of work on. You mentioned at time the beginning that you're currently working on projects around pollution. So I'm sure lots of fascinating investigation going on there and related in some senses to the book we've been discussing. So while you are working on your current projects, listeners can of course read the book we've been talking about titled Fossil Energy Ecology and Everyday Life in the Early Modern Low Countries, published by Leuven University Press in 2026. Wout. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [77:34]
Dr. Wout Salons
It's been a great pleasure. Thank you very much for having me. You're probably driving, working out, or doing chores right now. TikTok isn't just entertainment.
- [77:56]
New Books Network Announcer
It's where I find fast, practical advice for real life.
- [78:00]
Dr. Wout Salons
Download TikTok now.