The Subterranean Forest: Energy Systems and the Industrial Revolution
The author argues that the analysis of historical energy systems can provide an explanation for the basic patterns of different social formations.
The author argues that the analysis of historical energy systems can provide an explanation for the basic patterns of different social formations.
In this volume of RCC Perspectives, esteemed historian David Blackbourn follows the challenge of energy production in Germany over the past two hundred years—from wood and coal, to hydroelectricity and nuclear power, and finally to emerging renewable technologies
The introduction of new energy carriers and of engines able to transform energy into mechanical work was a necessary, although not unique, condition of modern growth in Europe and subsequently in the rest of the world.
This essay explores connections between energy regime changes and nutrition, as well as the impact of such changes on nutritional knowledge and food policies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
American knowledge of British coal practices had at least two crucial implications for the timing and shape of the nation’s first fossil fuel energy transition. This story suggests that attention to transnational contexts can help us better understand how, when, and why energy transitions occur.
This essay considers how the Kaprun project launched by Germany drove two critical but neglected energy transitions in postwar Austria.
Energy-from-waste plants in places like Britain were designed help reduce waste and carbon emissions, but they have had unintended side-effects.
Ruth Sandwell examines people’s energy-related experiences in the transition from the organic to the mineral fuel regime in Canada.
Sean Patrick Adams explores coal storage and expansion in nineteenth-century America.