Early Modern Fire: Science, Technology, and the Urban Space
Early Modern Fire: Science, Technology, and the Urban Space
by Gianenrico Bernasconi, Marco Storni
English | 2025 | ISBN: 9004521755 | 380 Pages | PDF | 23 MB
by Gianenrico Bernasconi, Marco Storni
English | 2025 | ISBN: 9004521755 | 380 Pages | PDF | 23 MB
Early Modern Fire offers new perspectives on the history of fire in early modern Europe (ca. 1600-1800). Far from the background role that scholarship has traditionally assigned to fire, the essays in this volume demonstrate its centrality to understanding the entangled histories of science, technology, and society in the pre-industrial period.
Analysing case studies ranging from alchemy to cooking and from firefighting to fireworks, the contributors show that the history of fire is not only one of change and progress, but also of continuity, characterised by the persistence of traditional know-how, small-scale innovation, and the coexistence of different paradigms.