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Paper short abstract:

This paper complements conventional interpretations of the English transition to coal as arising from a population-resource crisis or rapid commercialization, by considering climate cooling, heating technologies, and changing institutional and socioeconomic relations between 1300 and 1600.

Paper long abstract:

If the immediate cause of the fossil energy transition in early modern England is the bifurcation of coal and wood-fuel real prices in the late 16th century, the standard underlying explanations—Malthusian population pressure or Smithian commercialisation—are insufficient: populations of (especially eastern) England and London’s supply area were greater in 1300 than in 1550–1600. The Marxian historiographical supermodel has remained silent, focusing on agrarian and industrial relations of class and production, where the transition to coal was quintessentially urban and domestic. Instead, climate cooling between 1300 and 1600 affected both supply and demand via shifting growing and heating degree days. Reduced supply of wood fuels is indicated by coppicing cycles increasing from 4–8 to 10–20 years between 1300 and 1540. On the consumption side, customary attachment to open fires, higher urban land prices and post-plague consumer standards led to the introduction of the fireplace, flue and chimney in cities from the 14th century onwards (London), and in the countryside from the 16th century. This did not raise heating efficiency but rather allowed—homeostatically—burning more fuel in inclement weather without the smoke becoming unbearable: the invention of comfort. It also facilitated the shift from wood/charcoal to coal as late 16th-century winters grew longer and colder. Coal was not affected by climate other than via increasing demand, but production and marketing also had institutional support from the Tudor state and municipal authorities fearing social unrest. The increasingly common hedgebreaking for fuel was not an option for city-dwellers, who instead opted for cheap coal.