Fossil Consumerism

Wout Saelens' Fossil Consumerism examines how households in the early modern Low Countries embraced peat and coal to create new standards of warmth, light, and domestic comfort, arguing that these domestic changes were foundational to modern fossil dependence.

Drawing on probate inventories, household manuals, personal journals, medical treatises, and contemporary art, the book reconstructs material, cultural, and health effects of the shift from wood to peat and coal.

Saelens bridges energy history, consumption studies, and environmental history to show how new fuels altered household technologies, gendered labor, and perceptions of health and cleanliness.

He demonstrates that increased domestic burning produced indoor pollution, intensified housework (especially for women), and contributed to social inequalities and market dependence for fuel.

The book reframes early contributors to the Anthropocene by locating significant change within private homes rather than solely in industrial mills.