Early Modern Fire : : Science, Technology, and the Urban Space / / edited by Gianenrico Bernasconi and Marco Storni.

• Superior document: Intersections ; Volume 95
• TeilnehmendeR: Bernasconi, Gianenrico,; Storni, Marco,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden, The Netherlands : : Brill,, [2025]; ©2025
• Year of Publication: 2025
• Edition: First edition.
• Language: English
• Series: Intersections (Boston, Mass.) ; Volume 95.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (380 pages)

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, 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. Contributors include: Gianenrico Bernasconi, Catherine Denys, Hannah Elmer, Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, Olivier Jandot, Cyril Lacheze, Andrew M.A. Morris, Cornelia Müller, Bérengère Pinaud, Stefano Salvia, Marco Storni, Marie Thébaud-Sorger, and Simon Werrett See Less

Table of Contents

Front Cover -- Half Title -- Series Information -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Figures -- Notes on the Editors -- Notes on the Contributors -- Introduction: the Early Modern Fire -- Part 1 Fire in Early Modern Science -- Chapter 1 Purity, Purification, and Fire in the Seventeenth-Century Chymical Texts of Nicaise Le Febvre and Michael Sendivogius -- Chapter 2 'Atoms of Fire': Galileo's Unachieved Theory of Heat and the Beginnings of Thermometry (c.1603-1638) -- Chapter 3 Without a Thermometer: the Technical Knowledge of Heat in the Early Modern Age -- Chapter 4 Working with Fire: Remedy Making from the Shop to the Garden in the Apothecaries' Guild (Eighteenth Century, Paris) -- Part 2 Early Modern Fire Technologies -- Chapter 5 The Kitchen Fire (Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century) -- Chapter 6 Fire Mechanics: Inventors and Promoters of Heating Systems (Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century) -- Chapter 7 'The Manner of Conducting Fire': Firing Architectural Terracotta in the Modern Era, between Know-How, Wood Shortage, and Innovations -- Chapter 8 John Smeaton's Fire Engine Trials -- Part 3 Fire in the Urban Space -- Chapter 9 The Outbreak of Fire: Inventions, Materials, and Combustion Knowledge in the Eighteenth Century -- Chapter 10 What Firefighting Tells Us about Eighteenth-Century Urban Police -- Chapter 11 Organising the Chaos: Firefighting in Upper Lusatia in the Early Modern Period -- Chapter 12 Spectacle, Enthusiasm, Objectivity - Managing Fire as an Emoterial -- Chapter 13 Conclusion: the Technicity of Fire in Modern Europe - a Historiographical Crossroads -- Index Nominum -- Back Cover.