Book contents
- The Cambridge World HistoryVolume I
- The Cambridge World History
- The Cambridge World History
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Table
- Contributors
- Preface
- Book part
- 1 Introduction and overview
- Part I Historiography, method, and themes
- 2 Writing world history
- 3 The evolution of world histories
- 4 Evolution, rupture, and periodization
- 5 From divergence to convergence: centrifugal and centripetal forces in history
- 6 Belief, knowledge, and language
- 7 Historiography of technology and innovation
- 8 Fire and fuel in human history
- 9 Family history and world history: from domestication to biopolitics
- 10 Gendered world history
- 11 What does anthropology contribute to world history?
- 12 Migration in human history
- Part II The Paleolithic and the beginnings of human history
- Index
- References
8 - Fire and fuel in human history
from Part I - Historiography, method, and themes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2015
Edited by
Book contents
- The Cambridge World HistoryVolume I
- The Cambridge World History
- The Cambridge World History
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Table
- Contributors
- Preface
- Book part
- 1 Introduction and overview
- Part I Historiography, method, and themes
- 2 Writing world history
- 3 The evolution of world histories
- 4 Evolution, rupture, and periodization
- 5 From divergence to convergence: centrifugal and centripetal forces in history
- 6 Belief, knowledge, and language
- 7 Historiography of technology and innovation
- 8 Fire and fuel in human history
- 9 Family history and world history: from domestication to biopolitics
- 10 Gendered world history
- 11 What does anthropology contribute to world history?
- 12 Migration in human history
- Part II The Paleolithic and the beginnings of human history
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter deals with the peculiar bond between humans and fire: what, in the course of history, have we humans done with fire, and what has fire done to us. Four successive phases in human history are distinguished: the phase before domestication; the phase of domestication of fire; the phase that in analogy with the subsequent phase of industrialization may be called agrarianization; and industrialization. A new phase (fifth phase), in which fire and fuel will play a very different role than in the still current phase of industrialization, is discussed. The history of the human bond with fire and fuel has aspects that relate to practically all academic disciplines, in the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences. Fire is a process of combustion of organic matter. A momentary conjunction of three conditions, Matter, Energy, and Information (MEI), is needed for it to occur.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge World History , pp. 185 - 207Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015
References
Further reading
Bankoff, Greg, Lübken, Uwe, and Sand, Jordan (eds.), Flammable Cities: Urban Conflagration and the Making of the Modern World, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Burton, Frances D., Fire: The Spark that Ignited Human Evolution, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Christian, David, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eden, Lynn, Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Elias, Norbert, The Process of Civilization: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations, Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2012, vol. iii.Google Scholar
Elias, Norbert, What Is Sociology?, Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2006, vol. v.Google Scholar
Frierson, Cathy A., All Russia is Burning! A Cultural History of Fire and Arson in Late Imperial Russia, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Goudsblom, Johan, and de Vries, Bert (eds.), Mappae Mundi: Humans and their Habitats in a Long-Term Socio-ecological Perspective, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goudsblom, Johan, Jones, Eric L., and Mennell, Stephen, The Course of Human History: Economic Growth, Social Process, and Civilization, Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996.Google Scholar
Harris, Marvin, The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture, New York: Harper & Row, 1968.Google Scholar
Morris, Ian, The Measure of Civilization: How Social Development Decides the Fate of Nations, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Pyne, Stephen J., Fire: A Brief History, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Sieferle, Rolf Peter, The Subterranean Forest: Energy Systems and the Industrial Revolution, Cambridge: The White Horse Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Smil, Vaclav, Harvesting the Biosphere: What We Have Taken From Nature, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weissenbacher, Manfred, Sources of Power: How Energy Forges Human History, 2 vols., Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2009.Google Scholar
Westbroek, Pieter, Life as a Geological Force, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Wrangham, Richard, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human, New York: Basic Books, 2009.Google Scholar
Yergin, Daniel, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, New York: Penguin Press, 2011.Google Scholar
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