History: The Stories of Why Things Are the Way They Are

     After fiction, whether fantasy, scifi, or based in reality, my favorite genre to read is history. I particularly enjoy various pieces on different cultures and such as it helps me understand a great deal more about the world and why things are the way they are. I just finished a brilliant book by Ruth Goodman called The Domestic Revolution, which basically expounds on how the rapid shift from wood to coal burning in English homes dramatically altered not just every aspect of daily life, but also had major cultural implications that continue to the present.  It was so interesting to see how everything fit together. I'll give a brief overview that will in no way do justice to this lovely piece of research. 

• Fuel shortages and rising populations turned interest to the relatively cheap coal instead of traditional wood(this was around the reign of Elizabeth I)
• Wide-spread coal burning required chimneys in the common houses were previously there would generally be a large room with a central hearth and high-ish ceilings so smoke would just travel up and slowly filter through the thatch. 
• The introduction of chimneys lead to drafts along the floor introducing a greater need for furniture as previously people would sit and sleep on the floor. 
• It also lead to the ability to have multiple levels in a smaller building, as asphyxiation was no longer a major concern. 
• Coal burned hotter and longer (despite being a bit more complicated to get burning than wood) and thus required an adjustment in cooking instruments and techniques. (Enter boiled "puddings".)
• This is also probably why British cookery gets such a bad rap, as once they started colonizing they no longer had ready access to coal and the recipes that they had developed specifically for cooking on coal fires, fared very poorly over alternative fuel types. Additionally, the local hired help would have little to no idea how the dish they were attempting was actually supposed to turn out. 
• Need for sturdier metal pots lead to developing new iron casting techniques that were foundational to the coming industrial revolution. 
• Demand for coal in London gave rise to an increase of merchant sailors (many of whom helped repel the Spanish Armada). The increase in seafaring would also give England the ability to conquer and maintain its empire. 
• The smog and smut produced by coal required new cleaning techniques and are the reason for the Western obsession with hot water and soap. This lead to the dramatic increase in soap production and import by the English.
• The dirtiness caused by coal burning was very damaging to traditional wall coverings such as tapestries. This lead to the development of the wallpaper industry. 
• The new forms of cleaning took longer and happened more often, causing a shift in the domestic role of women that likely lead to the "women belong in the home" mentality. 
• This also lead to distinct social divide between those who could afford to have someone at home to clean (be it hired help or the housewife) and those who needed multiple people to be earning outside the home, giving rise to the concept and reality of "the great unwashed". 

    I'm pretty sure there are a number of other points made that I am completely forgetting, because, in the best possible way, there was just so much going on in that book. 

    It's so interesting to see how pieces of history continue to impact us to this day!  A mild example of this is blue laundry detergent. When people were making the switch from lye produced from their own wood-ash to purchased soap, they discovered that the soap lacked the natural bleaching properties of lye and ended up leaving their pale and white fabrics rather dull and yellowed looking. To counteract that they started adding a bit of blue dye when washing their whites, as it it an optical brightener that made their clothes look whiter. It's still slightly mind boggling to me that they came up with that solution over three hundred years ago. It's so simple yet so brilliant, and it's something we still use today.