ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by outlining the patterns of change in domestic heating and lighting observed in a provincial town in the Southern Netherlands between the final quarter of the seventeenth and the end of the eighteenth centuries. Using a social-historical perspective on the adoption of fossil fuels within the early modern home, this chapter aims to bring the everyday implications of energy transitions to the fore. In this context of early modern decline and subsequent growth in a small urban community, the author examine the ways in which households used energy sources in their domestic environment. Notwithstanding such issues, post mortem inventories are a reliable source of information on the material culture of households in the early modern period. In the town of Aalst the most common reason for drawing up the post mortem inventory of a household was succession by minors (or other judicially ‘incapable’ individuals) as heirs.
