social change

"Engineering Miracles: Water Control, Conversion and the Creation of a Religious Landscape in the Medieval Ardennes"

This article demonstrates that monks were able to use their religious authority and their control of religious message to support and supplement their temporal powers. The control of water resources was deeply connected to monastic identity and the relationships between monks and the secular world.

"Was Brazilian Industrialisation Fuelled by Wood? Evaluating the Wood Hypothesis, 1900–1960"

Two substantive criticisms of Warren Dean’s ‘wood hypothesis’ are offered here: the wood hypothesis is accurate in general but underestimated the industrial consumption of fossil fuels, without conclusively rejecting the competing ‘hydroelectricity’ hypothesis; the method used for estimating potential energy supply from forest area was erroneous.