The major challenge to research on hydrocarbon history is the accessibility of archival sources. Among other factors, the restricted access to corporate records has limited the field of exploration of the discipline so far.
Edward Anthony Wrigley, The Path to Sustained Growth: England’s Transition from an Organic Economy to an Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2016).
This paper argues that historians and their disciplinary practices can enhance the analysis of energy transitions by non-historians.
Astrid Kander, Paolo Malanima and Paul Warde, Power to the People: Energy in Europe over the Last Five Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013)
Jean-Claude Debeir, Jean-Paul Deléage, Daniel Hémery, Une Histoire de l'énergie. Les servitudes de la puissance (Paris : Flammarion, 2013 [1986])
The historical approach of energies consumers is based on several questions on the conceptual frameworks. In the dailylife anthropology framework, energy consumption disappears behind the use of the artefacts and becomes an infra-consumption.
Vaclav Smil, Energy and Civilization. A History (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2017)
This historiographical essay shows how historians have dealt with energy since the beginning of the 20th c. and until today.
Energy is a rich concept that can analyze much of the evolution of societies over time.