The domestic consumption of firewood in preindustrial Seville, 1518–1775. An intensive bias driven by the Mediterranean diet

Depósito de investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla https://idus.us.es/ “This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in European Review of Economic History following peer review. The version of record Isabel Bartolomé Rodríguez, Manuel González-Mariscal, The domestic consumption of firewood in preindustrial Seville, 1518–1775. An intensive bias driven by the Mediterranean diet, European Review of Economic History, Volume 25, Issue 2, May 2021, Pages 280– 299, https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/heaa013 is available online at: https://academic.oup.com/ereh/articleabstract/25/2/280/5902088?redirectedFrom=fulltext.” THE DOMESTIC CONSUMPTION OF FIREWOOD IN PREINDUSTRIAL SEVILLE, 1518–1775. AN INTENSIVE BIAS DRIVEN BY THE MEDITERRANEAN DIET ISABEL BARTOLOMÉ RODRÍGUEZ MANUEL GONZÁLEZ-MARISCAL Universidad de Sevilla ABSTRACT Fuelwood was the main domestic fuel in the Mediterranean Basin during the Early Modern Age, although the consumption level was lower than in other latitudes. The calculation of annual real prices and per capita household consumption figures in Seville from 1518 to 1775 reveals a complex evolution connected to a European-wide scenario. As expected, low levels of domestic fuelwood use were maintained in accordance with climate and heating requirements, but contrary to prior assumptions, a substantial increase is evidenced as of 1630. The growing supply of firewood from treecrops, leading to a decrease in real prices, ran parallel to an early diet shift to pulses and the corresponding extension of cooking times. Keywords: Traditional Energies, Mediterranean Basin, Mediterranean Diet, Climate Shifts, Living Standards, Early Modern Age 2 1. INTRODUCTION Recent focus on biomass as a renewable energy source has drawn attention to the positive benefits of household use of both firewood and charcoal, while tending to ignore negative aspects for consumers. However, mainstream scholarship has assumed that the shift from biomass to fossil fuels in the past resulted not only in increased total energy consumption but also additional value—in terms of time and money—for household consumers (Fouquet 2008, Warde 2019). Accordingly, the downward trend in household biomass consumption in seventeenth-century Great Britain would reflect the benefits consumers received from the adoption of new energy carriers and associated technologies, while the attachment of domestic consumers to fuelwood in the Mediterranean Basin would have maintained low levels of total fuel consumption and efficiency losses (Malanima 2016, Kander et al. 2013). Regarded exclusively as the curse of a poor fossil fuel endowment, the behavior of the Mediterranean fuel consumer during the Early Modern Age has been largely overlooked (except for Malanima 2011 and Iriarte 2013). A better understanding of the intricacy of the drivers of household consumption of biomass fuels in the long run may reveal some new insights about its rationale then and now. Fuelwood was crucial in Early Modern Europe. It accounted for more than half of total energy consumption in Western Europe, with 28-34 megajoules (MJ) of daily consumption per capita, although wide variations existed. According to Kander et al. (2013, p. 56-58), daily fuelwood consumption per capita in the eighteenth century ranged from around 1 to 10 kg from southern Italy to Scandinavia. These substantial differences are usually regarded as being strictly dependent upon two variables in terms of demand: manufacture specialization (ceramics, glass and metal working), and especially climate and associated heating needs. However, household consumption, 3 which accounted for 60-80 percent of total fuelwood use in Early Modern Europe, was not only for heating, with 80 percent of consumption in the Mediterranean Basin being for cooking purposes (Smil 1994; Victor and Victor 2002, p. 14; Fouquet 2008; Kander et al. 2013, p. 56). Limited research is available on the evolution of domestic uses of fuelwood in Mediterranean Europe and its relation to real price shifts (Iriarte and Infante 2019; Malanima 2010, 2016). The evidence is scarce and scattered both geographically and chronologically, although the importance of household consumption during the energy transition to fossil fuels in other European regions is undeniable (Fouquet 2008; Muldrew 2011). According to Allen (2001), the available evidence for fuelwood prices in different parts of Europe falls within a very narrow range prior to the seventeenth century, as heating needs would have gone hand in hand with the availability of woodland. Fuelwood prices would have grown at the same pace as both population and income levels. However, in the second half of the seventeenth century, a price increase of organic fuels due to “hunger for land” would have given rise to an intensive pattern of energy consumption in both England and Holland. The replacement of organic fuels with either coal or peat for domestic use would be an essential early stage of the energy transition. This switch would have anticipated the use of coal for motive power during the industrial revolution, and contributed to the emergent divergence between the Mediterranean Basin, adopting energy-saving models owing to their poorly endowed subsoils, and the richly endowed north-western Europe (Warde 2007; Malanima 2011, 2016). Similarly, some attention has been devoted to geographical variations in the use of biomass fuels for heating, but the impact of well-known climate shifts on fuelwood consumption in Early Modern Europe remains largely unexplored (Kander et al 2013). 4 Other aspects of domestic consumption—essentially heating drinks and processing food to make it more nutritious and flavorsome—are usually taken for granted as constants before either energy or nutritional transitions. Furthermore, the nexus between diet change and energy consumption is almost absent from the literature. In view of the above, this paper aims to analyze the evolution and main drivers of fuelwood use during the Early Modern Age in the Mediterranean Basin. First, we present new evidence on annual real prices and consumption per capita of both firewood for cooking and charcoal for heating in Seville, a major European commercial hub with a Mediterranean climate, between 1518 and 1775. The long-term price trends for both fuels are examined within the wider framework of firewood and charcoal price series from other Spanish and European cities. This evidence suggests that fuelwood consumption fell in Seville in 1520-1560 and 1610-1630, and increased gradually from 1630 onwards, a curve that is inversely related to fluctuations in both fuel prices and living standards. This contrasts with previous works, in which the small difference between fuelwood consumption in England and Italy until 1750 is usually attributed to the fact that greater heating-fuel consumption in England was offset by higher income levels in Italy (Malanima 2016). The prices of Italian organic fuels would have increased in parallel to the population and agricultural prices during the eighteenth century (Malanima 2011), and a downward trend of fuelwood consumption associated with its rise in nominal prices is hypothesized (Malanima 1996, p. 55). Thus, diminishing living standards would have affected the relative prices of fuelwood and encouraged the adoption of fuel-saving use models (Malanima 2016). Second, the main reasons behind the increase in fuelwood use in Seville are examined. The occasional augmentation in fuel consumption from the 1630s onwards and the significant rise during the eighteenth century overlapped drops in real fuelwood 5 prices. The increasing abundance of firewood from olive pruning in the Sevillian hinterland might have enabled charcoal consumption growth during the intensification of colder winters during the Maunder Minimum (1666-1700), and the so-called la Maldá in the Mediterranean Area. However, the substantial rise in firewood consumption was for cooking and may be attributed to unexplored causes. Diets were very sensitive to living standards, as both fuel and food expenses constituted a significant proportion of most families’ budgets (Hausman 1995; Muldrew 2011, p. 101). A gradual switch from ‘expensive kilocalorie’ diets to ‘cheap kilocalorie’ diets, consistent with the evolution of living standards in Seville in this period, would have led to an increasing intake of dried legumes which require longer cooking times. Thus, the emblematic ingredient of the Mediterranean diet, the pulse, would essentially explain the surge in firewood consumption in Seville. At the core of this article is the exploration of the close relationship between the upsurge in consumption of both firewood and pulses. The main contributions of this study are: first, to provide additional information on complex fuelwood consumption patterns before the energy transition in southern Europe; second, to examine the response of fuelwood use trends to changes in relative prices; and finally, to relate biomass energy use shifts to the preliminary stages of the nutritional transition, associated with an increased intake of pulses (Cusso and Garrabou 2007). The article is organized as follows: section two briefly outlines the sources and methodology used for our estimations; section three introduces the new dataset and compares it with the main available firewood and charcoal price series from Europe and the main factors behind the phenomena under examination; section four discusses the main findings of our study; and the final section draws conclusions. 6 2. SOURCES AND METHODOLOGY Building data series on primary energy consumption, calculated with homogenous criteria and including costs, is vital for any comparative exercise (Gales et al. 2007; Warde 2019). Most of the available series on fuelwood consumption in Europe during the Early Modern Age are based on either tax records or timber production figures. In the former, the regulated supply of specific cities is analyzed through tax records. Once the total amount of fuelwood that officially entered the urban area is established, this is divided by the estimated population (Bernardos et al. 2011). Apart from potential tax fraud, two difficulties arise. First, to a certain extent, cities operated as redistribution markets for fuelwood in their hinterland. Second, in a society marked by income inequality, these aggregate data do not distinguish family income patterns in fuelwood consumption. Long-term fuel consumption series based on timber production estimates have recently been updated for Mediterranean countries by adding firewood from wooded pastures, scrubland, and tree-based crops, in addition to that supplied by forestry areas. These calculations separate timber used as a raw material from fuel use, taking into consideration differences in productivity of various types of woodland and tree-based crops, and calculating the degree of appropriation for these two different uses (Infante and Iriarte 2017; Iriarte and Infante 2019). According to the available data, significant differences in overall fuelwood consumption existed between northern and southern regions in preindustrial Europe, being largely attributed to climatic diversity (Gales et al. 2007). Heating needs were less pronounced in Mediterranean countries, but the primary productivity of woodland was also lower than in the north. Estimated averages range from 1 kg per capita in southern Italy to 10 kg in northern Scandinavia, with a European average of 2-3 kg (28-34 MJ) per capita daily consumption (Warde 2007; Kander et al. 2013, p. 56-57). Data from 7 Portugal, specifically Lisbon, break with this pattern, since daily fuelwood consumption was in excess of 2.0-2.4 kg per capita in 1850 (Henriques 2011, p. 40). Estimates of fuelwood consumption in preindustrial Spain vary widely. Rubio (2005) and Gales et al. (2007) based their estimations upon firewood production in forested areas and place the consumption close to the Mediterranean average calculated by Malanima, fluctuating daily between 1-2 kg per capita. According to tax records, however, fuelwood consumption was higher: 3 kg daily per capita in Madrid (Bernardos et al. 2011, p. 326). When tree-crop fuelwood is included, the estimated daily use rises to 3.1 kg (43 MJ) in 1860 (Infante and Iriarte 2017). Regarding geographic distribution, recent research with data from 1860 elevates the daily fuelwood consumption in Seville to 2.5 kg, mainly sourced from tree-based crops (Iriarte and Infante 2019). Our series of prices and domestic use of firewood and charcoal per capita in Seville rest upon the purchase data of Santa Marta Hospital (hereinafter, SMH) from 1518 to 1775see Appendix 1 . Founded in the late fourteenth century and inherited by the Seville Cathedral Chapter in 1404, the hospital’s mission was to distribute daily food rations after prayers and, from November to February, to provide a brazier to some poor, who did not stay in the hospital overnight 2 . The hospital’s account books specify quantities of firewood and charcoal purchased annually, as well as prices, date and place of each purchase, sellers, and the costs of both transportation from the river and the splitting and storing of firewood. Firewood varieties were often mentioned, and, in the same books, the number of assisted-poor and hospital employees was recorded, as well as the composition of food rations. Additionally, the books show that SMH used firewood exclusively for cooking, and charcoal, burned in braziers, as a source of heating. However, bread, which was an essential intake for the poor, was not baked in 8 SMH, but bought ready-made. All of this was detailed in the hospital's regulations and reinforced by the maintenance of its secular customs. A long tradition of resorting to charity institutions' accounts for building price and consumption series dates back to E. J. Hamilton, but SMH's accounting books constitute an unprecedented source as this hospital enables exceptionally accurate consumption estimates due to its specific mission, the homogeneous and relatively small sample of consumers and the neat accounting procedures maintained over three centuries. Seville was an important merchant city at national and European levels during these centuries. Between 1530 and 1585, after the city was granted a monopoly over American trade, Seville grew enormously, before entering a slow but continuous period of decline until the 1640s, when the plague dealt it a blow from which it hardly recovered until the nineteenth century. The last four decades of the seventeenth century witnessed a moderate recovery, only for the city’s decline to resume in the eighteenth century. In terms of population, the city peaked in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, when the population was approximately 130,000, whereas by the end of the eighteenth century it had fallen to 80,000. The city’s decadence accelerated after the loss of the trade monopoly in 1717, although it still ranked as the fourth Spanish city at the turn of the century (Domínguez Ortiz 1984; Morales Padrón 1989; Aguilar Piñal 1989; González-Mariscal 2013). Fuels were not taxed by the city council until 1846, and the Guadalquivir River provided the city with smooth access for goods (Madrid 1998). Firewood and charcoal supplies moved along this route, where fuels were bought wholesale. Most of the firewood purchased by SMH came from the pruning and uprooting of olive trees and holm oaks in municipalities within a 20 km radius, namely Tomares, Aznalcázar and Mairena del Aljarafe (Collantes de Terán 1991; García Baquero 2006). Regarding 15 few sectors. In Spain, even though coal was utilized on a massive scale for manufacturing in the last third of the nineteenth century, domestic energy transition did not take place until the second half of the twentieth century. Exceptionally, coal became commonplace in some cities, such as Barcelona and Madrid, a century before, as a result of recurrent shortages in fuelwood supplies (Bernardos et al. 2011, table 15.1 and Iriarte and Infante 2019). In summary, fuelwood consumption in Seville for culinary and heating purposes during these centuries followed a distinctive path, more complex than that previously assumed for the Mediterranean Basin. The initial trend was similar to that of Naples, a city with certain resemblances, but the total level of fuel consumption was greater, closer to that described for Lisbon and other cities with a less benign climate, such as Madrid (Bartoletto 2004, Teives 2011, Bernardos 2011). In addition, fuel-saving strategies were both precocious and reversible. In 1520-1560 and 1610-1630 fuel-saving practices may be observed, followed by an increase in the use of both firewood and charcoal. Before analyzing other factors, we shall examine this consumption behavior in comparison with other European countries. 3.2 Prices and firewood consumption in Seville in the European mirror Long-standing controversy characterizes the studies on the evolution of organic energy prices, particularly organic fuel prices. This has re-emerged in recent years in parallel with the exploration of the relationship between their increase in Western Europe from 1500 to 1700when prices doubled or tripledand the energy transition to the massive use of fossil fuels. Once these prices were recalculated in real terms, it became clear that there was fierce competition between agricultural and forestry land use in north-western Europe. This would have encouraged a rapid switch from organic 16 to fossil fuels at the domestic level for calorific uses anticipating those for motive power applications by almost two centuries (Malanima 2006 and 2016; Kander et al. 2013, p. 96). In the rest of preindustrial Europe, fuelwood prices would seem to be an unreliable indicator for their economies, showing similar trends within a narrow range all over Europe (Allen 2009). An enduring tradition of examining Sevillian prices from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century existed as its port, and the whole city, became the vortex of the storm that the arrival of precious metals from the Americas unleashed upon the European money supply (Hamilton 1975, 1988; González-Mariscal 2015, 2017, 2019). The nominal prices of firewood and charcoal (per MJ) between 1520 and 1775 follow the same major trends confirmed for other products: a sharp rise during the so-called “price revolution” of 1514-1603; a less pronounced increase during the “billon inflation” of 1603-1680; stabilization from the 1680s to the 1740s; and finally, the beginning of “paper inflation,” from the 1740s to the 1800s 14 . In order to compare the prices of firewood and charcoal in Seville (in grams of silver per kilogram) to those in other Spanish cities, we took the available data and calculated the arithmetic average value for the whole country 15 . The prices of organic fuels in Seville were, together with those of Madrid, the most expensive in Spain during the Early Modern Agefollowed by those of Toledo, Valencia and Barcelonawith a differential to the country average, in the case of firewood, which fell from 32 percent in the sixteenth century to 18 percent in the eighteenth century, while that of charcoal stayed at around 30 percent during this period. Using data for other European cities, grouped by country 16 , we may compare price differentials from country to country 17 . Spanish firewood was the most expensive in terms of grams of silver per kg or liter in Europe during the Early Modern Age. 17 Firewood was slightly less expensive in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, while the cheapest prices, by far, were in Central Europe. Likewise, Spanish charcoal was the most costly during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but in the eighteenth century it was overtaken by Belgian charcoal. Therefore, despite the convergence process owing to a marked price decrease in the Mediterranean Basin from 1500 to 1775, Spanish organic fuels remained among the most expensive in Europe. To explore the relationship between the price of organic fuels and the living standards of unskilled workers in Europe, we take the wage paid to a mason’s helper and divide it by the price of firewood and the price of charcoal (in grams of silver) in each of the cities selected. The price differential between each country and Spain is presented in Table 3. According to this calculation, during the Early Modern Age firewood was less affordable for unskilled workers in Eastern Europe (Poland and Ukraine), followed by Mediterranean Europe (Spain and Italy), Western Europe (France) and Central Europe (Austria and Germany). Spain’s exceptional top position in the sixteenth century was due to the “price revolution”. During this century, an unskilled Polish or Ukrainian worker could buy 40 percent more firewood than a Spanish worker; an Italian worker 50 percent more; a German worker 250 percent; and an Austrian worker 380 percent. INSERT TABLE 3 ABOUT HERE For charcoal, the profile is similar, although data for Eastern Europe are sparse. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, charcoal was more expensive in Mediterranean Europe (Italy and Spain), followed by continental Western Europe (Belgium and France), and Central Europe (Austria). In England, on the other hand, charcoal prices 18 remained the cheapest in Europe throughout the Early Modern Age, enabling a mason’s helper to purchase 1.8-2.7 times more charcoal than his Spanish counterpart from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. In the latter century, Eastern Europe had the most expensive charcoal (apart from Belgium), and an unskilled worker there could only afford to buy 70 percent the amount of a Spanish laborer. Adding industrial uses to household consumption in Seville (Table 4), firewood and charcoal consumption during the sixteenth century would be in the range of 28.5-34.8 MJ, slightly below the European average, although amounts must remain hypothetical in this regard. In the seventeenth century, total consumption fell to 27.2 MJsomewhat below the lower limit for Western Europealthough domestic consumption remained within continental benchmarks. Finally, in the eighteenth century, total consumption in Seville clearly exceeds that of Europe. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the replacement of organic fuels with coal in western European households coincided with an increase in domestic consumption in the Mediterranean city of Seville. INSERT TABLE 4 ABOUT HERE Responses to the widespread timber “famine” in Europe during the seventeenth century were varied (Sieferle 2001). Unlike in north-western Europe, where forests were under threat and coal and peat were then adopted for household calorific uses, the struggle between forestry and farming in Andalusia dates back to 1520-60 and 1610-30. Firewood supply from forestsholm oakwas replaced by pruning tree-based cropsolive treesduring a gradual agrarian readjustment. Thus, cities were increasingly supplied with firewood from their own hinterland 18 . Hence, although living standards fell and diet composition inevitably changed, fuel consumption actually rose. 19 3.3 Weather Variations and Diet As previously noted, the increase of domestic firewood consumption in Seville from 1630 to 1770 (130 percent) was considerably higher than the drop in real prices (43 percent) and charcoal behaved as a luxury good, as its consumption expanded by 365 percent while real prices only declined by 26 percent. Climate and diet may be the factors behind these discrepancies. First, increased charcoal consumption for heating was dependent upon climatological changescolder winters and enormous climatic variability, with a succession of frequent high-intensity droughts and floodswhich may have pushed fuel prices up in some European regions (Malanima 2006). Sharp fluctuations in temperature were also observed in other Spanish institutions (Sanz de la Higuera 2014). As no temperature records exist for Seville at this time, rainfall data have been referred to instead. These indicate that the eighteenth century was relatively dry, minimum levels being reached in 1750, when the dry and cold period came to an end. However, low levels of solar radiation still characterized the final decades of the century in Andalusia, with elevated rainfall and several floods from the River Guadalquivir, corresponding to the so-called Maldá in the Mediterranean regions followed by the Dalton Minimum (1790-1820) (Rodrigo 2007, p. 33, 2018; Domínguez- Castro et al. 2014; Barriendos and Llasat 2003). Second, the increase in the use of firewood for cooking might result from the evolution of the relative prices of fuel and food and the adoption of saving patterns for the less affordable commodity, food, leading to changes in diet composition and the correspondingly increased fuel consumption. An analysis of the diet of poor people at SMH from the 1520s to the 1770s clearly reveals that caloric intake hardly changed. The main components of the diet served at SMH were strictly regulated: 0.690 kg of bread, 0.230 kg of meat or fish, and 0.978 liters of wine. Actual intake did not differ 20 from the regulated amount in the case of bread, while that of proteinsmeat and fishfluctuated between 0.225 and 0.250 kg, and that of wine was closer to 1.1 liters (González-Mariscal 2013, 7-26 and 43-45). Despite this apparent regularity, significant changes in the varieties of meat and fish consumed at SMH are observed during the Early Modern Age. A shift from “expensive kilocalories” to “cheap kilocalories” was gradually implemented between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. For instance, bacon became increasingly important to the detriment of fresh meat, and fresh fish was progressively replaced by salted cod from the final decades of the sixteenth century onwards. Nevertheless, the greatest change involved the increasing relevance of dried legumes in the diet. The only pulse served in significant quantities until 1575 was the chickpea, then the consumption of lentils, broad beans, beans and green beans became increasingly common, especially in the seventeenth century. Rice and chestnuts also became frequent during the eighteenth century 19 . From the sixteenth through the eighteenth century, the real prices of pulses, bacon and salted cod either decreased, for example lentils, or remained stable, for instance chickpeas, broad beans and bacon. In terms of kilocalories, beef was 3.4 times more expensive than bacon in the sixteenth century and 4.4 times in the eighteenth century, while dogfish was 2.5 times more expensive than salted cod in the sixteenth century and 1.9 times in the eighteenth century. Graph 4 represents the consumption of pulses and bacon, on the one hand, and firewood, on the other, at SMH from 1581 to 1775. In broad terms, the evolution of both series is rather similar. Four periods can be distinguished: 1580-1630, when the consumption of legumes and bacon fell by 35 percent and that of firewood by 31 percent (Elasticity = 0.89) 20 ; 1630-1710, when the consumption of legumes and bacon increased by 108 percent and firewood by 99 percent (E = 0.92); 1710-1730, when the 21 consumption of legumes and bacon fell by 38 percent and firewood by 33 percent (E = 0.88); and, 1730-1770, when legumes and bacon consumption increased by 29 percent and firewood by 67 percent (E = 2.31). A clear correlation existed between the consumption of legumes and bacon and that of firewood until 1750. From then onwards, firewood consumption grew faster than that of legumes and bacon. INSERT GRAPH 4 ABOUT HERE 4. DISCUSSION Premodern energy systems were characterized by low power and low per capita consumption rates, but the black box of energy history before the transition to fossil fuels may conceal some interesting phenomena. Our new estimations show that household fuelwood consumption was neither stationary nor a constant dependent upon geographical considerations. Firewood, largely used for cooking, accounted for a significant proportion of overall fuel consumption in the Mediterranean Basin, where, not surprisingly, prices mattered (Fouquet and Pearson 2006). The evolution of firewood prices as a proxy of supply shifts has shown to be a crucial factor in terms of both how likely it was to be used and in what volume. However, from the demand side, firewood and food were complementary inputs in the daily energy intake per capita, and both were constrained to a limited budget in urban contexts. According to Warde (2019), among the various factors affecting the choice of fuel and consumption volumes, prices are a useful analytical variable. Our estimations show these variables were strongly sensitive to the evolution of fuelwood prices. In addition, household demand for fuelwood was not as relatively constant in preindustrial economies as has generally been assumed, since price-elasticity has demonstrated to be 22 less rigid than hitherto believed. However, fuelwood prices should no longer be used as a sole explanation of incremental consumption levels in Seville, specifically from 1630 to 1770. Malanima (2010, 2016) alluded to sensitivity to income levels to describe different energy consumption patterns in England and Italy. In line with this model, the price of organic fuels in the eighteenth century rose in parallel with the population and agricultural prices and the distinct decline in the amount of organic fuel available per capita in Europe from 1750 onwards would only have been offset by the replacement of firewood with relatively cheaper fossil fuels in England (Wrigley 2016); while in Italy, fuel-saving models would have been pursued (Malanima 2011). According to our data, however, in Seville the opposite relationship prevailed, since diminishing living standards went hand in hand with increasing per capita levels of firewood consumption between 1630 and 1770. Sevillian diet adapted to both income levels and the availability of fuel during the Early Modern Age. In tough times, people did not “eat hot meals,” as illustrated by Spanish picaresque novels, in which meals of bread and cheese or pie and grapes were common. In the eighteenth century, boiling replaced roasting while pulses and bacon replaced meat and fresh fish. In Britain, changes in cooking practices and diet composition, related to firewood shortages, are also attested (Muldrew 2011, p. 100). Although cooking practices underwent few technical changesmost food was boiled or roasted in pots and pans hanging from hooks over the hearth (Fouquet 2008)diet composition was largely responsive to income levels. The evolution of relative prices of complementary goods, such as firewood and food, reveal the nature of the relationship between agricultural goods and energy consumption, which was crucial according to Malanima (2010). In his model, one of the 23 main drivers behind the switch to coal were the Malthusian constraints to boosting the fuel supply in a context of growing population, that is, the increasing prices of agricultural goods encroached upon other land uses and firewood prices soared. However, this does not seem to apply to eighteenth-century Seville. On the supply side, alternative land uses, such as planting olive trees and sowing pulses instead of cereals, increased firewood supply in a context of falling real wages and living standards, despite decreasing population numbers. On the demand side, the shift to more affordable foodstuffs like pulses and salted bacon may largely explain the increase in firewood consumption from 1630 onwards. Longer cooking times, and probably diminishing opportunity costs of labor for household cooking, were complementary to relatively inexpensive meals. Last but not least, the Little Ice Age must also have contributed to the expansion of firewood consumption in the late eighteenth century. Charcoal poses a clearer case, but the link between firewood, which was essential for cooking, and colder and wetter winters is less apparent. However, the use of open fires in kitchens was a straightforward way to heat buildings when the differential of relative prices between firewood and charcoal reached its apogee. HSM's assisted-poor would probably not have enjoyed this benefit, but SMH staff probably would have. 5. CONCLUSION The evolution of household fuelwood consumption during the Early Modern Age, according to new estimates based on SMH’s accounts from 1518 to 1775, sees daily consumption per capita increase in Seville from 2.0 to 2.5 kg, which is slightly above the Spanish average of 1.8 (Iriarte-Goñi 2013), and closer to estimates made for southern inland regions for 1860 (Iriarte and Infante 2019). This is a significant 24 conclusion, bringing forward the vital role of tree-based crops as an incremental supply source of firewood in southern Spain by approximately a century. Compared to the Mediterranean average calculated by Malanima (2006), two key differences stand out: (1) domestic fuelwood consumption was higher in Seville during the eighteenth century, and (2) fuelwood consumption levels did not remain stationary, but rather increased gradually from the 1630s onwards. Thus, these divergences pose the question: what explanatory variables may illuminate this discrepancy in firewood consumption patterns in Seville? Among the factors underlying our case-study, we have analyzed the evolution of fuelwood prices in the European mirror, climatic variations, and diet changes. Although fuel prices mattered, their explanatory potential becomes gradually limited as the eighteenth century progresses. A combination of the final stage of the Little Ice Age, a period that witnessed extreme weather variability, and the increasing presence of pulses in the diet of SMH's assisted-poor, with the correspondingly longer cooking time, might help explain the sharp growth in fuelwood consumption between 1630 and 1775. Then, the deterioration of living standards enforced changes in the diet, and the resulting “Mediterranean diet” was underpinned by the intensive use of traditional and relatively affordable fuels. With geography generally presented as the main (and static) distinguishing driver of household fuelwood consumption during the Early Modern Age, factors other than climate emerge once the time span is expanded. Climate conditions had a major impact on fuel consumption for heating, but fuel prices and living standards were also relevant. These shaped diet shifts and cooking preferences, leading to fluctuations in fuel use. 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From 1776 onwards SMH ceased firewood purchases. 2 “… estos dichos pobres vienen solamente a comer al medio dia y lo que les sobra de la dicha racion se lo lleban cada uno consigo para cenar, por manera que no vienen a la dicha casa y ospital mas de sola una vez al medio dia e no se les da otra cosa ninguna, ni cama en que duerman” [sic] (Collantes de Terán y Caamaño, 1886: 210-211). This reference is thanks to José L. Candelaria. 3 For firewood, the original units were cargas and carretadas from 1518 to 1570s and quintales from then on. 1 carretada = 5 cargas = 10 quintales = 40 arrobas = 460.09 kg. For charcoal, the original units were costales, carretadas and cargas from 1518 to 1560s and arrobas from then onwards. 1 carretada = 5 cargas = 25 costales = 50 arrobas = 575.1 kg. 4 Archivo Histórico de la Universidad de Sevilla (AHUS), Colegio de San Telmo, libros de datas de cuentas generales, Books 91-121. Likewise, this institution bought firewood for cooking and charcoal for heating. 5 Thus, the multiplying factor used for 1518-1562 is 18.491 MJ/kg; 18.916 MJ/kg for 1634-1664; and 18.617 for 1760-1775. Graduation between periods applied by decades. 6 12-68 from 1518 to 1775. No relevant diminishing trend in firewood consumption is dependent upon the increasing size of the group (annual record, in Appendix). The R2 between the number of beneficiaries and the annual consumption of firewood is 0.6 (1518-1775). 7 From the 1630s onwards, purchases were made wholesale, whereas in earlier periods this only applied to chickpeas, while the remaining legumes and bacon were only recorded intermittently in the daily accounts. 8 Minimum cooking times were the following: beans and broad beans 120 minutes; chickpeas and pork fat 90 minutes; lentils and green beans 45 minutes; chestnuts 40 minutes; and rice 20 minutes. Following 35 this, each product has been weighted in the index number as follows: beans and broad beans 0.21; chickpeas and bacon 0.16; lentils and green beans 0.08; chestnuts 0.07; and rice 0.03. 9 In 1619, the person who bought the firewood for SMH declared that “there is little firewood available on account of the olive trees whence it comes from not being ready, and because of the olive crop, not many being uprooted” (ACS, sección V, serie 2, libro). 10 Here, Elasticity measures the sensitivity of the quantity of firewood demanded by SMH to price changes caused by shifts in supply and/or demand curves. 11 The uprooting of olive trees in the properties of the Cathedral Council of Seville, among the greatest landowners, took place between 1598 and 1667, particularly in 1630-1651, when over 25,000 olive trees were uprooted (González-Mariscal 2013). The Cathedral Council owned 822 ha of olive groves in 1538, and only 236 ha by 1667. 12 Wines and liquors were also delivered to SMH. No fuel was employed in fermentation, but some was used for distilling liquor at the manufacturing plants. 13 This amounted to an annual consumption of 91.5 kg, but these calculations could underestimate firewood consumption per baked loaf, as they were made assuming the use of oak firewood. Galloway’s annual estimations for firewood consumption for baking bread in London in 1300 were 280 kg per inhabitant and 200 kg in 1400 (Galloway et al. 1996, p. 456). We are indebted to Sagrario Martín. 14 Hamilton’s series present some difficulties: there is no data for 1501-1550; prices are expressed in quintals, not in cargas, for 1551-1650; 1 carga is equivalent to 2 quintals, not to 2.5. We are grateful to Ernesto López Losa for Hamilton’s data from 1651 to 1750. 15 Barcelona, in Feliu (1991a, 1991b); Valencia, in Hamilton (1975, 1988); Toledo, in González Agudo (2015) and Hamilton (1975, 1988). Charcoal prices for Madrid in Llopis et al. (2009). We are grateful to Enrique Llopis and David González for sharing their data. 16 Allen (2001), available at http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/data.php#europe. The firewood sample includes Florence and Milan (Italy), Paris (France), Augsburg and Leipzig (Germany), Vienna (Austria), Warsaw and Gdansk (Poland) and Lwow (Ukraine). For charcoal, we have included Naples and Milan (Italy), Paris and Strasbourg (France), Antwerp (Belgium), London (England), Vienna (Austria) and Warsaw (Poland). 17 We prefer price differentials due to the use of units of both volume and weight. For Spain, we know the firewood varieties employed, holm oak and olive tree. This enables us to compare different cities by converting kg into liters. A density of 1,000 kg/m3 for firewood and one of 300 kg/m3 for charcoal is assumed. 18 Agricultural production increased by around 30 percent in western Andalusia in the eighteenth century (estimations based on Llopis and González-Mariscal, 2010). 19 Cookbooks from the eighteenth century in both Spain and Italy did not give cooking times for pulses and stews, but it is a well-known fact that pulses are an ingredient that requires longer cooking times. 20 Although the retail purchase of legumes in this period may have led to a slight underestimation.