Island of Light: The Development of Artificial Illumination in Early Modern England

Between 1680 and 1710, the city of London built a centralized network of lamps that dwarfed anything on the continent and soon inspired similar constructions across Europe, heralding the first creation of a modern system of public lighting. This thesis asks why such a sea change in artificial illumination happened in London at this time, and why illumination sparked resistance, by contextualizing debates about light and lighting, refusing to treat light as an autonomous issue. By examining the propaganda and internal records of three crucial joint-stock companies, the public printed record, and several sets of Chancery documents, this thesis argues that centralized artificial illumination emerged in late seventeenth-century England because of four factors: an effective popular discourse of modernization, innovative funding structures, an emergent cultural proclivity for invention, and political support for lighting projects. From there, this thesis argues that the development of centralized, standardized artificial lighting substantially altered the temporal experience of early modern Britons.