Routes of Power: Energy and Modern America by Christopher Jones (review)

Christopher Jones locates the roots of modern America in the routes that moved new forms of energy — coal, oil, and electricity — from their places of extraction to the locales where they were consumed. Merely finding the sources of mineral energy, or developing a technology to extract or utilize them was not enough. Transitioning from an organic energy regime based on personal exertion to a mineral regime based on stores of energy accumulated over geologic time required a cost-effective transport infrastructure. According to Jones, understanding the history of energy transport is the key to understanding America’s first great energy transition, and therefore the key to understanding the making of modern America itself.

Networks of canals, pipelines, and transmission lines transformed the mid-Atlantic between 1820 and 1930, creating what Jones calls “landscapes of intensification.” These routes of power not only transported fossil fuels, but they also carried the promise of continual growth, unshackling people from the Malthusian limitations of the organic energy regime. Jones acknowledges that the concept of a shift from organic to mineral energy regime is not completely new. The careful reader will find references to similar concepts featured in several notable works of world history. However, Routes of Power differs from these works in two ways. First and foremost, other works tend to focus on technologies, cultural pre-conditions, or resources as the decisive factors that made the transition from human power to fossilized power possible. Yet Jones draws attention to a key fact that new technologies were for naught unless these new sources of energy could be moved efficiently to the places where they were consumed. Second, Jones uses a regional, rather than global scale to discuss this transition, bringing to light the spatial politics and uneven costs/benefits associated with uncoupling the relationship between energy sources and energy use.

Boosters play an important role in Jones’s regional story. From scientists and merchants to politicians and would-be industrialists, the vision and tenacity of boosters were crucial to creating these “landscapes of intensification.” Men like Jacob Cist or Josiah White, for instance, believed in the future potential of anthracite coal as a staple energy source for fueling industries and heating homes. They convinced investors and legislatures to support their efforts to “improve” rivers for the task of carrying “stone coal” from mountainous extraction sites to Pennsylvania’s urban centres, and they aggressively promoted anthracite coal to manufacturing and residential consumers alike. Much like the landscapes these men sought to transform, though, the path to a new energy regime was never straight or smooth. False starts, setbacks, and lags plagued infrastructure projects, and the unseating of the organic energy regime was anything but instantaneous.

Jones seamlessly ties the shifts to other energy sources, like oil or electricity, together with the earlier shift to coal to create a single, fluid narrative. For instance, he shows how the rise of petroleum in the last half of the nineteenth century was itself a result of the transition to coal. To keep increasingly larger and faster coal fueled machines working into the night, and to keep them operating smoothly required more artificial light and better lubricants than solar or organic sources could provide. When people looked to petroleum as a possible answer to these problems, they used coal-fueled steam engines to drill and pump the oil to the surface, reflecting a peculiarity of the mineral energy regime. According to Jones, “the use of mineral energy sources to solve problems created by the intensive use of mineral energy sources” is a recurring pattern (91).

There is much to praise in Routes of Power. The book’s blend of creative synthesis and interpretive acumen are equally matched by the author’s knack for storytelling and suggestiveness. Jones maintains a clear focus on the topic at hand, yet repeatedly provokes questions about a wide ranging array of subjects — be it the relationship between sacrificial landscapes and the logic of growth...