Rendered Obsolete: Energy Culture and the Afterlife of US Whaling

"Through the mid-nineteenth century, the United States whaling industry drove industrialization and urbanization, offering ways to lubricate and illuminate the country. The Pennsylvania petroleum boom of the 1860s brought cheap and plentiful petroleum into the market, decimating whale oil's popularity. Here, Jamie L. Jones tells that story from the flipside of the modern age of fossil fuel - a history of how the whaling industry held firm to U.S. popular culture even as it slid into obsolescence. Jones shows just how instrumental whaling was to the very idea of 'energy' in American culture, and how it came to mean a fusion of labor, production, and the circulation of power. Analyzing a vast archive that includes novels, artifacts from whaling ships, periodicals, tourist attractions, and even whale carcasses, Jones explores the histories of race, labor, and energy consumption in the nineteenth century United States through the lens of the whaling industry's legacy. She shows that dying industries exert real force on environmental perceptions and cultural imaginations. In terms of how we view power as a nation, we are, she argues, still living in the shadow of the whale"--

"Through the mid-nineteenth century, the United States whaling industry drove industrialization and urbanization, offering ways to lubricate and illuminate the country. The Pennsylvania petroleum boom of the 1860s brought cheap and plentiful petroleum into the market, decimating whale oil's popularity. Here, Jamie L. Jones tells that story from the flipside of the modern age of fossil fuel - a history of how the whaling industry held firm to U.S. popular culture even as it slid into obsolescence. Jones shows just how instrumental whaling was to the very idea of 'energy' in American culture, and how it came to mean a fusion of labor, production, and the circulation of power. Analyzing a vast archive that includes novels, artifacts from whaling ships, periodicals, tourist attractions, and even whale carcasses, Jones explores the histories of race, labor, and energy consumption in the nineteenth century United States through the lens of the whaling industry's legacy. She shows that dying industries exert real force on environmental perceptions and cultural imaginations. In terms of how we view power as a nation, we are, she argues, still living in the shadow of the whale."