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Energy's History: Toward a Global Canon
Book · March 2025
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ENERGY’S HISTORY
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ENERGY’S HISTORY
Toward a Global Canon
Edited by
Daniela Russ
and
Thomas Turnbull
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
© 2025 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights
reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any infor-
mation storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Stanford
University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Russ, Daniela, 1987– editor. | Turnbull, Thomas, 1986– editor.
Title: Energy’s history : toward a global canon / edited by Daniela Russ and Thomas
Turnbull.
Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2025. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2024048931 (print) | LCCN 2024048932 (ebook)
| ISBN 9781503640863 (cloth) | ISBN 9781503641501 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781503641518 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Power resources—History—20th century. | Energy development—
History—20th century.
Classification: LCC HD9502.A2 E55437 2025 (print) | LCC HD9502.A2 (ebook) |
DDC 333.79—dc23/eng/20241227
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024048931
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024048932
Cover design: Jason Anscomb
Cover art: Alamy. Vintage exposition poster promoting electricity “Exposition In-
ternationale d’Électricité, Marseille April–October 1908,” lithograph in colors, 1908,
printed by Moullot Fils Aine, Marseille, artist David Dellepiane (1866–1932)
Contents
List of Contributors vii
Introduction
Toward a Global Canon 1
Daniela Russ and Thomas Turnbull
1 “The Largest and Most Important Renewable 21
Energy Project in the World”
Maurilio Biagi Filho and the Brazilian Sugar Ethanol Industry
Jennifer Eaglin
2 “Coal Will Be the Primary Fuel of the Future” 35
Yoshimura Manji on the “Fuel Question”
Victor Seow
3 The Fear of Being “Left Behind in the Dust” 55
The Rise and Potential Fall of Coal in China
Shellen X. Wu
4 Frederick Tryon and the Decoupling of Energy 71
and Economic Growth in the 1920s
Antoine Missemer
5 The Colony and the World Energy Revolution 84
Meghnad Saha’s Energetic Developmentalism
Elizabeth Chatterjee
6 The Red Thread to Socialism 103
Gleb M. Krzhizhanovskii’s “Energetics and
Socialist Reconstruction”
Daniela Russ
vi Contents
7 Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo and the Invention 124
of Anticolonial Democratic Oil Conservation
Michael Dobson and Giuliano Garavini
8 Privatizing a Colonial Electricity Undertaking 144
F. W. Dove’s “What People Think of Our Electric Light”
Damilola Adebayo
9 Gender, Food, and Vernacular Energy in 157
Moussa Travélé’s “Three Rapid People”
Laura Ann Twagira
10 Uncertain Energy Epistemologies 169
William James and the Case of Mental and Moral Energy
Rebecca Wright
11 Laura Nader’s Third-Wave Energy Anthropology 183
Thomas Turnbull
12 The Master Resource 202
Energy, Inter-Planetary Capitalism, and
Neoliberal Cornucopianism
Troy Vettese
Conclusion
Pluralistic Energy History in a Contested Epoch 223
Daniela Russ and Thomas Turnbull
Acknowledgments 229
Notes 231
Index 273
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