Reviewed by:

• American Lucifers: The Dark History of Artificial Light, 1750–1865 by Jeremy Zallen
• R. Shaw Bridges (bio)

Herman Melville diagnosed the social and environmental cost of the whaling industry when he warned nineteenth-century readers: “For God’s sake, be economical with your lamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man’s blood was spilled for it.” In coruscating prose, Jeremy Zallen makes the case that histories of lighting have for too long been blinded by teleological narratives of technological progress. Whereas technology historian David Nye has shown how electrification became a symbol of bourgeois political values, by looking at early organic lighting technologies, Zallen argues that lighting has a spatial, environmental, and labor history beyond its use-value.

Employing the spatial frameworks of Richard White’s Railroaded (2011), David Harvey’s Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference (1996), and Thomas Andrews’ Killing for Coal (2008) among others, Zallen demonstrates that in order to appreciate the full spectrum of pre-U.S. Civil War light, historians must trace the paths of organic compounds along their commodity chains. Unlike scenic train routes, however, there was nothing sublime in these “workscapes.” Zallen follows whale bodies from [End Page 990] whaleships to oil slick Nantucket wharves, where Quaker merchants employed women and children to pack candles. These were shipped to Caribbean slaveholders, who lit the clear-burning candles to extend the working hours of their captive sugar-mill workers and cotton-ginners (p. 39). The organic matter stored in West Indian guano islands was transmuted chemically into “inorganic” phosphorus that clung to the skin of the child workers in Birmingham match factories (p. 172). Whether considering the unpaid labor of colonial midwife Martha Ballard making tallow candles, or the “metabolism” of whales imbued in spermaceti, Zallen maintains that historians should see these sources of organic lighting in the Atlantic World “as historically embedded energy and matter in process” (p. 4).

Zallen does not eschew the “revolutionary” role of these technological innovations in shaping American industrialization, however, revolutions in lighting ultimately depended on antebellum revolutions in transportation. Railroads superseded well-trodden Ohio Valley mountain paths and river ferries as the dominant means of transporting hogs, allowing midwestern depots in Cincinnati to increase their daily production of lard oil (p. 154). Slaveholders forced captive workers to tap pines under the threat of violence and contended with the “living ecologies” of North Carolina turpentine forests they “coerced into survival” (p. 87). The politics of lighting “drew and challenged cleavages among more than just humans” (p. 134). Antebellum political discourses of progress also obscured the labor of enslaved “lucifers” mining by Davy lamps in the dark caverns of Richmond’s Midlothian coal pits. Slaveholders took out slave life insurance policies to minimize their financial risk, allowing mine owners to push slave miners deeper into the bowels of the earth. In 1858, Charleston chemist J. G. Dumas invented a distillation process that eliminated human labor in oil works, and Kanawha mine owners lowered their costs by substituting free with enslaved miners. Rather than eliminate human labor requirements, technological revolutions in antebellum lighting made the work even more oppressive. Zallen thus reminds historians how these technologies proved just as integral as the coal-powered steam pump to the industrial revolution.

While Zallen sheds light on industrial slavery, he does not compare regional investment in free and slave industrial labor nor devote much space to examining how these labor systems influenced their differing visions of modernity. This is probably why he depicts antebellum New Orleans, like New York, as a predominantly “liberal” urban space (p. 132). Understandably, the Civil War plays a pivotal role in Zallen’s narrative, simultaneously ending industrial slavery and older technologies of turpentine and whale oil as viable competitors to the newly discovered Pennsylvania petroleum. It was initially uncertain whether the Kanawha region in West Virginia would join the Union or the “slave-powered white-supremacist industrial war machine” of the Confederacy (p. 242). In telling this entangled history [End Page 991] of...

审核人：

• 美国路西法：人造光的黑暗历史，1750–1865年，杰里米·扎伦（Jeremy Zallen）
• R.肖桥梁（生物）

赫尔曼·梅尔维尔（Herman Melville）在警告十九世纪的读者时，诊断出捕鲸业的社会和环境成本：“看在上帝的份上，节约用灯和蜡烛的费用！您燃烧的不是一加仑，而是为此洒了至少一滴人的血液。” 杰里米·扎伦（Jeremy Zallen）在散文散文中提出，照明历史长期以来一直被技术进步的目的论叙述所蒙蔽。技术历史学家戴维·奈（David Nye）通过观察早期的有机照明技术，展示了电气化如何成为资产阶级政治价值的象征，而扎伦（Zallen）则认为照明具有超出其使用价值的空间，环境和劳动历史。

用人理查德·怀特的空间框架草率（2011），大卫·哈维的正义，自然，和而不同的地理（1996年）和托马斯·安德鲁斯杀煤（2008）等等，Zallen表明，为了欣赏全谱在美国内战之前，历史学家必须沿着其商品链追踪有机化合物的路径。但是，与风景秀丽的火车路线不同，这些“工作区”没有任何升华之处。Zallen在[End Page 990]中追踪鲸鱼的身体浮油楠塔基特码头的鲸鱼，奎克商人在这里雇用妇女和儿童来包装蜡烛。这些被运到加勒比海的奴隶主，他们点燃了燃烧的蜡烛，以延长俘虏制糖厂工人和轧棉工人的工作时间（第39页）。存储在西印度鸟粪岛中的有机物被化学转化为“无机”磷，并附着在伯明翰火柴工厂的童工的皮肤上（第172页）。无论是考虑殖民地助产士玛莎·巴拉德（Martha Ballard）制作牛脂蜡烛的无偿劳动，还是考虑抹在鲸精中的鲸鱼的“新陈代谢”，扎伦都认为，历史学家应将大西洋有机照明的这些来源视为“历史上嵌入的能量和过程中的物质”。 （第4页）。

Zallen并未回避这些技术创新在塑造美国工业化中的“革命性”作用，但是，照明革命最终取决于交通运输的前革命。铁路取代了广为人知的俄亥俄山谷山间小道和河渡轮，将其作为运输生猪的主要手段，从而使辛辛那提的中西部仓库能够提高猪油的日产量（第154页）。奴隶主迫使俘虏工人在暴力威胁下轻敲松树，并与他们“被迫生存”的北卡罗来纳松节油森林的“生活生态”作斗争（第87页）。照明政治“吸引并挑战了人类之间的分裂”（第134页）。战前的政治进步话语也掩盖了戴维灯在里士满中洛锡安煤矿坑的黑暗洞穴中被奴役的“荧光素”采矿的工作。奴隶主购买了奴隶人寿保险单以最大程度地降低其财务风险，从而使矿主将奴隶矿工推入更深的土地。1858年，查尔斯顿化学家JG Dumas发明了一种蒸馏方法，该方法消除了石油厂的人工劳动，而Kanawha矿主通过用被奴役的矿工代替来降低成本。战前照明的技术革命并没有消除对人工的要求，反而使工作更加压迫。因此，扎伦（Zallen）提醒历史学家，这些技术如何证明与工业革命中的煤动力蒸汽泵一样不可或缺。奴隶主购买了奴隶人寿保险单，以最大程度地降低其财务风险，从而使矿主将奴隶矿工推入更深的土地。1858年，查尔斯顿化学家JG Dumas发明了一种蒸馏方法，该方法消除了石油厂的人工劳动，而Kanawha矿主通过用被奴役的矿工代替来降低成本。战前照明的技术革命并没有消除对人工的要求，反而使工作更加压迫。因此，扎伦（Zallen）提醒历史学家，这些技术如何证明与工业革命中的煤动力蒸汽泵一样不可或缺。奴隶主购买了奴隶人寿保险单，以最大程度地降低其财务风险，从而使矿主将奴隶矿工推入更深的土地。1858年，查尔斯顿化学家JG Dumas发明了一种蒸馏方法，该方法消除了石油厂的人工劳动，而Kanawha矿主通过用被奴役的矿工代替来降低成本。战前照明的技术革命并没有消除对人工的要求，反而使工作更加压迫。因此，扎伦（Zallen）提醒历史学家，这些技术如何证明与工业革命中的煤动力蒸汽泵一样不可或缺。杜马斯（Dumas）发明了一种蒸馏方法，该方法消除了石油厂中的劳力，而卡纳瓦（Kanawha）的矿主通过用奴隶制的矿工代替自由来降低成本。战前照明的技术革命并没有消除对人工的要求，反而使工作更加压迫。因此，扎伦（Zallen）提醒历史学家，这些技术如何证明与工业革命中的煤动力蒸汽泵一样不可或缺。杜马斯（Dumas）发明了一种蒸馏方法，该方法消除了石油厂中的劳力，而卡纳瓦（Kanawha）的矿主通过用奴隶制的矿工代替自由来降低成本。战前照明的技术革命并没有消除对人工的要求，反而使工作更加压迫。因此，扎伦（Zallen）提醒历史学家，这些技术如何被证明与工业革命中以煤为动力的蒸汽泵一样不可或缺。

扎伦（Zallen）揭示了工业奴隶制，但他没有比较自由劳动和奴隶制工业劳动的区域投资，也没有花很多时间研究这些劳动制度如何影响他们对现代性的不同看法。这可能就是为什么他将像纽约这样的新奥尔良战前描绘为主要的“自由”城市空间（第132页）。可以理解，南北战争在Zallen的叙述中起着举足轻重的作用，同时结束了工业奴隶制以及松节油和鲸油的较老技术，成为了新发现的宾夕法尼亚州石油的可行竞争对手。最初尚不确定西弗吉尼亚州的卡纳瓦哈地区是否会加入联盟，还是联邦的“奴隶制白人至上主义工业战争机器”（第242页）。在讲述这个纠结的历史时[结束页991] 的...