Sunday, January 4, 2009
Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America
Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America
Historians have long assumed that new industrial machines and power sources eliminated work animals from nineteenth-century America, yet a bird’s-eye view of nineteenth-century society would show millions of horses supplying the energy necessary for industrial development. Horses were ubiquitous in cities and on farms, providing power for transportation, construction, manufacturing, and agriculture. On Civil War battlefields, thousands of horses labored and died for the Union and the Confederacy hauling wagons and mechanized weaponry.
The innovations that brought machinery to the forefront of American society made horses the prime movers of these machines for most of the nineteenth century. Mechanization actually increased the need for horsepower by expanding the range of tasks requiring it. Indeed, the single most significant energy transition of the antebellum era may have been the dramatic expansion in the use of living, breathing horses as a power technology in the development of industrial America.
Ann Greene argues for recognition of horses’ critical contribution to the history of American energy and the rise of American industrial power, and a new understanding of the reasons for their replacement as prime movers. Rather than a result of “inevitable” technological change, it was Americans’ social and political choices about power consumption that sealed this animal’s fate. The rise and fall of the workhorse was defined by the kinds of choices that Americans made and would continue to make—choices that emphasized individual mobility and autonomy, and assumed, above all, abundant energy resources.
Product Details
Editorial Reviews
Review
A lively parade of horses and the people who worked with them fills this rich portrait of living things functioning as machines. By focusing on horsepower and horse culture as energy technologies, Greene tells a fresh and fascinating story.
--Susan D. Jones, University of Minnesota
An exceptional book that helps us understand the full dimensions of the working horse's contributions to American society.
--Joel A. Tarr, co-author, The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the 19th Century
--Katherine C. Grier, University of Delaware
About the Author
Ann Norton Greene is a Lecturer and Administrator in History and Sociology of Science at University of Pennsylvania.
Customer Reviews
Quirky Yet Fascinating
The industrial history of the horse would not seem, at first blush, to be a fascinating subject. But in the hands of Ann Norton Greene, it is!
Greene has managed to dig about troves of information about the role of horses and other equines in 19th century America. She demonstrates their central role in economic development but also stress related social dimensions.
Give this book a try. If you have any interest in 19th century U.S. history, I think you will be pleasantly surprised.
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Posted by Horde at 11:00 AM
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