Powering Colonialism - (Intersections) by Nathan N Kapoor (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Powering Colonialism explores the history of electrification and its relationship to colonialism in Aotearoa New Zealand. Exploitative electric infrastructure, Nathan N. Kapoor argues, was not inevitable, and it was not determined by geography or a coincidence of colonization--it was by design. By the twenty-first century, hydropower provided more than half the country's electricity. Although it is now lauded as a renewable energy source, advocates for the earliest hydroelectrification schemes were more concerned with extracting greater profits and highlighting British technological superiority. Settlers, miners, and politicians saw electricity as a tool for achieving modernity, wealth, and self-sufficiency, and Aotearoa New Zealand's vast river system, once a barrier to colonial expansion, was now used to justify it. The electrification projects Kapoor examines in Powering Colonialism--from hydroelectric power for gold mining in the 1880s to Māori-led geothermal energy plants in use today--illustrate how, from the very beginning of Aotearoa New Zealand's transition to electric power, settlers designed and used electric power systems in service to their colonial mission.

Review Quotes

In this thought-provoking book, Nathan N. Kapoor deftly explores the relationship between electrification and settler colonial logics in Aotearoa New Zealand. Through five different electrification projects, Kapoor powerfully demonstrates that modern Aotearoa's electric energy systems were not determined by a path of least resistance, but rather were historically conceived, adapted, and justified in accordance with settler colonial notions of land use and value imported from across the British Empire. Powering Colonialism is a necessary read for anyone seeking to understand settler colonialism's role in shaping global energy systems.--Jessica Urwin, University of Tasmania

Nathan N. Kapoor's lively book fills a welcome gap in scholarship on electrification in Aotearoa New Zealand. It reveals the legacy of colonial development projects in shaping the country's current electricity generation system, and that there was nothing inevitable or natural about the emergence of such infrastructure. His work also points to the losses--environmentally, socially, and to the Māori--of such grandiose projects of modernity and cautions current decision-makers to be cogniscent of avoiding past mistakes.--James Beattie, Sun Yat-sen University

About the Author

Nathan N. Kapoor is assistant professor of history at Illinois State University. He is the editor of Electric Power in Victorian Britain and coeditor of volume 8 of The Correspondence of John Tyndall.