CARBON TECHNOCRACY

An exploration of the effects of intensive coal mining on the evolution of East Asian energy systems.

In his debut book, Seow, a historian and assistant professor at Harvard University, examines the effects of fossil fuel energy on global Chinese and Japanese markets in the early to mid-20th century. His analysis of Japan’s modern industrialization centers specifically on a “colossal open pit” in Fushun, China—a locale the author repeatedly visited—which was the former site of East Asia’s largest coal-mining operation. His extensive research probes the rise of fossil fuel use in East Asia and globally, showing how it was used to realize industrialization goals; he also argues that it was used as a means to strengthen socialist states. Seow sees the steep increase in coal-mining operations as related to a trio of modern industrialization objectives: the technological taming of nature, the mechanization of labor, and the voracious pursuit of production. He also assesses why the fossil fuel transition occurred and how our increasing dependency on this type of energy comes with numerous societal and environmental ramifications, including regional ecological deterioration and terrible labor conditions. Seow builds his thesis with extensive source materials, including illustrations, travelogues, coal miners’ oral histories, mining engineers’ testimonials, and company records. Impressive in scope, the book begins in 1927 and concludes with Seow’s analysis in the 1960s at the height of Communist China’s Great Leap Forward, in which industrial and economic stimulation came at the expense of the health, safety, and longevity of citizens. Overall, Seow’s prose is accessible and his research soundly delivered. However, the book is not a casual read; although it’s immensely informative and comprehensive, it’s essentially an academic text, dense with statistical data, cultural and geopolitical analysis, historical examination, and industry analysis. Still, the book is not only an erudite history, but also—perhaps most critically—an urgent call for environmental intervention, as when Seow laments that “unless radical transformations take place,” his offspring’s generation will inherit the “world that carbon made, so deeply despoiled and unjust.”  

An ambitious, scholarly study of the societal complications of energy extraction.