Journal of Arizona History

American Lucifers is a uniquely effective piece of environmental history scholarship in the subtle expansiveness with which it considers the idea of illumination. Jeremy Zallen is to be commended for his careful research but, more important, his thoughtful consideration of what [End Page 700] could have been a fairly focused topic of light in the nineteenth century. In his hands, a topic that might have seemed somewhat esoteric becomes a dynamic story of a most unique crossing of the history of technology, material culture, and consumer markets in the nineteenth century. In each industrial sector, Zallen prioritizes the story of human labor, ranging from southern slaves in the turpentine industry to the whalers pursuing the leviathan.

Compounding American Lucifers's effectiveness, Zallen resists connecting his story to larger relevant themes such as energy transitions or technological transfer—these he leaves for readers to make. Instead, he connects a free-standing narrative that should become an enduring book used to understand nineteenth-century industrialization through a basic human desire for available and safe forms of illumination. His effort to explore "radical changes in geographies bringing lights to life" humanizes this technological tale (p. 5). In doing so, he exposes that the story of light is not just a progressive, steady move of innovation toward electricity. Zallen writes:

Any honest rendering of the history of light must show how the good and the bad produced each other. Only through engaging with such contradictions can we begin to challenge the enduring hold heroic stories of light and progress have had on popular discourse

(p. 8).

As he later describes his purpose, Zallen writes: "This is how Americans blinded themselves with light, and why it's still so difficult to see" (p. 256).

In an approach similar to Richard White's consideration of the Columbia River in his seminal Organic Machine (1995), Zallen deconstructs the effort to negotiate and integrate flexible forms of making light into American life in the nineteenth century. The center of that story is a remarkable chapter on the technology of a match—a technology so basic that it has been largely overlooked by historians of energy, fire, light, and really of human life. American Lucifers uses a history of technology approach to trace the match's growing ubiquity. Through its portability and flexibility, the match richly exemplifies larger changes in American consumerism at the end of the nineteenth century.

From this point of origination, flames could be generated through a number of commodities, which Zallen considers in chronological order as each becomes viable on the growing market to provide flexible, ubiquitous light. Whale oil, camphene, turpentine, coal gas, lard oil, and petroleum are each considered with a deft craft for storytelling and the use of in-depth primary source research. While each chapter is [End Page 701] strong, the story of the development of phosphorus and the "Lucifer Match" will stand out to readers. In his chapter on "Lucifer Matches and the Global Violence of Phosphorus," Zallen achieves that enviable historical task of surprising his reader. While the progression of commodities providing illumination has been covered in other histories, the idea of the match—and particularly its acquisition from guano supplies to the ubiquitous portability with which it informs every type of illumination—is new. In addition to unpacking this remarkable story, Zallen's exploration of the match leads to a consideration of the technology's larger cultural and social impacts, including the danger of fire: "The violent ecology of phosphorus provides real opportunities for even the most powerless, but it was a slippery power that might turn in its purported owner's hand, and was ever escaping control" (p. 173). In such a story, American Lucifers creates an excellent case study to be used with undergraduates for any lecturer on nineteenth-century history and makes itself a must-read for historians.

In the end, the success of American Lucifers derives most from Zallen's own craftmanship. He is a superb writer at the micro-level but also in his larger conception of the entire book. In summing up his narrative, Zallen writes:

The coincidences of emancipation, warfare, and Oil Creek's serendipitous ascent on the eve of secession made it possible to misunderstand the relationship between petroleum and providence. Later, it allowed people to convince themselves that American lucifers had always been on the road to transcendence from toil, a road that had merely stopped at the waystation of kerosene on its way to electricity. But the first century of the industrialization of light was at least as much a story of increasing human and animal unfreedom as it was an escape from labor

(p. 255).

Through this narrative, Zallen places lighting technology as a critical part of nineteenth-century industrialization. In sum, American Lucifers is an enjoyable read for anyone interested in history and adds crucial insight and information to scholars of energy and everyday nineteenth-century life. [End Page 702]