Natural Resources, Modernity, and Security in the Progressive Era

Abstract

The essay focuses on the entanglement of natural resources, progress, and security in the United States. It argues that Progressive Era politics and culture were crucial for the process of securitization of raw materials and that geologists and natural scientists working for the Department of the Interior were the first to grasp the transformations imposed by the use of oil, thus making the case for the "control" of supply. The essay also introduces a research agenda for a project that looks at American power's environmental and human health implications by investigating oil pollution in water in the early twentieth century.