TY - JOUR TI - Flowing power: rivers, energy, and the remaking of colonial New England DO - https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-pskt-av15 PY - 2019 AB - This dissertation considers how river energy was a source of authority in colonial New England. The caloric, kinetic, and mechanical energy people derived from rivers was necessary for survival in New England’s forbidding environment. During the initial stages of colonization, both Europeans and Indians struggled to secure strategic positions on waterways because they were the only routes capable of accommodating trade from the coast to the interior. European and Native peoples came into conflict by the late seventeenth century as they overextended the resource base. Exerting dominion in the ensuing wars on New England’s frontiers was directly tied to securing strategic river spaces since the masters of these places determined the flow of communication and food for the surrounding territory. Following British military conquest, colonists aggressively dammed rivers to satisfy the energy demands of their growing population. These dams eviscerated fish runs, shunting access to waterpower away from Native Americans and yeoman farmers. The transformation of New England’s hydrology was a critical factor in the dispossession indigenous peoples before the Revolution and essential in laying the legal groundwork for the region’s industrial future. This project shows that the groups which controlled waterpower drove the changes which reorganized the environment along a Native American, colonial, and finally industrial capitalist sense of natural order. KW - Rivers KW - History KW - Water-power -- New England -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 KW - Hydrology -- New England -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 LA - English ER -