Incendiary Cities: Fire and Technology in Germany and the United States, 1840 – 1900

Over the last decades, historians of risk and disaster have demonstrated that landscapes of risk are socially constructed. Technology looms large over such histories, both causing and mitigating disasters. Despite recent publications that invite historians of technology to contribute to histories of risk, studies that employ the methods of the history of technology are still rare. My study of the design, use, and proliferation of technologies of fire response provides new insights into the relation between society, technology, and risk. It presents material evidence for how societal values find their way into risk management. This dissertation analyzes fire response and technology in Germany and the United States between 1840 and 1900. During this period, fire services became the dominant force in urban emergency response. Whereas fire departments were novelties at the beginning of the century, they were ubiquitous around 1900. This thesis shows how the history of fire and technology was driven by infrastructure provision, the desire to protect property, and urban authorities’ quest for social order. Extensive archival research in Germany and the United States reveals that technologies of fire response mirrored interests and shaped the norms that guided society’s response to risk. Fire alarm telegraph networks, for instance, privileged house owners and the police. Their design materialized authorities’ distrust of the common population and allowed for the control of urban space. The development of technologies of risk response was also guided by the interests of manufacturers. It did not simply follow a logic of the best available equipment. As the century progressed, fire services became spheres of masculinity and militarism. Municipal authorities employed firefighters to disperse riots and to break strikes. Fire departments and the technologies they employed shaped the urban space and the modern approach to risk. My dissertation shows that the primary object of fire response was not to protect the individual, but rather to ensure the smooth functioning of the networked metropolis of the nineteenth century.

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