Electrifying Finland: The Transfer of a New Technology into a Late Industrialising Economy by Timo Myllyntaus

Abstract

438 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE efforts, making new technological advances was of less importance to the HEPC than finding ways to shoulder the cost of and gain political support for extending its markets to remote hamlets and farms. Power at Cost concentrates far more on the political and economic aspects of HEPC’s policy-making process than it does on examining the tech­ nology that enabled Ontario Hydro to lead the way in North American rural electrification. Gail Evans Dr. Evans teaches environmental history at Iowa State University and pursues research on United States-Canadian water policy topics. Her recent article, “Storm over Niagara: A Catalyst in Reshaping Government in the United States and Canada during the Progressive Era,” appeared in Natural Resources Journal 32, no. 1 (Winter 1992). Electrifying Finland: The Transfer of a New Technology into a Late Industrialising Economy. By Timo Myllyntaus. Basingstoke, Hamp­ shire: Macmillan, 1991. Pp. xvi + 407; figures, tables, notes, appen­ dix, bibliography, index. $50.00. Finland’s transformation from a backward agricultural country in 1870 to a fully industrialized nation a century later is an important story that does not follow a familiar script. Timo Myllyntaus’s ambitious book attacks theories of technology transfer that assert the efficiency of relying on foreign investments, imports of foreign machinery and equipment, and acquisition of turnkey plants and licenses. Such transfers are rapid, but they may leave a nation permanently dependent on foreign corporations and incapable of self-sustained development. Myllyntaus argues that the rapid transfer of electrical technologies to Finland was accomplished primarily through the active role of the host nation. In the 1870s and 1880s local entrepreneurs and technicians quickly grasped commercial applications of electrical systems, garnering information from foreign education, international exhibitions, and the technical press. An Edison lighting system was installed in Tampere’s Finlayson textile works even before the famous Pearl Street Station went into service in New York, and as early as 1889 a Finnish company was “the biggest supplier of electrical equipment in the country” (p. 33). While early success was soon tempered by foreign competition, Finland never lost its local initiative. Why not? Myllyntaus’s explana­ tion stresses internal sociopolitical factors: high literacy, energetic entrepreneurs, investment in technical education, little competition from the undeveloped gas industry, widespread popular support for “buy Finnish goods” campaigns, and passage of laws prohibiting foreigners from owning power plants or distribution lines. Because Finland possessed sites for hydroelectric power and a vigorous TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 439 wood-products industry that generated power by burning sawdust, it was virtually independent of foreign energy sources. As this list indicates, Myllyntaus stresses the centrality of nontechnical factors in effecting the transfer of electrical systems to Finland. The volume is divided into three large sections, framed by three short chapters of only ten pages each. After the brief introduction, 130 pages outline Finnish electrification from the formative years until 1977, when the first atomic plant went on line. This section and the seventy-page discussion of energy production succeed better than the fifty-page overview of consumption in industry, transport, agri­ culture, and households, with an aside on price competition with other energy sources. While structurally clear, this organization retraces a century of Finnish history three times, with some unavoid­ able repetition, followed by a ten-page chapter on “the interaction of electricity and the economy.” Throughout, there are frequent com­ parisons with leading industrial nations, with considerably less atten­ tion to the recent experience of Third World countries. These comparisons are often presented in excellent charts and figures. However, comparing Helsinki to the entire United States (p. 255) makes little sense when city statistics are available. Repeatedly com­ paring nations in terms of electricity production per capita (pp. 9, 97, 225) is an application of a dubious measure of progress, especially when the lion’s share in Finland was used by heavy industry. In the 1980s Japan consumed half as much total energy per capita as East Germany, but this statistic proves little about quality of life, industrial efficiency, or the strength of either economy. The publisher failed to correct some infelicities of style and the occasional use of an inappropriate word that...