Colonial Tutelage and Industrial Colonialism: reindeer husbandry and early 20th-century hydroelectric development in Sweden

The incentives for large-scale hydropower development in Sweden are usually explained in terms of the early 20th-century belief in progress and the need for energy to fuel industrialization and modernization. For reindeer husbandry, the consequences and cumulative effects of this large-scale landscape conversion, and the societal changes it entailed are still largely a story to be told as impacts and effects constantly evolve in the socio-ecological system of the reindeer grazing lands. The present article 1 1 This article is part of the multi-disciplinary research project ‘Adaptations of Natural Resource-based Communities to Climatic and Societal Changes: Sami Reindeer Herding in the Past, Present and Future’ funded by The Swedish Research Council, FORMAS, The National Space Board and Faculty of Humanities, Umeå University. investigates hydropower development in the northern parts of Sweden, and how the reindeer husbandry of the indigenous Sami people was involved, through a case study of three hydropower projects in the early 20th century. An additional perspective is illuminated: how early hydroelectric development in the reindeer grazing areas was made possible through an immersed colonialism.