Improvising Planned Development on the Gezira Plain, Sudan, 1900-1980


Book Description

The typical image of the Gezira Scheme, the large-scale irrigation scheme started under British colonial rule in Sudan, is of a centrally planned effort by a central colonial power controlling tenants and cotton production. However, any idea(l)s of planned irrigation and profit in Gezira had to be realized by African farmers and European officials, who both had their own agendas. Projects like Gezira are best understood in terms of continuous negotiations. This book rewrites Gezira’s history in terms of colonial control, farmers’ actions and resistance, and the broader development debate.




Improvising Planned Development on the Gezira Plain, Sudan, 1900-1980


Book Description

The typical image of the Gezira Scheme, the large-scale irrigation scheme started under British colonial rule in Sudan, is of a centrally planned effort by a central colonial power controlling tenants and cotton production. However, any idea(l)s of planned irrigation and profit in Gezira had to be realized by African farmers and European officials, who both had their own agendas. Projects like Gezira are best understood in terms of continuous negotiations. This book rewrites Gezira’s history in terms of colonial control, farmers’ actions and resistance, and the broader development debate.




Water Brings No Harm


Book Description

In Water Brings No Harm, Matthew V. Bender explores the history of community water management on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Kilimanjaro’s Chagga-speaking peoples have long managed water by employing diverse knowledge: hydrological, technological, social, cultural, and political. Since the 1850s, they have encountered groups from beyond the mountain—colonial officials, missionaries, settlers, the independent Tanzanian state, development agencies, and climate scientists—who have understood water differently. Drawing on the concept of waterscapes—a term that describes how people “see” water, and how physical water resources intersect with their own beliefs, needs, and expectations—Bender argues that water conflicts should be understood as struggles between competing forms of knowledge. Water Brings No Harm encourages readers to think about the origins and interpretation of knowledge and development in Africa and the global south. It also speaks to the current global water crisis, proposing a new model for approaching sustainable water development worldwide.




Irrigation in Early States


Book Description

Irrigation has long been of interest in the study of the past. Many early civilizations were located in river valleys, and irrigation was of great economic importance for many early states because of the key role it played in producing an agricultural surplus, which was the main source of wealth and the basis of political power for the elites who controlled it. Agricultural surplus was also necessary to maintain the very features of statehood, such as urbanism, full-time labor specialization, state institutions, and status hierarchy. Yet, the presence of large-scale or complex irrigation systems does not necessarily mean that they were under centralized control. While some early states organized the construction, operation, and maintenance of irrigation works and resolved conflicts related to water distribution, other early governments left most of the management to local farmers and controlled only the surplus. The cross-cultural studies in this volume reexamine the role of irrigation in early states. Ranging geographically from South America and the southwestern United States to North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, they describe the physical attributes and environments of early irrigation systems; various methods for empirical investigation of ancient irrigation; and irrigation's economic, sociopolitical, and cosmological dimensions. Through their interdisciplinary perspectives, the authors-all experts in the field of irrigation studies-advance both methodological and theoretical approaches to understanding irrigation in early civilizations.




Ecology and Power in the Age of Empire


Book Description

Ecology and Power in the Age of Empire provides the first wide-ranging environmental history of the heyday of European imperialism, from the late nineteenth century to the end of the colonial era. It focuses on the ecological dimensions of the explosive growth of tropical commodity production, global trade, and modern resource management-transformations that still visibly shape our world today-and how they were related to broader social, cultural, and political developments in Europe's colonies. Covering the overseas empires of all the major European powers, Corey Ross argues that tropical environments were not merely a stage on which conquest and subjugation took place, but were an essential part of the colonial project, profoundly shaping the imperial enterprise even as they were shaped by it. The story he tells is not only about the complexities of human experience, but also about people's relationship with the ecosystems in which they were themselves embedded: the soil, water, plants, and animals that were likewise a part of Europe's empire. Although it shows that imperial conquest rarely represented a sudden bout of ecological devastation, it nonetheless demonstrates that modern imperialism marked a decisive and largely negative milestone for the natural environment. By relating the expansion of modern empire, global trade, and mass consumption to the momentous ecological shifts that they entailed, this book provides a historical perspective on the vital nexus of social, political, and environmental issues that we face in the twenty-first-century world.




Eurasian Environments


Book Description

Through a series of essays, Eurasian Environments prompts us to rethink our understanding of tsarist and Soviet history by placing the human experience within the larger environmental context of flora, fauna, geology, and climate. This book is a broad look at the environmental history of Eurasia, specifically examining steppe environments, hydraulic engineering, soil and forestry, water pollution, fishing, and the interaction of the environment and disease vectors. Throughout, the authors place the history of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union in a trans-chronological, comparative context, seamlessly linking the local and the global. The chapters are rooted in the ecological and geological specificities of place and community while unveiling the broad patterns of human-nature relationships across the planet. Eurasian Environments brings together an international group scholars working on issues of tsarist/Soviet environmental history in an effort to showcase the wave of fascinating and field-changing research currently being written.




Landscape as Heritage


Book Description

This edited book provides a broad collection of current critical reflections on heritage-making processes involving landscapes, positioning itself at the intersection of landscape and heritage studies. Featuring an international range of contributions from researchers, academics, activists, and professionals, the book aims to bridge the gap between research and practice and to nourish an interdisciplinary debate spanning the fields of geography, anthropology, landscape and heritage studies, planning, conservation, and ecology. It provokes critical enquiry about the challenges between heritage-making processes and global issues, such as sustainability, economic inequalities, social cohesion, and conflict, involving voices and perspectives from different regions of the world. Case studies in Italy, Portugal, Spain, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Turkey, the UK, Columbia, Brazil, New Zealand, and Afghanistan highlight different approaches, values, and models of governance. This interdisciplinary book will appeal to researchers, academics, practitioners, and every landscape citizen interested in heritage studies, cultural landscapes, conservation, geography, and planning.




Technology and Globalisation


Book Description

This book examines the role of experts and expertise in the dynamics of globalisation since the mid-nineteenth century. It shows how engineers, scientists and other experts have acted as globalising agents, providing many of the materials and institutional means for world economic and technical integration. Focusing on the study of international connections, Technology and Globalisation illustrates how expert practices have shaped the political economies of interacting countries, entire regions and the world economy. This title brings together a range of approaches and topics across different regions, transcending nationally-bounded historical narratives. Each chapter deals with a particular topic that places expert networks at the centre of the history of globalisation. The contributors concentrate on central themes including intellectual property rights, technology transfer, tropical science, energy production, large technological projects, technical standards and colonial infrastructures. Many also consider methodological, theoretical and conceptual issues.




The Vortex


Book Description

Environmental challenges are defining the twenty-first century. To fully understand ongoing debates about our current crises—climate change, loss of biological diversity, pollution, extinction, resource woes—means revisiting their origins, in all their complexity. With this ambitious, highly original contribution to the environmental history of global modernity, Frank Uekötter considers the many ways humans have had an impact on their physical environment throughout history. Ours is not a one-way trajectory to sudden collapse, he argues, but rather death by a thousand cuts. The many paths we’ve forged to arrive in our current predicament, from agriculture to industry to infrastructure, must be considered collectively if we are to stay afloat in what Uekötter describes as a vortex: a powerful metaphor for the flow of history, capturing the momentum and the many crosscurrents that swept people and environments along. His book invites us to look at environmental challenges from multiple perspectives, including all the twists and turns that have helped to create the mess we find ourselves in. Uekötter has written a world history for an age where things are falling apart: where we know what lies ahead and are equipped with the right tools—technological and otherwise—and plenty of experience to deal with environmental challenges, but somehow fail to get our affairs in order.




Water in World History


Book Description

This book takes a thematic approach to the global history of water, covering a wide range of human interactions with water and the ways in which it carries both life and death. Water is one of the most common and valuable natural resources for the survival of individual people and civilizations. As the Anthropocene brings the unpredictable challenges of climate change, population growth, and global industrialization and urbanism, issues of water scarcity and availability will be ever-growing, and both the presence and absence of water can be sources of far-reaching disaster. The book argues that a deeper understanding of water’s history is essential for navigating these changes. The chapters discuss water and religion, floods and disasters, water engineering and waterpower, the history of drinking water, water parks and leisure, the history of underwater exploration, and the history of drought and water scarcity. Each chapter is global in scope and is told over a broad chronology, with complementary case studies. Water in World History is an accessible introduction to water history and is an ideal resource for undergraduate students in environmental history and world history courses.




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