Showing papers in "Water History in 2014"

“Nkrumah’s Baby”: the Akosombo Dam and the dream of development in Ghana, 1952–1966

Abstract: The Akosombo Dam across the Volta River in Ghana remains at the center of debates and imaginations about nationhood, modernity, and development. Originally designed in the 1920s to serve the British metropole, the Volta River Project was reshaped by the country’s founding leader Kwame Nkrumah in the 1950s. The revised project included a hydroelectric dam, an aluminum smelter to process Ghanaian mined bauxite, new cities, a deep sea harbor, and other infrastructural investments. The project became central to a modernization program that promised rapid industrialization and reducing the country’s dependence on cocoa exports. Public discourses increasingly identified the project with Nkrumah and his dream of development. In the course of its planning and construction, the Akosombo Dam became a manifestation of the personalization of state politics that engaged with international donors, multinational companies, foreign governments, and local expectations. Based on multi-sited archival and oral research, the article explores how public, government, and expert discourses about the Volta project produced different temporalities of an industrialized future that would transform the country’s rural past and create new cities, factories, and infrastructures during the 1950s and 1960s. The Volta scheme is an excellent prism to reconstruct how a large dam became not just the engine for the imagined transformation of Ghana during Africa’s era of decolonization but also a vehicle for multiple actors with competing agendas within the Cold War context. In this article, I unpack these interventions that led to a series of tensions and paradoxes. Analyzing the Volta scheme’s debates and public spectacles provides an account about the interplay between development aspirations and possibility, dreams and reality.

A harbour–canal at Portus: a geoarchaeological approach to the Canale Romano: Tiber delta, Italy

Abstract: This paper presents a detailed description of the sediments trapped by the Canale Romano in the Imperial harbour complex of Portus (Rome). The study confirms the hypothesis of a Roman canal (active during the early 2nd century ad and the 3rd/5th century ad) with a maximum water-depth between 4.36 and 7.37 m. The function of this canal as a harbour seems to particularly fit with the data available. This study follows a multidisciplinary approach. It combines all previous data available on the Canale Romano (geophysical surveys, archaeological and historical data) and provides a new palaeoenvironmental dataset in order to draw a more complete overview about its history. Three cores drilled in the Canale Romano are analyzed using sedimentological data, CM diagram and bioindicators, 14C and archaeological data. Four main sedimentation phases were identified: (1) Pre-canal deposits; (2) relatively quiet fluvial environment deposits; (3) flood sediments inputs; and (4) fine sediment infill after the cut-off of the canal. In the discussion, the paper attempts to put this stratigraphic sequence into context of the reorganization of the harbour of Imperial Rome during the reign of Trajan (early 2nd century ad) and its subsequent evolution.

“We are the ones who made this dam ‘High’!” A builders’ history of the Aswan High Dam

Abstract: This article explores a workers’ history of the Aswan High Dam. The workers who built the Dam refer to themselves as builders—a title that includes workers, technicians and engineers, laden with the pride of having worked on the Dam and the kind of classless society it promised to create. Builders demanded that I understand the ‘language of the Dam’ in order to be able to grasp its experience. The language of the Dam included idioms that encapsulated the glory of the Dam building experience as well as bitter experiences that rupture that glory completely. The building of the Aswan High Dam becomes metaphoric for the nation building process of the time, drenched in rhetoric and the promise of an ideal society, whilst equally exposed to its failures. I explore these contradictory experiences and argue that forms of intimate language such as idioms, sayings and poetry that emanate from a communal experience at a particular point in time reveal the politics, emotions and intricacies of that experience in a way that a constructed narrative of the experience may not. Thus, I unravel the politics of Dam building through the politics of a promised future, in a contradictory present; all now a past that workers grapple with as they compare a dream they made many sacrifices for, to a reality they are living in.

The temporal politics of big dams in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia : by way of an introduction

Abstract: Since the first connection of electric generators to dams, pioneered on sites in England and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century, dams have steadily increased in size and importance as a source of electricity. They have also continued to fulfil their ageold functions such as facilitating controllable water reservoirs for irrigation or providing water power for mills. Hydropower now accounts for about 2.3 % of global electricity production, with the Asia–Pacific region today investing particularly heavily in new dam projects (IEA 2013:6). The building of large hydro-electric dams is often associated with the post-war high modernist moment. But such projects have in fact never ceased to proliferate, particularly in the global South. Rising concern for carbon-low forms of energy production, alongside the need to satisfy the increasing energy demand of growing populations have recently made large dam projects attractive (again) to governments as diverse as Turkey (Evren, this issue) or Tajikistan (Suyarkulova, this issue), in some instances realizing plans that were first drawn up in the 1920s (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan). Projects such as the Itaipu Dam on the Brazil/Paraguay border, the Guri Dam in Venezuela or the Chinese Three Gorges Dam (Le Mentec, this issue) stand out as particularly ambitious new projects. Dams have frequently been regarded as signs of human ingenuity, symbols of progress and ‘temples’ of the modern nation-state—as Nehru famously put it when inaugurating the Bhakra Nangal dam in 1954 (McCully 2001, pp. 1–2). On the other hand, displaced populations, environmental activists, tax payers and creditors have cast serious

The rise and decline of an anti-dam campaign: Yusufeli Dam project and the temporal politics of development

Abstract: This article discusses the temporalities of development and local politics in the context of the Yusufeli Dam project in Artvin, Turkey Once finished, the project will lead to the submergence of the Yusufeli town center and 19 villages, the relocation of at least 20,000 people and the destruction of all agricultural land The threat of destruction and eviction has in the past led to the mobilization of the residents of Yusufeli to establish alliances with international NGOs which successfully prevented the start of the project for more than a decade More recently however, the earlier activist energy in the town gradually fizzled out to give way to the rise of bargaining with the state as the dominant form of political action To be able to understand this shift from collective opposition to negotiation, I propose to study the spatio-temporal changes and sensibilities that dam planning, finance and construction elicit and become entangled with If development materializes partly through the desires and emotional attachments of its target populations, I argue, then material and moral engagements of the local residents with past, present and future condition their political responses

The Fossa Corbulonis between the Rhine and Meuse estuaries in the Western Netherlands

Abstract: A few classical sources mention the construction of a canal by the Roman general Corbulo between the estuaries of the rivers Rhine and Meuse in the Netherlands around 50 AD; the Fossa Corbulonis. The location of this feature has been subject to speculation for a long time, but in recent years, various archaeological investigations have established the presence of a canal just behind the beach barrier, roughly between the current towns of Leiden and Naaldwijk. Furthermore, dendrochronological and C14 dates support the identification of this canal as the canal dug under orders of general Corbulo. The various research campaigns have shown that the canal is only partially artificial. Certain parts of its course have been established by connecting existing waterways, thus negating the need for manual labour. Roughly in the middle of the trajectory, indirect evidence for the presence of a dam and a possible portage have been found, indicating an understanding of water management on the part of the Romans.

Exportable engineering expertise for ‘Development’: a story of large dams in post independence India

Abstract: Unlike any other technological artifact, large dams are unique stamps of human technological superiority over nature. Large dams however, have been analysed and critiqued in detail from various angles. Despite their seemingly apolitical nature, large dams are wired politically. Investigating the process of their assembly reveals a whole gamut of ideas—modern water, expert control and national space—that are stitched together to yield a hydraulic bureaucracy. In my paper, I draw upon engineering narratives to understand the rationale for technology-transfer in an overtly apolitical fashion. Ideas about ‘modern water’ and technology formed a template through which the hydrocracy—which in India took the form of the Central Water Commission—thought through, discussed and justified technological interventions. This seemingly stable template became a kind of bedrock for post independence engineering narratives for greater, scaled up technological interventions on riverine landscapes. By fixing the nation state as the object of development, the contours of the nation state were established whilst simultaneously casting it as an independent, self-sufficient unit. By portraying the nation state as one distinct freestanding unit, India could be represented as an empirical object. Its socio-political and economic processes could be represented as internal functions that were far removed from other socio-political forces outside the system. Listening closely to engineers, this paper will seek to bring to the fore the ways and means through institutional power is made and realised.

‘Majuli in Peril’: Challenging the received wisdom on flood control in Brahmaputra River Basin, Assam (1940–2000)

Abstract: This paper seeks to provide a framework to understand the politics of flood control and representation of deluge ‘narrative’ by looking at Majuli—one of the largest freshwater river islands in the world, located in the upper Brahmaputra valley in Assam. Policy makers and state planner present simplistic explanation of flood and its resultant impact on the island habitable space, as a ‘techno-managerial’ crisis needing policy redemption through ‘experts’ intervention. I present the phenomenon of flooding as a ‘techno-political’ problem and examine the politics of knowledge production. The paper thus challenges the received wisdom on ecological change promoted by institutions who have been working to save the island from two perceived threats—floods and bank erosion. Through a synoptic survey on state measures to control flood in the Brahamapura River Basin since the 1950s, I will show how the ‘statist ecological discourse’ based on equilibrium and linear models underlined by a ‘command and control’ discourse have dominated policy making on flood mitigation- devaluing other perspectives of ecological change. These new revisionist directions in ecology and science policy discourse bring important insights to understand the phenomena of floods from the multiple pathways of an ecological change paradigm and the ways they are mitigated and perceived.

Between national idea and international conflict: the Roghun HHP as an anti-colonial endeavor, body of the nation, and national wealth

Abstract: This contribution examines the nationalist politics and international controversy surrounding the construction plans for Roghun dam and hydropower station in post-Soviet Tajikistan. Conceived in 1970s as part of the Soviet ‘hydraulic mission’, this project has taken on new meanings in the second decade after Central Asian states acquired their sovereignty. This grandiose undertaking has become the ‘symbol of the nation’ and a ‘national idea’ in Tajikistan, reflecting popular hopes for dignified living and bolstering the ruling regime’s claim to power. Meanwhile, the neighbouring Uzbekistan dismisses the project as ‘silly’ and objects to it on environmental, economic and safety grounds, water becomes simultaneously an economic, social, physical, metaphysical and cultural resource. While the clashing visions of the upstream and downstream state are deeply rooted in the local histories and political contexts, the competing doctrines of water use reflect the global trends and debates regarding proper use of transboundary water resources, commodification of water and fundamental human right to access to water including for food production. Both countries gained independence under the conditions of globalization. Tajikistani society experienced a civil war, which has been described as a ‘complex crisis of decolonization’ (Heathershaw, Post-conflict Tajikistan: the politics of peace building and the emergence of legitimate order, 2009) in the first decade of its existence as a sovereign state. The resurrection of Roghun project not only serves the economic and political interests of Tajik ruling elite, it has also become a popular anti-colonial undertaking—this time overcoming dependence on a more powerful neighbor—Uzbekistan.

(Inter)Nationalist Rivers?: cooperative development in David Lilienthal's plan for the Indus Basin, 1951

Abstract: Sharing water resources in the Indus Basin, split between India and Pakistan in 1947, helped sour relations between these hostile neighbours until the signing of the Indus Waters Treaty in 1960. This article explores a radical early intervention into the dispute. David E Lilienthal, an American development expert, published a plan for trans-border cooperative development in 1951. He used a discourse of technocratic internationalism to privilege shared expertise over political difference. His proposal, I argue, tried to align politics in the Indus Basin with a constructed notion of the basin itself as a “natural” entity, contrasted with the political boundaries that divided India from Pakistan. I show how Lilienthal’s appeal to engineers to effect a “scale jump”, shifting the waters dispute from a nationalist to an internationalist plane, reinforced an existing reliance in South Asia on technocratic water management. While subsequent negotiations dropped his proposal for cooperative development, his novel use of the idea of engineering to produce the basin as a depoliticised space helped to frame the terms of the debate. The paper is based on material from diplomatic archives in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Introduction to the special issue: Roman canals studies—main research aims

Abstract: This special issue of Water History is the first of a set of two volumes dedicated to canals and their evolution through time These two publications derive from a workshop organised at the Maison de l’Orient et de la Mediterranee in Lyon (France) under the sponsorship of the University of Lyon 2 and the CNRS, on the 23rd and 24th of May 2012, entitled ‘‘Diverting water Canals through time: a technological answer to socio-environmental variability’’ The themes of the workshop focused on ‘‘canals’’ and addressed the question of long-term interactions between nature and society, as well as the organisation and regulation of hydrologic and anthropic systems through time This first volume focuses on a socio-cultural context: the ancient Roman world, ie an archetypical hydraulic society The case studies developed are related to canals in environments characterized by complex interactions at different spatial and temporal scales (deltaic area, alluvial plain or mountains) They do not include urban water systems as the latter are too specific (water supply of the cities by aqueducts or the drain of waste water by sewers) The second volume will be structured around the issue of water management in

Ancient canals in the valley of Bourgoin-La Verpillière (France, Isère): morphological and geoarchaeological studies of irrigation systems from the Iron Age to the Early Middle Ages (8th century bc –6th century ad )

Abstract: Crop marks of long canals diverted from ancient rivers were identified on aerial photographs in the valley of Bourgoin-la Verpilliere, in the northern part of the Isere department. The environmental multidisciplinary study of the sedimentary fill of these canals sheds light on their function and chronology of use between the Iron Age and the Early Middle Ages (8th century bc–6th century ad). We interpret these hydraulic structures between 0.4 and 2 m deep, as part of large gravity irrigation systems for watering meadows, and even for growing specific crops in the marshes during the Roman period. These findings shed new light on the antiquity of irrigation practices in temperate climate zones and demonstrate the artificialization of wetlands since the Protohistory, based on a sophisticated engineering technology. These new data show that hydraulic systems were integrated into the Iron Age agricultural system several centuries before the Roman Conquest of the Transalpine Gaul in the end of the 2nd century bc.

Water history facets of landscape change in Israel/Palestine 1920–1970: a question of scale and periodization

Abstract: The history of water is closely intertwined with the history of landscape change, particularly in rural settings. These landscape changes, in turn, have profound impacts on the water resources. The landscape of Israel/Palestine has been transformed dramatically in the twentieth century. This transformation involved the widespread abstraction of water from their natural basins. Yet, studies of the modern history of Israel/Palestine have tended to separate the settlement and water histories. Here we examine the inter-relations between water resources and landscape change in Israel/Palestine between 1920 and 1970. In three case studies, selected to represent the different stages of water system development in this era, the relationships between landscape change and water resource development were examined. These allow us to critically analyze the scale and periodization at which previous studies were conducted, suggesting that a more nuanced area-sensitive periodization is called for when water and landscape inter-relations are analyzed.

The canal system and Tiber delta at Portus. Assessing the nature of man-made waterways and their relationship with the natural environment

Abstract: Results of the ongoing archaeological survey and excavations at Portus and the surrounding hinterland of the Tiber delta have revealed a system of large artificial canals and associated structures relating to the Imperial and Late Antique port, and associated agrarian practice and secondary industries practiced in the delta area. These man-made features have demonstrable links to the geomorphology of the Tiber delta, with canals making use of the dune cordons and variations in the sediments across the wetland. The methodology used to map the archaeological and geomorphological features in the study area has included topographic survey, geophysical survey, using magnetometry, and Ground Penetrating Radar, and analysis of air photographic evidence together with other sources of data including satellite imagery. To these non-intrusive techniques have been added borehole data collected by colleagues as part of the Portus Project (www.portusproject.org), and evidence for canal and waterfront construction relating to excavation at the site of Portus. This paper presents a detailed methodology of the fieldwork to date, and assesses some of the preliminary results of the archaeological survey, focusing on evidence for the system of large canals linking the port with the river Tiber, and the Tiber to the coast. It also focuses upon a reassessment of some of the canal features by comparing coring evidence collected during the excavation seasons at Portus by colleagues at the CNRS-Lyon with results of the geophysical survey. The paper also advances possible avenues for future investigation and research, and draws upon the results of the survey to provide an overview of evidence for the organization of land in the delta and wetland surrounding the port complex, including a system of smaller canals and land divisions.

Water networks of Roman gold mines of Northwestern Iberian Peninsula

Abstract: This paper presents a synthesis of the work done by the research group Social Structure and Territory—Landscape Archaeology (Institute of History, CSIC) in North Western Spain, for which the study and analysis of hydraulic networks related to Roman mining exploitation has been a fundamental part. The gold-bearing areas of the Iberian Peninsula’s North West had a great importance for the Roman Empire, which integrates their exploitation in the overall control of the territory from the very beginning of the 1st century AD. To ensure the essential supply of water for the whole of the mining process was one of the main axes of the reorganization of the provincial territories. The aim of this paper is to present both the historical context of these water networks and the methodology and approach of our work, in which the fieldwork and network analysis is an important research aim. We will do this by using the example of the Roman gold mines of the Sierra de Francia region where an extensive and very well preserved hydraulic system has been recorded and analysed. Our team has gathered archaeological evidence for the study of water networks and mining exploitation and their incidence on the revaluation of natural resources in the region.

The Three Gorges Dam and the demiurges: the story of a failed contemporary myth elaboration in China

Abstract: This article analyses the elaboration and modes of diffusion of official narratives about the past and the present following the construction of the Chinese Three Gorges Dam (1993–2008). After the vote on the Three Gorges Project, alongside a myth of progress, a narrative relying upon ancient legends linking the Dam to the past was widely transmitted by the official discourse. The aim of this paper is to analyse this narrative, and in particular the parallel developed between the Dam’s construction and the myth of Yu the Great, a famous hero-demiurge. The first two parts of the article are dedicated to the main facets of Yu’s myth associated with the Dam: the political control brought by successful water management and the demiurgic action of reshaping the territory. The contemporary uses of songs, poems, metaphors, statue settings, tourist sites, temples, and public engravings are emphasized. The last part of the essay introduces a shift in the government discourse and focuses on the population’s reactions to the official narrative. It presents the lack of efficiency of the official narrative and the cultural tools (such as rumors and legends) mobilized by the people to propose their own interpretation of the Dam. The conclusion reflects on issues related to the use of the past in the context of big construction works: How efficient are myths and legends in conveying positive or negative interpretations of such structures? Can these tools be involved in processes of resilience? This work relies on qualitative long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Wuhan (Hubei), Chengdu (Sichuan) and the Three Gorges Area (Chongqing) between 2002 and 2014. The data also includes printed and electronic (internet) media.

Creating dry land in S.E. Lindsey (Lincolnshire, England) before ad 1550

Abstract: A rise in sea-level in late Roman times created a large tidal wetland embayment which subsequently was subject to seaward invasion by freshwater fen These ecosystems were colonized by Germanic and Danish immigrants and a gradual conversion to dry land was achieved, which was continued by later medieval communities, which included monasteries A major technique was the bank, dividing salt-marsh and fen into compartments These banks were used to contain both the sea and freshwater fen A typical parish is used to exemplify these processes and to attempt to assign dates to the phases now visible in the landscape The result is a set of dryland environments which nevertheless have historically been defined by water and which still rely on effective pumping to maintain their status Comparison with the eastern shores of the North Sea is desirable though it is freely admitted that work in this area is not yet at the detailed level of reconstruction possible in some of the Low Countries

“Mountain dream” or the “submergence of fine scenery”? Japanese contestations over the Kurobe Number Four Dam, 1920–1970

Abstract: This article explores the often-contentious discussions surrounding the construction of Japan’s largest concrete arch dam, the Kurobe Number Four (Kuroyon), during the middle twentieth century. It investigates this history at varying spatial scales, especially the local and national, to show how synergies among supporters and opponents at these scales could crucially affect the pace and scope of damming along the Kurobe River in the Central Japan Alps. Prior to World War II, local and national-level opponents employed a modern language of scenic preservation and succeeded in forcing dam builders to scale down and relocate their projects away from key scenic spots in the Kurobe River Gorge. After the war, however, dam opponents were unsuccessful in halting the Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO) as it set out to construct the 186-meter Number Four Dam in the heart of Chūbu Sangaku National Park. National-level officials, politicians, big businesses, regional boosters, and local tourism promoters all pressed for rapid economic growth and electrification through the “comprehensive development” of Japan’s river valleys after 1945. Within such a policy environment geared toward national reconstruction and “modernization,” KEPCO divided and appeased local and national-level opponents, in large part by pledging to contribute to the development of alpine tourism. An epilogue details the construction of the Number Four Dam, how the Japanese mass media covered the event, and the ultimate impacts of the project as it tamed the once-rapid flows of the Kurobe River.

Water control in South Asia: an introduction

Abstract: Water control in South Asia has long been dominated by the colonial imagination To be sure, post-Independence India was defined as much by Nehruvian development politics as by anything else; one need but watch the opening scenes of Mehboob Khan’s 1957 film Mother India to see just how deeply the idea of development had penetrated the popular imagination But Nehruvian progress was rooted in the quantifiable: kilowatts of power generation, kilometers of rail, cubic meters of water flow-through And this quantification of development was rooted very firmly in the colonial legacy of India The ideology of empire demanded a ‘scientific’ approach to knowledge that valued ‘‘accuracy over intimacy [and] instruments over informants’’ (Mitchell 2009, p 153) Local knowledge situated within a particular socio-environmental context gained and passed down over some undetermined passage of time—what James C Scott (1998) termed mētis—was a little suspect at the very least Any such knowledge not given by informants ‘‘of uncommon genius and knowledge’’ or ‘‘much superior to those with whom one usually meets in India’’ would be deemed wholly unreliable, and even the best such informants required verification (Edney 1999, pp 81–82) This paradigm has been slow to change despite the often savage critiques of development that have appeared since the 1980s Why, James Ferguson (1990) would have us ask, does the discourse of ‘development’ seemingly and so often exclude both academic discourse and common sense? That the development paradigm has been traditionally not just rooted in but rooted to colonial ideas of progress should be our first clue Though never expressed so blatantly, the paradigm of progress in the colonies more closely resembled ‘trickle down’ than it ever did ‘build up’ As far as the British were concerned, real knowledge—about a people, about a place, about a process—came from the outside and only insofar as was deemed needful This same lantern was used to cast light on water resource development in the years following the decolonization of South Asia

Drainage galleries in the Iberian Peninsula during the Islamic period

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to outline the research on drainage galleries in the Iberian Peninsula from an archaeological point of view, specifically in relation to the Islamic period. The literature review section begins by addressing some theoretical questions regarding the importance of studying each drainage gallery as part of a hydraulic system, which is additionally composed by the peasants and the organisation of production. A large portion of this paper is then dedicated to the definition and classification of the most common typologies of drainage gallery. Following this, the relation between the different typologies of drainage gallery and the environment in which they are inserted is examined. I next consider the spread and diffusion of this technique across the Iberian Peninsula and contrast my findings to previous theories on the role of Romans in this process. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of the weaknesses in this field and stress the significance of drainage galleries to both Iberian cultural heritage and sustainable development.

Human eddies and flows: the mid-century floods of Albuquerque

Abstract: Recent work suggests that local water governance is in part a function of histories of human responses to water crises. In this article, a specific example is described to develop that argument, namely, the effort to control flooding caused by urban development in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the 1950s and 1960s. The description of this single case will show contingencies in the production of conflict, the importance of population worldview in that conflict, and the way that different levels of governance scale collapse into a single local event. Authors outline a dynamic crisis-driven model to generalize the New Mexico case for future comparative analysis.

Policy legends and water policy in the Union Territory of Puducherry

Abstract: When the French ceded their Indian colonies to the Republic of India in 1954 they left in place a system of waterworks and flood mitigation strategies that had antecedents traceable to India’s medieval period. Faced with the process of integration into the Indian democracy the new administration of what was to become the Union Territory of Pondicherry let languish many of the infrastructural improvements built by the former French colonial government. Over the course of the following half century a series of narratives developed within the administration surrounding French water control and flood mitigation mechanisms. Rooted in a flawed understanding of the colonial history of flood control in the French territories of India these beliefs ossified and have negatively shaped development aimed at flood mitigation and resilience across the post-colonial Union Territory of Puducherry. This paper uses a category defined by Gary Alan Fine and Barry O’Neill to explore how “policy legends” about French water control infrastructures shaped both popular and official understanding of flood vulnerability in the administrative unit made up of the former French territories of India.

Harris LM, Jacqueline A. Goldin and Christopher Sneddon (eds.): Contemporary water governance in the global south; scarcity, marketization and participation

Abstract: The book Contemporary Water Governance in the Global South discusses hegemonic concepts in water management. Hegemonic concepts are described as ideas that become dominant within society and mould how individuals and groups perceive and interpret certain phenomena. The book focuses on three such concepts: scarcity/crisis, privatization/ markets and participation. While not necessarily wrong, these concepts would oversimplify matters. They would treat water exclusively as a physical substance, neglect variety in space and time, and downplay ethical and power issues. Central questions that the book sets out to explore are what these concepts mean specifically; whose interests they serve; how they travel from the global to the local level or perhaps in the opposite direction; how they are applied in local practice and to what effect; and what the alternatives for these concepts are. The book consists of a relatively large number of introductory chapters; nine case study chapters; six reflections by activists or academics; and a concluding chapter. And all within 258 pages (excluding table of contents, index, etc.). At first sight the book looks very interesting. It promises to discuss how power is exercised through ideas and how ideas influence water management. This should be of interest to the readers of Water History. Moreover, some of the contributions have an explicit historical character, such as chapter 7, on the emergence of a hydraulic bureaucracy in Matabeleland, Zimbabwe, between 1964 and 1972, and chapter 12, on ‘‘private water’’ in Zambia from 1930 to the present. Unfortunately, the book does not deliver fully on its promise. Take for example chapter 12 on Zambia. In this chapter, Hilary Waters discusses malaria control by the copper mines in the 1930s and decision-making on the Kariba hydropower dam in the 1950s. In both cases ‘‘objective’’ scientific expertise was used to serve political ends—the health of the Europeans settlers and the interests of Southern Rhodesia. In addition, Waters discusses the more recent privatization of drinking water supply. She suggests that the main beneficiaries of the privatization process are the mines because neoliberal privatization might eliminate cross-subsidies from companies and,

Water law in British-ruled Palestine

Abstract: This article surveys the water law of Palestine under British rule, identifying the legal norms governing the use of water and explaining some of the factors shaping the development of this area of the law. It argues that despite their lack of official lawmaking power, Arabs and Jews succeeded in decisively shaping the course taken by water law in this period. After surveying the Ottoman water law in force when the British took power in 1917, the article examines influential court decisions in a case brought by the Arab residents of the village Artas against government expropriation of water, and explains the significance of this litigation for the subsequent development of Palestine’s water law. It then discusses British initiatives meant to reform water law and subject the country’s water to state control, plans frustrated by the opposition of Zionist groups fearful of increased government regulation. It closes by noting that water law was made in this colonial context neither by imposition from above nor by resistance from below, but by intervention of subject peoples at the highest levels of official lawmaking.