Enclosing Water: Nature and Political Economy in a Mediterranean Valley, 1796–1916
An environmental history of the Industrial Revolution, as inscribed on the Liri valley in Italy’s Central Apennines.
Aliases:
waterways
water
“Preface: Beginning with Rome”
George Perkins Marsh chose to open Man and Nature, his magnum opus, with a discussion of the environmental decline and fall of the Roman Empire…
Melinda Laituri on "Integrated Environmental History of Watersheds"
Melinda Laituri, Carson fellow from February to May 2011, talks about her research project, “Integrated Environmental History of Watersheds,” a comparative, historical-geographical analysis of the Danube and the Colorado rivers.
"'When The Well's Dry:' Water and the Promise of Sustainability in the American Southwest"
This article argues that it is more accurate to combine the categories of nature and culture, to see humans as inextricably and deeply entwined with the natural world, and to recognise all environmental issues as characterised by the contradictory relationships humans have developed with the world they inhabit.
"Sludge on Tap: Queensland's First Water Pollution Legislation, 1944–1985"
The pollution of the Herbert River with tin dredge effluent after 1944 sparks the first Act specifically to control water pollution in the Australian state of Queensland.
"Riding the Tide: Indigenous Knowledge, History and Water in a Changing Australia"
This paper discusses the contested and relational nature of indigeneity and challenges the ahistorical conceptualisation of indigenous knowledge.
"The Spectre at the Feast: The Emergence of Salt in Victoria's Irrigated Districts"
Salinity in Victoria’s irrigated districts can be understood as the result not only of environmental predisposition and technological inadequacies, but of a prevailing political philosophy which considered irrigation as a social and economic good per se.
"Saving Wild Rice: The Rise and Fall of the Nett Lake Dam"
This paper examines the interrelations of technology, environment and people by exploring the origin, design and implementation of a dam-building project intended to control water-level fluctuations and enhance the Nett Lake wild rice ecosystem at Bois Forte Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota.
"Engineering Miracles: Water Control, Conversion and the Creation of a Religious Landscape in the Medieval Ardennes"
This article demonstrates that monks were able to use their religious authority and their control of religious message to support and supplement their temporal powers. The control of water resources was deeply connected to monastic identity and the relationships between monks and the secular world.
"Accepting Father Rhine? Technological Fixes, Vigilance, and Transnational Lobbies as 'European' Strategies of Dutch Municipal Water Supplies 1900–1975"
In this article Disco describes the repertoires developed by the municipal waterworks of two large Dutch cities, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Two main repertoires are visible: 1) ‘coping’ by means of technical fixes and vigilance and 2) ‘transnational technopolitics’ aimed at institutionalising regulatory regimes to curb pollution.