Regenerating Nature: A British Vision for the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers

• In Event: Empires of Knowledge: Environments Between the Colony and the Globe

Abstract

The British occupation of Mesopotamia at the close of the First World War significantly expanded the British Empire's possessions in southwestern Asia. It also inaugurated four decades of British control along the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. At war’s end, the British faced the question of how to manage the rivers for navigation, agriculture, and most importantly, the extension of British power in the region. Scientific, religious, economic, and political arguments engaged a broad network of imperial engineers, military experts, and political officers in an empire-spanning discussion of what was to be done about the rivers. In that process, particular ways of seeing, understanding, and organizing Iraq’s environment came into being. Flood control and agricultural technologies and infrastructures also played a role. These “advancements” molded the river physically while also demonstrating the growing power of scientific and industrial networks to shape a place according to imperial design.

Author

• Dale Stahl, University of Colorado Denver