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The level of the sea is a trope of environmental discourse, used to symbolise current and future changes to the natural framework that surrounds us. These modifications are inherently global and promise to have revolutionary impacts. The impact of the determination of different levels of the sea has a history that spans however a much longer period than that covered by the actual awareness of the role of humans in environmental change. Both are in fact part of a complex history that is rooted in nineteenth-century globalization of science and technology.
Being mere approximations of a surface level, actual mean sea-levels vary substantially from one coast to the other. Moreover different levels of the sea have historically developed in diverse national and local settings to mark geodetical vertical datums. How this process was set in a debate happening between the global and the local dimension is evident when looking at such diverse nineteenth century debates as those about the planning of the Suez and Panama canals, scientific research about coastal erosion and subsidence, and, in general, the necessity of determining vertical datums in colonial settings, such as for example in India for the aim of developing its railway infrastructure.
The need to understand oceanic mechanics and standardize the reference system played a major role in all these tasks and affected the way interstitial coastal environments were understood, managed, and planned. In this talk I plan to connect the theoretical debate about the mean sea-level with exemplary case studies about colonial infrastructural projects regarding both transportation and the safeguard of the coast. In doing this I expect to connect the global history of science with the peculiarities of local environmental histories, to underline the constant tension between the two dimensions throughout late modernity.