Liquid Empire - by Corey Ross (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A bold new account of European imperialism told through the history of water

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a handful of powerful European states controlled more than a third of the land surface of the planet. These sprawling empires encompassed not only rainforests, deserts, and savannahs but also some of the world's most magnificent rivers, lakes, marshes, and seas. Liquid Empire tells the story of how the waters of the colonial world shaped the history of imperialism, and how this imperial past still haunts us today.

Spanning the major European empires of the period, Corey Ross describes how new ideas, technologies, and institutions transformed human engagements with water and how the natural world was reshaped in the process. Water was a realm of imperial power whose control and distribution were closely bound up with colonial hierarchies and inequalities--but this vital natural resource could never be fully tamed. Ross vividly portrays the efforts of officials, engineers, fisherfolk, and farmers to exploit water, and highlights its crucial role in the making and unmaking of the colonial order.

Revealing how the legacies of empire have persisted long after colonialism ebbed away, Liquid Empire provides needed historical perspective on the crises engulfing the world's waters, particularly in the Global South, where billions of people are faced with mounting water shortages, rising flood risks, and the relentless depletion of sea life.

Review Quotes

"Liquid Empire is a significant contribution to the fields of environmental history and political ecology, exploring the intertwined histories of water and empire during the era of European imperialism, as well as their legacies in the postcolonial era. Ross masterfully weaves together over two hundred primary sources in Dutch, English, French, and German to present a clear picture showing both 'the manifold ways in which humans are interwoven with the biophysical environment' . . . and the manifold ways in which the trouble brewing in the world's waters is 'deeply intertwined with the history of empire'."---Wietske Merison, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

"Liquid Empire is a wide-ranging and sweeping book covering the length and breadth of European colonial engagement with water."---Aditya Ramesh, American Historical Review

"Liquid Empire is a tour de force; as a formidable work of historical synthesis, generous in its recognition of the work of others, it testifies to how a generation of environmental historians has transformed the historiography of empire."---Matthew Kelly, Journal of Modern History

"Liquid Empire is an excellent synthesis of the hydraulic engineering schemes employed by modern European empires in colonial Asia and Africa, as well as the broader implications of their outcomes."---Heesoo Cho, H-Net Reviews

"A seminal and ground-breaking study."-- "Midwest Book Review"

"A timely exploration of the multi­faceted relationship between water and European colonial empires. Ross analyses water as a resource, a medium of power, and a site of socio-environmental contention, providing a rich perspective on imperial interactions with both people and environments. . . . Liquid Empire is a significant contribution to the study of colonial history and environmental humanities."---Anna Corsten, German Historical Institute Bulletin

About the Author

Corey Ross is director of the Institute for European Global Studies at the University of Basel in Switzerland. His books include Ecology and Power in the Age of Empire: Europe and the Transformation of the Tropical World.