Thesis ID: CBB001567280

Technologies of Rule: Empire, Water, and the Modernization of Central Asia, 1867--1941 (2011)

unapi

Peterson, Maya Karin (Author)


Harvard University
Martin, Terry


Publication Date: 2011
Edition Details: Advisor: Martin, Terry.
Physical Details: 559 pp.
Language: English

This dissertation is an environmental historical approach to the history of Central Asia under Russian rule. It analyzes the ways in which first tsarist and later Bolshevik efforts to change the physical landscapes of Central Asia intersected with Russian imperial and Soviet notions of civilization, progress and modernity. The dissertation focuses in particular on the manipulation of water, which has always been a crucial and contested resource in Central Asia. Through three case studies of large-scale hydraulic projects and the multiplicity of actors involved in such endeavors--scientists, engineers, workers, entrepreneurs, local and regional officials, farmers, nomads, prisoners--the dissertation highlights the complex dynamics of power relations in this multiethnic frontier region. Rather than seeing the region as peripheral to a Russian core, my work treats Central Asia as inseparable from a larger Eurasian world. It highlights the fluidity of boundaries in the region and the existence of transnational labor and migration networks that made such large-scale hydraulic projects possible. By focusing on Russian and Soviet efforts to transform landscapes in the Central Asian borderlands, the dissertation also places Russia within global discourses of science, modernization, and imperialism in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In Central Asia, for tsarist and Bolshevik officials alike, the apparent backwardness of Central Asian landscapes seemed to confirm the backwardness of indigenous peoples, justifying Russian and Soviet presence in the region. The invocation of science and technology as a means by which to improve agriculture and hydraulic engineering in Central Asia was intended to legitimate Russian and Soviet rule in the borderlands. In addition to transnational labor networks, large-scale hydraulic projects in the Central Asian borderlands were made possible by international transfers of expertise and technology. As Central Asian systems of water management became disengaged from the contexts of local environments, however, they lost their flexibility. Moreover, as Soviet rule consolidated in the region, Central Asia went from being a dynamic and fluid borderland to becoming an isolated periphery of the Soviet empire, a space for increasingly radical projects to transform Central Asian environments and the lives of the people who lived there.

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Description Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 73/04, Oct 2012. Proquest Document ID: 915016115.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001567280/

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Authors & Contributors
Stroshane, Tim
Brescius, Moritz von
Tanja Penter
Rodrigues, Ana Duarte
Hansen, Jan
Isacar Bolaños
Concepts
Imperialism
Water resource management
Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence
Water supply
Environmental history
Technology and culture
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
Early modern
21st century
20th century, early
18th century
Places
Central Asia
United States
Russia
Malay; Malaysia
Soviet Union
India
Institutions
History of the Urban Environment Book Series
East India Company (English)
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