Article ID: CBB244747613

Mastering the Nile? Confidence and Anxiety in D. S. George’s Photographs of the First Aswan Dam, 1899–1912 (2020)

unapi

The first Aswan Dam was built at the dawn of the twentieth century and celebrated as a triumph of imperial engineering. Five years after its completion, workers returned to extend the dam. Photographer D. S. George recorded both the building and extension projects for the Egyptian Public Works Department in a series of images that give a unique insight into the place of engineering in the imperial imagination. The dam was built at the same time as Britain was seeking to secure its domination of the Nile Valley, having recently seized control of Sudan. Mastering the river’s water was vital to expanding agriculture in Egypt, a central plank of British policy in the region. Representations of the dam speak to a larger history of empire and power in northeast Africa. This article examines the tension between bombastic confidence and nagging anxiety in the ideologies of empire. Drawing together water, engineering, and environmental histories, it explores the connections between attempts to control the politics of the Nile Valley and efforts to harness its waters. The key themes found in the albums—nature, technology, work, and conservation—will be used as lenses through which to scrutinize the peculiar form of modernity that engineers attempted to forge on the world’s longest river. This analysis reveals that imperial officials sought total mastery of the environment but that the difficulties faced in realizing such grand schemes also generated persistent anxieties and so helps us understand the fears that accompanied the ambitions of imperial modernity.

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Authors & Contributors
Andersen, Caspar
Armando Gervasoni
Andrew A. Robichaud
Jennifer L. Derr
Frederico Freitas
Blouin, Katherine
Concepts
Environmental history
Nature
Conservation of natural resources
Technology
Dams
Imperialism
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
20th century, early
20th century, late
Early modern
Ancient
Places
Great Britain
Egypt
Nile River
United States
Iguaçu Falls (Argentina and Brazil)
West Indies
Institutions
UNESCO
Yosemite National Park
United States. National Park Service
Science Museum, London
Dutch East India Company
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