Between 1868 and 1908, French activity in Iraq was increasingly shaped by questions of water management in the southern reaches of the Tigris-Euphrates valley and prevailing ideas about the region’s ostensibly limitless potential for commercial agriculture. Specifically, French entrepreneurs and officials advocated for the introduction of steamships on the Tigris and Euphrates and the mobilization of French technocratic expertise in hydraulic engineering to modernize these rivers. In doing so, they hoped to increase France’s influence in Iraq (and the west Indian Ocean more broadly) by competing with British steamships and by responding to Ottoman priorities focused on developing agriculture in Iraq. Thus, the story of French environmental engineering on the Tigris-Euphrates demonstrates that France employed hydroimperialist practices not just at home and in its colonies but also in the unlikely noncolonial setting of Iraq to expand its influence abroad, albeit through informal methods.
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