Dam Internationalism

Rethinking Power, Expertise and Technology in the Twentieth Century

Vincent Lagendijk, Frederik Schulze, Vincent Lagendijk, Frederik Schulze

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN:
  9781350367883
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350367890
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

During the 20th century dam-building became a truly global endeavour. Built around the world, they generated networks of actors, institutions and companies embedded in globally circulating technological knowledge and discourses of modernization and development. This volume takes a global approach to the history of dams, exploring the complex power relations and internationalist entanglements that shaped them.

Shedding new light on the globalization of technology and international power struggles that defined the 20th century, Dam Internationalism shows that dams are artefacts in their own right and have created new and revisionist histories that urge us to rethink classic narratives. From international cooperation, to the importance of the Cold War and the capitalist/socialist divide, the success of western technology, the prominence of the United States, the alleged impotence of people affected by dams, and the uniformity of infrastructure. Each chapter showcases a different case study from Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America to show that dams enabled marginalized countries and actors to articulate themselves and pursue their own political and socio-economic goals in a century dominated by the Global North.

Table of contents

• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments and Dedication
• Dam Internationalism: Introduction to a Global Phenomenon
• Chapter 1: A Cohort of Their Own: Indian Hydraulic Engineers as Interlocutors of Dams and Development
• Chapter 2: The Internationalization of Dam-Building in Twentieth-Century China
• Chapter 3: Communicating US Hydro Expertise: Settler Colonialism, Imperialism, and the Cold War, 1946–1975
• Chapter 4: Linking the Global to the Nation: Dams and Political Legitimacy in Spain from the 1930s to the 1970s
• Chapter 5: New Centers of Knowledge: Latin American Dam-Building in the Twentieth Century
• Chapter 6: Internationalism Coerced and Willing: Choreographing the Global Entanglements of an Uzbek Dam in the Second World War
• Chapter 7: Hydro Money Machine: The Global History of Czechoslovak Dam-Building Expertise during the Cold War (1930s–1990s)1
• Chapter 8: Internationalism-Fueled Development Agendas and Dam Construction in Imperial Ethiopia
• Chapter 9: Ghana’s Volta River Project : The Global Entanglements of the Akosombo Dam
• Chapter 10: Dam Anthropology in Mexico and Beyond
• Chapter 11: From Dam Age to Damage: The International Organization of Dam-Building in the Twentieth Century
• Epilogue
• Selected Bibliography on Dam History
• Contributors
• Index