Pipe Dreams: Water and Empire in Central Asia's Aral Sea Basin

Studies in Environment and History

by Maya K. Peterson

The drying up of the Aral Sea - a major environmental catastrophe of the late twentieth century - is deeply rooted in the dreams of the irrigation age of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a time when engineers, scientists, politicians, and entrepreneurs around the world united in the belief that universal scientific knowledge, together with modern technologies, could be used to transform large areas of the planet from 'wasteland' into productive agricultural land. Though ostensibly about bringing modernity, progress, and prosperity to the deserts, the transformation of Central Asia's landscapes through tsarist- and Soviet-era hydraulic projects bore the hallmarks of a colonial experiment. Examining how both regimes used irrigation-age fantasies of bringing the deserts to life as a means of claiming legitimacy in Central Asia, Maya K. Peterson brings a fresh perspective to the history of Russia's conquest and rule of Central Asia.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Environment

416 pages, Hardcover

Published July 4, 2019

Reviews

[Vonn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book discuses the history of water management around the Aral Sea basin. From the 19th century on to mid 20th. Particularly focuses on the indigenous methods vs the Imperial Russian and later Soviet interventions in the environment to build civilization, stability, and agriculture, particularly cotton farming into the 20th century.

The author explores why water management was critical as a colonial project. Russians/Soviets sought to force nomads into more controllable sedentary lifestyles and make Central Asia a profitable colonial project through the exploitation of cotton. An industry that continues to dominate the central Asian economy despite the impact it has on the environment.

The book is rather dry and gets into the details of arguments made by politicians and engineers on projects that failed and succeeded, and why. Extraordinarily comprehensive work on the subject. Although the draining of the Aral Sea itself was a bit sudden in the book given the scale of the ecological disaster, it was by then part and parcel for the Soviet projects that saw the environment as something to exploited first and foremost.

[Andrew Leaf · Rating 2 out of 5]

Has some interesting information about the history of canals and irrigation in Central Asia (esp the Aral Sea basin), but too academic for my taste. Too many words spent (often redundantly) arguing for a specific historical narrative and too many name drops. Too focused on the human side of the problem with almost no focus on the natural side and the interplay between the two. I was most interested in ecological, hydrological and geological information about the Aral Sea basin and the effects of human alterations but there is almost none of that here.